The Circus As Theater

The Circus as Theatre: Astley's and Its Actors in the Age of Romanticism
Author(s): A. H. Saxon
Source: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3, Popular Theatre (Oct., 1975), pp. 299-312
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3206456
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A. H. SAXON
The Circus as Theatre:

Astley's and Its Actors in the Age of Romanticism
The circus has long cast its spell over the creative arts. Fascinated by its
colorful, highly charged atmosphere, the ceaseless struggle of its artists for
perfection of style and bodily skill, the laughable yet somehow menacing
appearance of its white-faced clowns, and the real or (as is more usually the case)
imagined tempestuous relationships between its glamourous figures, many poets,
painters, novelists, playwrights, and film scenarists have drawn inspiration from
its acts and performers. In the twentieth century a number of innovative directors
and playwrights have made use of circus settings and techniques in theatrical
productions-most recently Peter Brook in his controversial A Midsummer
Night's Dream and Tom Stoppard in his hilarious Jumpers-although such
physicalization of emotions and themes can be traced to the experiments of
Meyerhold, Eisenstein, Mayakovsky, and other Soviet directors of the early
1920s.1 In fact, these sporadic attempts to combine the circus with theatre are
hardly peculiar to the present century, but are only the latest manifestations of a
long and traditional relationship. For in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, during the romantic period, a large portion of the typical circus program
was theatre, with circus artists, both the two- and four-footed ones, appearing in
dramatic roles and compositions whose popularity rivaled and in many cases
eclipsed productions in regular theatres. The purpose of this essay is to outline the
development of some of these histrionic representations, to describe their format,
and to offer a few examples.
Although many circus acts, including tumbling, juggling, ropedancing, trick

riding, and the exhibiting of trained animals, can be traced to antiquity, the idea of
bringing together these and other acts to form a distinct entertainment of sufficient
magnitude to stand on its own dates from no earlier than the second half of the
eighteenth century. The person responsible for this innovation was the En-
glishman Philip Astley, a former sergeant major who had begun practicing trick
riding while serving as horse breaker to his regiment. At the time of his discharge
A. H. Saxon is Associate Professor of Theatre at the City College and Graduate Center of the City
University of New York where, since 1972, he has conducted the first doctoral seminar in Popular
Entertainments. He is the author of Enter Foot and Horse (1968) and is currently completing a
biography of Andrew Ducrow.
1 On the influence of the circus on Soviet theatre and acting, see Daniel Gerould, "Eisenstein's
Wiseman," TDR, 18 (March 1974), 71-76; and in the same issue Eisenstein's "Montage of Attrac-
tions," 77-85.
299
300 / ETJ, October 1975
Astley was presentedwith a white chargerand, with this and two other horses that
he bought and trained, he and his wife began exhibiting trick horsemanship
togetherwith the astonishingfeats of the "Little MilitaryLearned Horse" in an
open field on the outskirts of London in the spring of 1768. By consensus this date
marksthe foundingof the circus.2 In the following year Astley secured a piece of
land at the junction of Westminster Bridge Road and Stangate Street, and it was
here, a short distance to the south of the Thames, that the famous Astley's
Amphitheatrestood (althoughthrice burneddown and renamed after successive
owners)until 1893.The historyof this building,as well as that of its rivalthe Royal
Circus, has been told elsewhere;3 but, as circuses in the eighteenth and early
nineteenthcenturies were in several respects differentfrom those of today, a few
remarksare in order.
To begin with, nearly all of these establishments,includingthose erected in the

larger provincial towns, were permanent structures, and by the 1780s they were
completely enclosed. The interior arrangement of these amphitheatres or circuses
was not dissimilarto that found in theatres of the period. Spectators had their
choice among pit, boxes, and galleries, the only difference being that a large
portion of the pit was reserved for the ride or circle, which soon came to be
standardizedat thirteenmeters or aroundforty-threefeet in diameter,enclosed by
a paintedbarriersome four feet high. Remarkable,too, is the fact that as early as
1782,when the Royal Circusfirst opened its doors, prosceniumstages were a part
of these establishments(there were exceptions among provincial circuses, how-
ever). By the first decade of the nineteenth century these stages had grown to
formidabledimensions. The third Astley's Amphitheatre,the circus that stood
from 1804 to 1841 and figures in the writings of Dickens and Thackeray, possessed
an auditoriumwhose wall-to-wallwidth was a modest sixty-five feet. Its stage,
however, said to be the largest in England, was described in 1808 as measuring 130
feet in width.4In 1818an adjustableprosceniumwas installedby means of which
the stage opening could be increased in full view of the audience from forty to
sixty feet. Immense platforms, running the entire width of the stage and capable of
2
The name itself, it should be noted, does not derive from the Roman structures, but from the ring
or circle in which Astley and his competitors gave their performances. Astley himself, in fact, always
referred to his establishment as a riding school or, later, amphitheatre, and the latter term was
commonly used in Britain and America until well into the nineteenth century. The rival name was first
employed in 1782, when the equestrian Charles Hughes, together with Charles Dibdin the Elder,
opened the Royal Circus (later the Surrey Theatre) in St. George's Fields, a few hundred yards south
of Westminster Bridge.
a See, e.g., John Britton and A. Pugin, Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London (London,
1825-28), which contains, in Vol. I, the "Account of the Royal Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge" by
Charles Dibdin the Younger; Edward Wedlake Brayley, Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the
Theatres of London (London, 1826), containing essentially the same account, plus a history of the
Surrey (Royal Circus) Theatre; Jacob Decastro, The Memoirs ofJ. Decastro, Comedian (London,
1824), which includes Decastro's "History of the Royal Circus"; M. Willson Disher, Greatest Show on
Earth (London, 1937), a history of Astley's and its artists; A. H. Saxon, Enter Foot and Horse: A
History of Hippodrama in England and France (New Haven, 1968), concerned mainly with Astley's
and the Cirque Olympique in Paris; George Palliser Tuttle, "The History of the Royal Circus,
Equestrian and Philharmonic Academy, 1782-1816," Diss. Tufts 1972.
4The Microcosm of London (London: R. Ackermann, 1808-10), 1, 19.
301 / CIRCUS AS THEATRE
supportinggallopinghorsemen and even carriages, could be raised and lowered

