The Imperturbable Seriousness of the Circus Buffoon: The Shakespearean Clown on the Threshold of Modern Comedy

Abstract

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, there arose a type of circus performer in England called ‘Shakespearean clowns’. These clowns constituted a transitory figure between the age of Georgian pantomime clowns and the establishment of the typical circus clown in the later part of the century. One of the more neglected representatives of the genre was James Clement Boswell, who enjoyed a brief period of success in England before becoming a sensation in Paris during the 1850s. Although he was universally praised, his clowning also evoked bafflement. This article studies reviews of and periodical articles on Boswell in order to get a picture of his performances and clown persona, and of how critics perceived him and turned him into an example of the melancholy clown trope. The resistance that Boswell’s act and persona offered to the writers, however, illustrates that he was part of a change in the figure of the clown from its early nineteenth century incarnation to the twentieth-century clown and comic. Boswell’s clowning prefigures the irony and deadpan comedy that would become more prevalent in modern comedy. He is also illustrative of the increasing detachment of the clown figure from representations of a social reality, and the creation of the modern circus clown as an essentially unreal character that epitomizes a separate outlook on life.