The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-10
THE EVOLUTION OF THE CIRCUS.


The Roman circus was nothing but an
antique race track. 1875 feet long and 675
feet wide. Chariot races were the favorite
sport of the Roman populace, and the
emperor or consul who furnished the pub
lie, at his own expense, with the best week
of races was the popular favorite. Weak
and foolish emperors, like Nero and Com
modus, drove their own chariots, but, of
course, their competitors were sure to let
them win, just as Napoleon, who loved
chess, but played but an Indifferent game,
was always suffered to win by his cour-
tiers. Our modern circus il clearly de-
scended from the Roman Circensian
games, which included not only chariot
races, but gymnastic contests and shows
of wild beasts. The gladiatorial contests
were the natural outgrowth of these
games, and our modern circus, which in
its present form is not much more than q
century old, is a lineal descendant of the
public sports that once served to make
Roman holiday.
The old Anglo-Saxon manuscripts con-
tain pictures of an audience in an amphi-
theater diverted by a musician, to whose
music a man is dancing, while another
performer exhibits a tame bear that feigns
to be asleep or dead. In Charles Reade's
novel of 1.-THE Cloister and the Hearth"
there is graphic picture of the public
sports with which Philip, Duke of Bur-
grsndy. father of Charles the Bold, de-
lighted his subjects in the middle of the
fifteenth century. There were dancing
bears, horses that beat the kettle drum
with the fore feet, and gleemen who were
often tumblers and jugglers. An illustrated
Manuscript of the middle ages shows o
juggler throwing three balls and three
knives alternately, a boy leaping through
hoop, female acrobat bending back
ward, dancing bears apes, an OK balancing
itself upon a horses back, horse on a
tight rope, another walking on its hind
legs and fencing, as it were. with a man
armed with sword and buckler.
Among the tricks done by the jugglers
at fairs in the time of Queen Elizabeth
was the "decollation of John the Baptist"
identical with the severed head" of
modern conjurers. Shakespeare, in
Henry the Sixth" refers to the dancing
horse as "the wild Morisco, capering up
right, shaking his BELLS" and in Loves
Labor. LOST is the line, 1.-The dancing
horse will tell you" There was famous
Snowman in Shakespeare's day. one
Banks, and his performing horse. "Moroc-
CO." danced and solved arlthmetical ques-
.;o~. I;ba che leo rpaI ,,;c, +oAo,, +ba, ,,Io.,u
cards at our American fairs. Undoubtedly
Shakespeare had this performing horse in
mind when he wrote. In the "Tempest."
when Trinculo meets Caliban, he says,
"Were in England and had but this fish
painted, not holiday fool there but would
give piece of silver; when they will not
give doit TO relieve lame beggar, they
will lay out ten 10 see dead INDIAN"
Evidently human nature has OF changed
very much since Shakespeares day: the
''holiday fool" still crowds to see Buffalo
Bills Wild West show, where he will
spend dollar.after refusing tramp cold
buckwheat cake and offering him the un-
nutritious tipple of the water that the eggs
were boiled in.
Autolycus, the rogue in winters
Tale" describes as follows how he went
through the people that stood for the
fellows who went to fairs in Shakespeare's
day. They evidently were not very differ
ent from the average circus audience that
pickpocket robs today:
Twas nothing to get = purse: could have
fled keys of thai hurg in chains; no hearing.
| no feeling, but my sirs song. and admiring TIA
nothing OF IL So that in this time of leshargy
| picked and cut most OF their festival purses:
and had not the cid man come in with a WHO'D
ouo against his daughter and the kings son.
aud scared nv ehoughs from the chat, / had not
LETT purse alive il the whole army
The ballads Of three hundred years ago
sung by tramp Ministries at fairs were no