mechanicallyand were maskedby scenery representingbattlements,bridges,and
mountains.5Nor was this type of structureunique to England. In France, where
PhilipAstley also introducedthe circus in 1783,the famed CirqueOlympiquewas
noted for its ring and stage productions until the mid-nineteenthcentury;"in
America the English equestrianand riding master John Bill Ricketts introduced
the structureand its entertainmentsto Philadelphia,New York, Boston, and other
cities in the 1790s.7
As is obvious from the above, early circus programswere a far cry from what
we are accustomed to today. They did not include legitimate drama (that is,
five-act plays whose dialogue could be in prose, unaccompaniedby music or
recitative), since in London the patent theatres of Drury Lane and Covent
Garden,togetherwith the summertheatrein the Haymarket,claimed a monopoly
on this type of drama until the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843. However, the
licenses grantedto Astley's and the Royal Circus "for public dancingand music"
and "for otherpublic entertainmentsof the like kind" were broadlyinterpretedto
includenot only displays of equestrianismand circus acts but a variety of lesser
dramaticentertainmentsas well." Originallythese consisted of burlettas, pan-
tomimes, and ballets d'action, for whose performancea separate "dramatic"
company (as opposed to the "equestrian" company) of professional actors,
singers, and dancers was engaged. At the same time the circus artists, in keeping
with the versatilitythat has always been expected of them, frequentlyhelped out
as well. Thus a gracefulequestriennemightinterpretthe role of a young prince in
the opening stage spectacle, adding a piquant note by dressing in close-fitting
breeches, while a featuredropedanceror strongmanmightappearas Harlequinor
a bereavedfatherin the concludingpantomime.This was even more generalafter
the turn of the century, by which time the distinctionbetween the two types of
company had begun breaking down and circus stages had increased in size to
accommodatemore ambitious forms of entertainment.Prominentamong these
later productions, beginning in 1807 with The Brave Cossack, or Perfidy Punished,
were the spectacles known as hippodramas,equestrianizedmelodramasin which
the ridersand their mounts engaged in combat and galloped across the stage, and
the horses themselves often appearedas "stars"-rescuing infants and heroines,
identifyingand apprehendingvillains, scamperingup precipices, dancing, falling
down and playing dead-and, as more than one critic took perverse delight in
pointing out, frequently surpassed their two-footed colleagues in histrionic
abilities.
5 Saxon, Enter Foot and Horse, pp. 13-14.

6 Ibid., pp. 18-24.
7 See, e.g., Earl Chapin May, The Circus from Rome to Ringling, rev. ed. (New York: Dover, 1963),
pp. 14-21 (with illustrations). And for a description of the later Lafayette Amphitheatre in New York
City, see Robert Montilla, "The Building of the Lafayette Theatre," Theatre Survey, 15 (1974),
105-129.
8 On the licensing of the minor theatres and their types of entertainment, see Enter Foot and Horse,
pp. 1-6.
By the early years of the nineteenth century the programs at Astley's had
become standardized and ran something like the following. At 6:30 the curtain
rose on the featured piece, a hippodrama with some resounding title like The
Brave Cossack, The Blood Red Knight, or Uranda the Enchanter of the Steel
Castle. Following this came the "Scenes in the Circle," lasting some forty-five
minutes and including the acts we associate with the circus today-gymnasts
contortionists, clowns, strongmen-and always featuring a fine display of horse-
manship. The action then reverted to the stage where a burletta, pantomime, or
pedestrian melodrama rounded out the evening's bill. The musical accompani-
ment was provided by an orchestra stationed between the ring and the stage, and it
was not unusual, especially during the initial representations of a hippodrama or
pantomime, for the entertainments to conclude after midnight or even after
1:00 A.M. For the Amphitheatre, or "Ample-theatre," as visitors sometimes
referred to it, believed in giving its patrons their money's worth. The heavy
reliance on stage entertainments also explains the frequent appearances of circus
companies in so many theatres of the nineteenth century. Both Covent Garden
and Drury Lane eventually went over to producing hippodramas of their own,
engaging equestrians from Astley's and elsewhere, and it was standard procedure
for touring circuses to rent regular theatres-not excepting theatres royal-in
towns that did not possess circus buildings. On these occasions a part of the pit
might be temporarily converted into a ring, but just as often the ring was dispensed
with and the performances were confined to the stage. The same arrangements
prevailed in America, where even the prestigious Park Theatre was similarly
occupied for a period in 1817 by the company of the English circus manager James
West.9
There was, then, plenty of opportunity for dramatic representations in

nineteenth-century circuses, whose productions in most instances could easily be
transplanted to the boards of regular theatres. Most common of all were the
hippodramas, of which Astley's and the analogous Cirque Olympique in Paris
produced several new examples each season. In time these encompassed not only
melodramas, but equestrianized Christmas and Easter pantomimes, contempo-
rary military campaigns, and even grand opera and mounted versions of Shake-
speare's plays. An outstanding example of the genre was J. H. Amherst's The
Battle of Waterloo, originally staged at Astley's during the whole of the 1824
season and repeatedly revived over the next several decades, whose clashing
armies of supernumeraries, heroic charges and countercharges by foot and horse,
exploding ammunition wagons, and crackling musketry were sufficiently realistic
to attract the Duke of Wellington to the Amphitheatre. During the 1831 season the
success of this production was rivaled and in time even surpassed by H. M.
Milner's Mazeppa and the Wild Horse of Tartary, based on the poem by Byron.
The plot presented the tale of a youth who dared love above his station and was
condemned by his sweetheart's father to be lashed naked to the back of a wild
horse that was sent galloping over the Polish countryside. He nevertheless
managed to survive this terrifying journey, was proclaimed rightful heir to the
a George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York, 1927-49), II, 469-470.
throne of Tartary and, in a gratifying scene of retribution, led an army to rescue

his beloved from marriage to a detested suitor and to trounce the troops of his
future father-in-law. The lavish scenery for the original production included
spectacular views of practicable mountains up and down which the fiery steed
bearing Mazeppa was seen to rush, and in one scene a moving panorama
representing the course of the Dnieper slowly unwound as the hero, still bound to
the horse, was assailed by a mechanical vulture. Mazeppa was hippodrama at its
best, and it was also the making of the bawling actor John Cartlitch, who created
the title character and was presented with a gold medal upon the hundredth
performance a few months later. In the second half of the century the role became
a favorite vehicle in circuses and theatres for a host of shapely females whose
histrionic and riding abilities were praised in direct proportion to the amount of
anatomy they revealed. America's own "Naked Lady," the notorious Adah
Isaacs Menken, made (or rather, unmade) her reputation in the role and was
acclaimed for the brevity of her costume on both sides of the Atlantic.1o
Romanticism triumphed during the 1830 season with the production of another
spectacle by the prolific Amherst, The Spectre Monarch and His Phantom Steed,
or The Genii Horsemen of the Air. This time the action was set in China, whose
rightful prince was set upon by a Tartar usurper. The latter entered into a pact
with and received from the Spectre Monarch a magic ring, by aid of which his
unlawful desires were instantly gratified. Virtue, predictably, won out in the end,
and the discomfited villain, in a final settling of accounts with his dread master,
was borne off through the air in a car of fire "pursued by Daemon Horsemen
above THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA." The profusion and beauty of the
oriental settings were much applauded, as were the special effects which
enhanced one scene in which the Spectre Monarch mysteriously appeared in the
Temple of Death and ascended on his skeleton horse and another depicting
the "SINKING OF THE EARTH, And Celestial Vision, with the Advance of the
ARMY of the CLOUDS And Cortege of Genii, Maidens on their Aerial Coursers,
&c.""• Admittedly, there was always something of the absurd in these Astleian
productions (as in the 1833 hippodrama The Giant Horse, or The Siege of Troy,
whose dramatis personae included such authentic characters as Menelaus of Troy,
Paris of Greece, and Helen, daughter of Queen Hecuba), and reviewers, when
they were not busy exercising their wits at the expense of the playwrights, enjoyed
joking about the stars of the establishment. "There are great and beautiful actors
and actresses at this popular theatre," began one writer, "but then, shame to
biped and flesh and blood-devouring humanity! they all move on four legs and are
granivorous merely." At Astley's, it was stated, a horse of histrionic ability was
certain to be engaged on as liberal terms as any quadruped could reasonably
expect. Another sortie of the kind claimed to set forth the list of fines imposed on
o10For extensive discussions of both The Battle of Waterloo and Mazeppa, see Enter Foot and
Horse. And for a centenary appreciation of Menken and her career, see my "Adah Isaacs Menken: La
Dame Nue d'Ambrique," Le Cirque dans l'Univers, No. 68 (1er trimestre 1968), 17-22.
" Bill for 12 April 1830, Theatre Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum; reviews in the Times for 13
April and the Dramatic Magazine for 1 May 1830.
performers whenever they were guilty of infracting the theatre's rules: one peck of
oats for any "scenic indecorum,"one quarterpeck for snortingduringrehearsal,
and conscriptioninto Her Majesty's army for life for coming to rehearsal with
dirtyshoes or lyingdown in the green room.12The satiricaltone of such notices in
no way diminished the genuine admiration felt by all classes for these productions
and their actors. The most truly English theatre in the metropolis, Astley's was
the place where John Bull-whose appreciation of horseflesh was second to
none-was said to feel most sincerely at home.
Given the immensepopularityof these spectacles and their actors, it was only a
matter of time before other quadrupeds should put in an appearance, and in 1829 a
new starof impressivemagnitudearose in the theatricalfirmament,the renowned
elephant Mlle. Djeck. To be sure, elephants were nothing new to circuses or even
the stages of legitimate theatres by this date. In 1811 the young male elephant
Chuny-Chuny who in 1826 became ungovernableduring a period of must and
had to be destroyed by the militia-had been hired from Cross's Menagerie in
Exeter Change to appear in the Covent Garden pantomime Harlequin and
Padmanaba. 13 Even earlier than this elephants had occasionally been employed in
stage processions, as at the Park Theatre, New York, for a production of Blue
Beard in 1808.14Other houses, which either could or would not engage the living
article,reliedon their machinistsfor this partof theircasting-an expedientwhich
was not without certain advantages,for these ponderous animals, in addition to
eliciting symptoms of uneasiness from spectators and their fellow actors, were
capable of committing faux pas of mammoth proportions. Unless kept from the
water butt until after performances, they were likely to deluge both stage and
orchestrapit, to the no small discomfortof actors and musicians and the general
hilarity of those fortunate enough to be a safe distance away, while curtains were
hastily rung down and sawdust liberally distributed. Mlle. Djeck was herself guilty
of at least one such breach of manners during her London debuts, and was
creditedwith brazeningit out like the best demirep.15
12 Bons mots about Astley's and its "actors" were legion. The three representative ones given here
are recorded in, respectively, an unidentified review, hand-dated 18 May 1834, in the second of three
Astley's scrapbooks once the property of Maurice Willson Disher, now in the Kenneth Spencer
Research Library at the University of Kansas; the Times for 21 April 1829; and an unidentified article,
hand-dated 1839, Disher Scrapbooks, II.
13 See, e.g., David Mayer III, Harlequin in His Element: The English Pantomime, 1806-1836
(Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 101-103; and for a detailed account of Chuny's career, death, and
dissection, the Mirror of Literature for 11 March 1826.
14 Robert William Glenroie Vail, "The Early Circus in America," Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, NS 43 (1934), 127.

15 The actor Joseph Cowell, in his Thirty Years Passed Among the Players in England and America
(New York, 1845), p. 64, tells of a similar "hydraulic experiment" at the New York Park Theatre in the
1820s. And surely it must have been with this and other considerations in mind that the Royal Minor
Theatre at Manchester, in the summer of 1830, billed its production of The Elephant of Siam in the
following words: "Third NIGHT of the ELEPHANT, Miss AUTOMATON, Who for Decency,
Docility, Safety, & Sagacity, excels any living performer"-bill for 25 and 26 June 1830, British
Museum Playbills Collection, No. 251.
Fortunately,Mademoiselle possessed other talents as well, and in Ferdinand

Laloue'sL'Eliphant du Roi de Siam, the exotic vehicle especially createdfor her
and produced at the Cirque Olympique in July 1829, she was given ample
opportunityto display them. Appearingin a succession of scenes in which she
defendedthe hereditaryprince of Siam againstthe machinationsof a usurper,she
was seen carryingher master into battle, rescuinghim from the inevitableprison,
snatchingthe royaldiademfromthe villainto place it upon the brows of its rightful
owner, and sharingin the triumphat the end of the piece. Priorto this final tableau
she sat in the midst of a splendidbanquetinghall with an immense napkinaround
her neck, ringinga bell to signalher wishes to her attendantslaves and courtiers."16
The play had an enormous success at the Cirque Olympiqueand the following
Decemberwas transferredto London's AdelphiTheatre.The result was a ragefor
elephant dramaover the next several years, with playwrightseither dishing up
new pieces or rehashingold ones to accommodatepachydermatousperformers,
and managersreinforcingtheir stages and scramblingto obtain the services of
Djeck or one of her reasonablefacsimiles. At Astley's a play entitled The Royal
Elephant of Siam and the Fire-Fiend was got up during the 1830 season, although
Mademoiselleherself was not destined to make her debut there until late in the
followingyear. Meanwhile,billed as "of the TheatreRoyal, Adelphi," she toured
the Englishprovinces and Ireland;added to her repertoirea reworkingof the old
hippodrama The Cataract of the Ganges, now retitled The Triumph of Zorilda, or
The Elephant of the Black Sea, whose climax arrived when Mademoiselle,
improvingupon a feat formerlyreservedto a starhorse, plungedinto a paintedsea
to rescue the heroine and her son; and delighted her audiences by distributing
flowers to the ladies in the boxes.17 In late summer of 1830 she appeared at
Newcastle and Birminghamand then, seized by lust for even greater fame,
embarkedfor New York aboardthe packet Ontario. For a while it was feared her
ambitionhad been her undoing, as a rumorcirculatedthat Djeck had been thrown
overboardin the midst of a storm (anotherhad it that she had saved herself by
wrappingher trunkaroundthe mast). The story was shortly denied, however, and
Mademoiselle, after establishing her reputation at the Bowery and Chatham
theatres, triumphantlyreturnedto Englandin 1831.18
By this date, however, circus spectators were being thrilledby a new and even
more sensationalkind of spectacle, for a change featuringa biped performer,the
menagerieproprietorand formerequestrianHenri Martin.For the past ten years
Martin had been touring the Continent with an extensive collection of exotic
beasts, many of which he had personallytrained. In 1830, under the patronageof
the Duchesse de Berri, he installed his menagerieat Paris, and in April of the
16 Reviews in the Corsair and Courrier des Theatres for 5 July 1829; and for a description of the
settings in the original production, see Marian Hannah Winter, Le Theatre du Merveilleux (Paris,
1962), pp. 166-167.
17 See, e.g., the bills for the Dublin Theatre Royal, 30 May 1830 (British Museum Playbills, No. 213),
and the Bath Theatre Royal for 20 and 28 April and 1 May 1830 (British Museum Playbills, No. 180).
18 See the Dramatic Gazette for 30 October and 18 December 1830 and the Glasgow Opera Glass for
11 December 1830. For Djeck's appearances in New York, see Joseph N. Ireland, Records of the New
York Stage from 1750 to 1860 (New York, 1866), I, 657; Odell, Annals, III, 520-531.
following year, at a performance attended by Louis-Philippe, made his debut on

the stage of the Cirque Olympique in a drama written to exhibit him and his
animals. Les Lions de Mysore, the first of the great lion dramas to be produced
with such trainers as Martin, Van Amburgh, and Carter as their heroes, followed
the usual melodramatic formula. As was typical in these pieces, Martin acted in
dumbshow, playing the role of the nabob Sadhusing, forced to seek refuge in the
forest of Mysore to escape the persecution of Hyder Ali, the Sultan of Mysore.
The latter is in love with Delhi, Sadhusing's daughter, a fact which does not abate
his hatred for her father, whom he eventually captures and consigns to his fate in a
large cage containing a "ferocious" lion. Before this much-heralded combat took
place, however, Martin was provided numerous occasions to display his mastery
over four-footed creation, beginning with a scene in the forest where he was
discovered asleep on a lion. The novel stage arrangements for this and several of
the following scenes included a strong wire net, ingeniously masked by the jungle
foliage and so disposed as to give the illusion of the other actors being within the
same area as Martin and his animals. Upon awaking and rising from his
comfortable divan, Sadhusing was called upon to rescue his two sons from the
embraces of a pair of boa constrictors-an excellent excuse to strike the attitude
of the Laocoin-and in the following scene was defended by two of his lions
against the troops of the Sultan. In the second act a comic scene occurred when a
pelican waddled onstage to steal the dinner of Hyder Ali's jester. Llamas and a
buffalo traversed the forest, a monkey sat chattering and scratching itself atop a
tree, even a kangaroo came hopping on! The scene, one reviewer reported,
"seems alive with almost every variety of bird and beast." Hyder Ali then entered
the forest on his state elephant to take part in a tiger hunt, and several of these
felines were seen running about the stage. The same hunt served as pretext for
Sadhusing and his allies to launch an unsuccessful attack upon Hyder Ali.
Defeated and taken prisoner by his implacable enemy, Sadhusing was given one
last chance to save himself and his wife and child: vanquish in single combat the
untamed lion in the "arena" of Mysore. This, of course, he proceeded to do,
belaboring and subduing the king of the beasts with a spear. In the final tableau, by
which time Sadhusing and Hyder Ali had made up their differences, the hero
appeared in a triumphal procession with the conquered lion at his feet, while
Hyder Ali and Delhi entered on the elephant, accompanied by standard bearers,
bodies of troops, dancing girls, and military bands.19
News of the production was not long in reaching the ears of London managers
and, accordingly, on 17 October 1831Hyder Ali, or The Lions of Mysore, featuring
Martin and his menagerie, opened at Drury Lane. The superfluous curtain-raiser
on this occasion was Jane Shore, with the part of Hastings by the genial William
Charles Macready, whose reaction to the real stars of the evening may readily be
imagined. Over the succeeding weeks the "eminent tragedian," in such plays as
19 For an account of the Paris production, see M.-J. Vesque, "Le Cirque Olympique du Boulevard
du Temple (de Mars 1827 i Septembre 1836)," Le Cirque dans l'Univers, No. 15 (1953-54), 21. An
unidentified review of the same production by an English correspondent is in the Astley's Scrapbooks,
ni, 98, at the Harvard Theatre Collection.
307 / CIRCUSAS THEATRE
Richard III, William Tell, Macbeth, and Virginius, continued to take a back seat
to Martin and his beasts. Upon departing Drury Lane at the end of December,
Martin and his animals paid a brief visit to Dublin, then joined forces with the
company from Astley's, while the latter, in the course of its annual winter tour,
was playing at the Liverpool Amphitheatre.
Spectacular animal dramas and the more traditional afterpieces were not the
only instances of dramatic representations in early nineteenth-century circuses.
Even artists appearing in the ring attempted to give dramatic form and characteri-
zation to their acts. The clown, of course, is the one performer who immediately
comes to mind, for it is he alone among present-day circus artists who continues to
impersonate. From the early years of Astley's the ring or equestrian clown had
been an essential part of circus entertainment, although the name itself-derived
from the white-faced pantomime character of Clown created by Joseph Grimaldi,
who never appeared in the circus-was a later addition. Originally it was Mr.
Merryman who delighted spectators in the Amphitheatre at the foot of Westmin-
ster Bridge, engaging in wisecracks with his foil the Master of the Ring, excelling at
energetic displays of tumbling and leaping, and seemingly interrupting the
performances of the equestrians and ropedancers. There was a practical side to
these last fooleries, for they provided momentary rests to the other artists in the
midst of their strenuous exercises. The clown also held the banners (long bands of
cloth) and balloons (paper-covered hoops) used in equestrian acts, handed up any
properties that might be required, and checked to see that the performers' feet
were properly chalked. In the first half of the nineteenth century-again influ-
enced by the example of Grimaldi-the white-faced clowns, in elegant if some-
what bizarre costume, predominated in the ring; and by this time, too, a number of
them had worked up distinct acts of their own, known in circus parlance as
"entrees." The English supplied many of the best clowns of this type, and among
them was the multi-talented John Ducrow, who was clown to the ring at Astley's
from 1826 until shortly before his death in 1834. Billed as "Prime Grinner, and
Joculator General to the Ring, whose Circumgyrations and Facetiae extraordinary
will occupy the Intervals between the Acts,"20 he appears with two of his
diminutive ponies in a frequently reproduced print depicting one of his most
famous acts, "Darby & Joan Supping with the Clown." There we see him, in the
grotesque and rather frightening whiteface and tufted hairpiece favored by so
many nineteenth-century clowns, perversely stirring his tea with one toe, while
the ponies-bonneted, be-wigged, and with napkins around their necks-politely
sup at their separate tables. At other times John appeared opposite his celebrated
brother, the equestrian Andrew Ducrow, in a series of ring scenes of the latter's
invention. In 1831 he was Pan to Andrew's Apollo; in 1832, in a representation of a
Spanish bull fight (with a horse made up as the bull), Gracioso to Andrew's Leon;
and in 1833 he was Mr. Kill'emwrong to his brother's Mr. Jenkins in "The First of
September, or The Cockney Sportsman." His own skill as an equestrian is
sufficiently attested by another act entitled "The Fairy Steeds" in which he
rode-still in the character of clown-two galloping horses at the same time.
20
Bill for 2 October 1829, Victoria & Albert.
John Ducrow, in his clown costume and makeup, performing "The Fairy Steeds." His brother
Andrew, functioning as Master of the Ring, is at the left. From a print by R. Lloyd published
in 1832. Courtesy of the Bibliotheque de I'Oprra, Paris.
Mimetic scenes in the ring were by no means restricted to clowns and their
entrres, and in the early years of the century drama informed a surprising number
of other circus acts. Indeed, almost from the moment of the circus's inception a
dramatic element had been added to equestrianism through a number of brief
scenes depicting the disastrous attempts of a tailor to mount a horse and gallop off
to a customer ("The Taylor Riding to Brentford"-an act at one time performed
by Philip Astley), the equally inept horsemanship of a French messenger, and a
drunken sailor on his way to Portsmouth. Around the turn of the century these
were joined by another comic scene on horseback, "The Peasant's Frolic, or The
Flying Wardrobe," of which Mark Twain has given a famous description in
Chapter 22 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and which, on rare occasions,
may still be seen in the circus. The act traditionally began with a drunken
countryman rising from the audience and noisily insisting he be allowed to take a
few turns on horseback. After unsuccessfully trying to talk him out of this
foolhardy desire, the Master of the Ring finally gave in, and the peasant then went
on to amuse and horrify the spectators with his break-neck antics atop the rushing
horse-only to shed suddenly his peasant's clothes (generally consisting of a good
many layers) and stand revealed in a brilliant costume, leaving no doubt he was
actually a star performer.
For nearly fifty years such scenes were a stock part of circus programs,until
one person, determined to lift the art of equestrianismabove such "senseless
drollery"and give it an air of refinement,introduceda new school of equitation
and single-handedlyrevolutionizedthe art of circus riding. This was none other
thanAndrewDucrow, who hadbegunhis careerperformingthese same humorous
scenes, but who shortly went over to exhibitinga series of poses plastiques in
which he assumed the attitudes of Mercury, a Roman Gladiator, Zephyr, and
other classical figures atop a circling horse. Denied recognition in his own
country,from 1818to 1823Ducrow touredthe Continent,where he perfectedand
began performingthe first of his most famous creations, his pantomimes on
horseback. Combining equestrianism with dance and mime, accompanied by
appropriatecostumes, properties, and music, these elegant and sophisticated
creationswere truly dramaticand, in contrastto the static attitudes of Ducrow's
earlierposes plastiques, presentedcontinuous,often entire, actions played out on
the backs of one or more rushing horses. The subjects of these scenes were
selected with the object of inspiringspectators with a mixtureof emotions-as in
the life of a jolly British sailor who eventually was shipwreckedand had to swim
ashore("The Vicissitudes of a Tar"), the escape of a sorcereratop three galloping
horses from the pursuingFiends of Vengeance ("The Chinese Enchanter"),the
adventuresof a courier travelingwith dispatches from Russia to England("The
Courier of St. Petersburg")--and a number of them, like "The Death of the
Brigand," were downright tragic. In all, Ducrow invented some fifty of these
scenes, and following his return to London, where he quickly established his
reputationas England'sforemost equestrianand managedAstley's from 1825until
his death in 1842, his pantomimes and style were widely copied throughout
Europeand America.
One of Ducrow's most famous acts, originallyperformedin France, was his

"Carnivalof Venice" in which he impersonatedsix differentcharacters.Contem-
porary bills and reviews permit us to reconstruct the scene which began when
Ducrow, costumed as a Punch-marionette,was carriedinto the arena inside a toy
box. Upon being taken out of the box, he assumed various postures while
attempts were made by attendants to stand him on his feet. Then the clown,
elevated on stilts, strode over and, pickingup the stringsattachedto his armsand
legs, made him walk aroundthe ring. Still manipulatedby the clown, Punch was
next made to mount a horse on which he at first tottered and rolled about. "A
mere torpid mass of deformity, and liker some dressed up image than anything
animated,"was how one Scots critic describedthe characterin 1827,while a later
writer recalled Ducrow's flounderingand flinging his limbs about, once he had
mountedthe horse, "as if they were so many fly-flappers"and squeakinglike a
penny trumpet. After leaping up and kicking off his Punch costume, Ducrow
successively transformed himself into the dreamy Pierrot and the sprightly
Harlequin,performing, in the case of the latter, the peculiar type of dancing
associated with the character and exhibiting "everypas and attitude of it . . . with
a truth, a precision, and a force of gusto, not exhibited by any mere stage
harlequinextant, and on a slippery stage a few inches square, that is all the while
moving under his feet at the rate of twenty miles an hour!" Then came the
characterof Columbine,whom Ducrow interpretedas a delicate lady of "nervous
sensibility." A few moments later, as Bacchus or Silenus, he pretended to drink

and become gradually intoxicated, his legs, body, eyes, and expression progres-
sively indicating the state he was in, until he rolled and staggered about the horse.
Another Proteus-like change was accompanied by another startling contrast, this
time the athletic and graceful attitudes of Adonis or (as the French critics claimed)
Endymion with his bow, including an amazing feat of equilibrium when Ducrow,
standing on one toe, leaned out over the sides of the horse and seemed genuinely
on the verge of taking flight. Finally, at the moment he let fly the arrow he
assumed the pose of the Apollo Belvedere, while the applause from the ecstatic
spectators came down like thunder. The changes of costume and accessories were
made without Ducrow's once quitting his horse, and, as in all his pantomimes, the
drama was heightened by an appropriate orchestral accompaniment.21
In later years Ducrow created a number of pantomimical duets on horseback,

such as "The Mountain Maid and Tyrolean Shepherd," which he performed with
the lovely equestrienne and tightrope dancer Louisa Woolford, who was to
become his second wife in 1838. He also instructed numerous pupils in his new
school of equitation. By and large, these were skillful imitators to whom Ducrow,
after his health began failing in the 1830s, entrusted the more demanding of his
roles. A few of them, however, did evince genuine creativity of their own. The
equestrian Henry Adams, in addition to performing many of Ducrow's pan-
tomimes and a number especially arranged for him by Ducrow with the self-
explanatory title "The Trumpeter and the Bottle of Burgundy," invented several
fine scenes during his career. Perhaps the best of them was his "Shaw, the Life
Guardsman," which the reviewer for the Times (27 May 1831) praised for its
eloquence. Beginning with the enlisting, drilling, and arrival of Shaw in London,
the pantomime went on to depict his pugilistic exploits and finally his desperate
fighting and death at the Battle of Waterloo. Like the majority of Ducrow's own
scenes, the act was copied and continued in circus bills for many years afterward,
and a later description of the final moments tells of a shot being fired outside the
ring, while the rider simulated the wound by pressing to his forehead a sponge
soaked with red dye.22 The influence of Ducrow and his mimetic style of riding
dominated circus equestrianism for years to come. "All the troops in England
copy his performances," remarked Pierce Egan as early as 1827, an observation
that was echoed over forty years later, some thirty years after Ducrow's death, by
the clown William F. Wallett, who complained in his memoirs that "all the riders
21 Reconstruction primarily based on the Mimorial bordelais for 21 and 30 April 1822; the
Edinburgh Evening Courant for 6 December 1827; "Ducrow's Horsemanship and the Carnival of
Venice," Theatrical Journal for 30 August 1845 (the last source, a retrospective account written
several years after Ducrow's death, is not always accurate). For additional information on Ducrow's
career in France and descriptions of several other pantomimes by him, see my "La Carribre Frangaise
d'Andrew Ducrow," Le Cirque dans I'Univers, No. 89 (2e trimestre 1973), 3-11; "Andrew Ducrow,
England's Mime on a Moving Stage: The Years in France," Theatre Research/Recherches Thdatrales,
13 (1973), 15-21.
22 Charlie Keith, Circus Life and Amusements (Equestrian, Dramatic, & Musical), in All Nations
(Derby, 1879), p. 47.
of the present day have been living upon their inferior imitations of his great and
glorious creations."23
Even the venerable art of ropedancing possessed its sons and daughters of
Thespis in the nineteenth century. Besides being given in circuses, since the
eighteenth century tightrope dancing had been a fairly common entr'acte enter-
tainment in theatres, and in both these locales the usual arrangement was for the
rope to be supported on cross-poles at the front and rear of the stage so that the
majority of spectators could view the performers and their steps from the front.
Frequently two, and sometimes as many as three, artists performed simultane-
ously on a like number of parallel ropes, with their exercises carefully coordinated
and choreographed to display a variety of attitudes and dance figures at different
tempos. The stage area behind and at the sides was often dressed with scenery,
there was a musical accompaniment, and the artists themselves, suitably cos-
tumed, sometimes arranged their movements around a theme or dramatic action.
Such scenes were, in fact, ballets d'action transferred to the quivering rope. One
of the most beautiful of these acts was the double tightrope ballet performed in
1832 by Andrew Ducrow and Louisa Woolford, both of whom, in addition to their
other accomplishments, were renowned funambulists. Invented by Ducrow and
titled "The Hungarian Wood Cutters, or The Ascent of Zephyr in the Temple of
Flora," it was enhanced by music, scenery, properties, and "travestiment." This
last was Ducrow's "hard-sounding" term for trick costume changes, for midway
through the action Ducrow and Woolford, as the young rustics Gatz and Ida, were
suddenly transformed into the deities of the subtitle. The latter part of the ballet
was captured in a fine theatrical portrait by Lloyd, where we see Woolford posing
in her scallop-shell "temple" balanced on the two parallel ropes, and Ducrow in
his winged Zephyr costume flying high above her, trailing garlands whose ends are
held by members of the corps de ballet on the stage below. The whole is backed by
a handsome decor of arches, clouds, and painted stars. That the artist's rendering
is not as fanciful as it at first appears-that Ducrow did indeed "ascend" into the
air in the second part of the act-is attested by a notice dating from later in the
same season. The review also bears witness to the considerable risk such scenes
involved:
Therewas some spell upon the house this evening. A mass of clouds, or rathera quantityof canvas
and a large beam, fell from aloft while Mr. Ducrow was flying in the air, and Miss Woolford
supportingherselfon the tightrope. The escape of each was astonishing,but more especiallythatof
the lady, who saved herselfby some masterlybalancing.Had the beam eitherstruckher, or caused
herto fall off the rope, she must inevitablyhave been maimedif not killed.The curtainwas instantly
huddleddown, and the performance,in just considerationof the lady, not resumed.24
23 Pierce Egan's Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase, the Ring, and the Stage (London, 1827), p. 268;
The Public Life of W. F. Wallett, the Queen's Jester: An Autobiography (London, 1870), p. 61.
24 Unidentified review, dated 26 September [1832], Victoria & Albert. Cf. the bill for 21 May 1832,
the date the act was first performedin Londonafterhavingbeen given at Liverpoolduringthe winter
tour.
In the second half of the nineteenth century a number of profound changes

occurred in circuses and their programs. Tenting shows arose, and those
companies that continued to maintain permanent buildings eventually gave up
their scenic stages and went over to the arena-type structure seen today at the
Cirque d'Hiver in Paris (opened in 1852) and the modern Circus Krone in Munich.
The thunder of hoofs galloping across stages and up platforms began dying away,
and the beasts of creation, following the invention of the circular cage, departed
their pasteboard jungles for the sawdust ring. The age of the great hippodramas
and animal spectacles drew to a close, although Astley's itself continued to stage
"zoological pantomimes," employing all the artists and animals of the establish-
ment, until its demolition at the end of the century and a number of German and
American circuses followed suit. The only vestiges of these "specs" remaining
today are the gaudy, often tedious pageants or "walk-arounds" seen at such
circuses as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, in which artists, ballet girls,
floats, and animals parade around the hippodrome track, while some superbly
incoherent action titled "Alice in Wonderland," "The Wizard of Oz," or, during
the present season, "Circus Spirit of '76," is mimed by other performers in the
center ring. Also in the latter half of the century the elegant pantomimical school
of equitation founded by Ducrow was challenged by and eventually fell victim to
an acrobatic style of horsemanship, in which the equestrian now turned somer-
saults from one horse to another and performed other gymnastic feats. The
"meaning" and intellectual quality of Ducrow's performances were lost to the
circus, though whether this loss is a matter for regret is a subject of debate among
circus aficionados to the present day. For with the artists and their animals now
divorced from their earlier theatrical associations, the "pure" circus was born.
Nowadays only the clown-joined around 1865 by a second type, that of the
Auguste, whose ill-fitting clothes, oversize shoes, bulbous nose, and bungling
attempts to be of use to his exasperated white-faced partner are familiar through
the tramp variation of Emmett Kelly-retains his earlier dramatic function. Even
he, however, with a few exceptions like the Russian Popov, is rarely featured in an
act of his own and, especially in the immense space of the American three-ring
circus, simply fills in between acts while equipment is being set up or taken down.
But in the romantic period of the circus it was all quite different, and circus
artists-together with their gifted four-footed colleagues-had a real chance to
exercise their histrionic talents then.

The Circus As Theater

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The Circus As Theater

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The Circus as Theatre: Astley's and Its Actors in the Age of Romanticism

The Circus as Theatre:

Although many circus acts, including tumbling, juggling, ropedancing, trick

To begin with, nearly all of these establishments,includingthose erected in the

supportinggallopinghorsemen and even carriages, could be raised and lowered

5 Saxon, Enter Foot and Horse, pp. 13-14.

There was, then, plenty of opportunity for dramatic representations in

throne of Tartary and, in a gratifying scene of retribution, led an army to rescue

Antiquarian Society, NS 43 (1934), 127.

Fortunately,Mademoiselle possessed other talents as well, and in Ferdinand

following year, at a performance attended by Louis-Philippe, made his debut on

One of Ducrow's most famous acts, originallyperformedin France, was his

sensibility." A few moments later, as Bacchus or Silenus, he pretended to drink

In later years Ducrow created a number of pantomimical duets on horseback,

(Derby, 1879), p. 47.

In the second half of the nineteenth century a number of profound changes

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