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The Victorian Clown is a micro-history of mid-Victorian comedy, spun out of the life and work of two professional clowns. Their previously unpublished manuscripts - James Frowde's account of his young life with the famous Henglers' circus in the 1850s and Thomas Lawrence's 1871 gag book - offer unique, unmediated access to the grass roots of popular entertainment. Through them this book explores the role of the circus clown at the height of equestrian entertainment in Britain, when the comic managed audience attention for the riders and acrobats, parodying their skills in his own tumbling and contortionism, and also offered a running commentary on the times through his own 'wheezes' - stand-up comedy sets. Plays in the ring connect the circus to the stage, and both these men were also comic singers, giving a sharp insight into popular music just as it was being transformed by the new institution of music hall.
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Establishes the importance of the popular radical figure of the pantomime clown in the work of Charles DickensThis book reappraises Dickens's Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi and his imaginative engagement with its principal protagonist. Arguing that the Memoirs should be read as integral to Dickens's wider creative project on the theatricality of everyday existence, Jonathan Buckmaster analyses how Grimaldi's clown stepped into many of Dickens's novels. Dickens's Clowns presents new readings of Dickens's treatment of topics such as identity, the grotesque and violence within the context of the tropes of the Regency pantomime. This is the first study to identify the Dickensian clown as a unifying force for several Dickensian themes, overturning traditional views of Dickens's clowns as peripheral figures.Key FeaturesProvides a new reading of one of Dickens's most neglected texts, and firmly re-establishes it within the Dickens canon as both part of a wider project alongside his other major works of the period and an important influence on later work Identifies the pantomime routines of the Regency clown as a key cultural influence on Dickens's work, tracing significant new sources for his comical treatment of violence and his comedy more generallyOffers important new perspectives on two other key themes in Dickens's work - the use of food and drink within Dickens's articulation of the bodily grotesque and Dickens's use of clothing as a radical signifier of individual liberty
This conflict informs us not only of the complicated role that the circus played in Victorian society but provides a unique view into a collective psyche fraught by contradiction and anxiety.
This innovative collection of essays is the first to situate comedy and laughter as central rather than peripheral to nineteenth century life. Victorian Comedy and Laughter: Conviviality,Jokes and Dissent offers new readings of the works of Charles Dickens, Edward Lear,George Eliot, George Gissing, Barry Pain and Oscar Wilde, alongside discussions of much-loved Victorian comics like Little Tich, Jenny Hill, Bessie Bellwood and Thomas Lawrence. Tracing three consecutive and interlocking moods in the period, all of the contributors engage with the crucial critical question of how laughter and comedy shaped Victorian subjectivity and aesthetic form. Malcolm Andrews, Jonathan Buckmaster and Peter Swaab explore the dream of print culture togetherness that is conviviality, while Bob Nicholson, Louise Lee, Ann Featherstone,Louise Wingrove and Oliver Double discuss the rise-on-rise of the Victorian joke — both on the page and the stage — while Peter Jones, Jonathan Wild and Matthew Kaiser consider the impassioned debates concerning old and new forms of laughter that took place at the end of the century.
The Clown King is a microhistory of popular entertainment in the period 1840 - 1860 woven out of the career of Arthur Nelson, the Clown King. Born around 1816, Nelson began as an actor in provincial and minor theatres before specialising as a 'talking' or Shakespearean clown. While some contemporaries wrote accounts of their lives, Nelson left no such formal record and yet, as one of the most popular clowns at the time, his career was one full of interest. Traced through playbills, advertisements and newspaper reports of the period, he moved seamlessly between circus ring and pantomime stage, as well as performing in concert halls with his musical novelties. His 'benefit' stunt, being drawn in a washing tub by four geese, although not original, drew huge crowds when performed in a town or city. This was to end with disaster in 1845 at Great Yarmouth, when spectators watching from the suspension bridge over the river Bure were propelled into the river causing the largest loss of life there has ever been in the town. Using Nelson's career this book explores the social and economic place of the clown in circus, pantomime and the wider milieu of early Victorian society. His engagements enable the reader to trace the changing nature of the circus from rings, in semi-permanent wooden buildings and theatres, to the development of itinerant 'tenting'. His collaboration with other artistes allows for an exploration of performance as display, whether it be the 'pseudo-art' of tableau vivants or 'race-science' with the exhibition of dwarfs, microcephalic children and peoples of other cultures. His performance material gives an insight into cross-fertilisation of popular music between Britain and the United States before the American Civil War. This period saw rapid change as an expanding middle-class wanted their leisure-time to include entertainments that reflected both their aspiring cultural values and a desire to understand the technological and scientific progress of their age. The book is supported by a complementary website:www.theclownking.com
A version of this book with colour illustrations is also available. The Clown King is a microhistory of popular entertainment in the period 1840 - 1860 woven out of the career of Arthur Nelson, the Clown King. Born around 1816, Nelson began as an actor in provincial and minor theatres before specialising as a 'talking' or Shakespearean clown. While some contemporaries wrote accounts of their lives, Nelson left no such formal record and yet, as one of the most popular clowns at the time, his career was one full of interest. Traced through playbills, advertisements and newspaper reports of the period, he moved seamlessly between circus ring and pantomime stage, as well as performing in concert halls with his musical novelties. His 'benefit' stunt, being drawn in a washing tub by four geese, although not original, drew huge crowds when performed in a town or city. This was to end with disaster in 1845 at Great Yarmouth, when spectators watching from the suspension bridge over the river Bure were propelled into the river causing the largest loss of life there has ever been in the town. Using Nelson's career this book explores the social and economic place of the clown in circus, pantomime and the wider milieu of early Victorian society. His engagements enable the reader to trace the changing nature of the circus from rings, in semi-permanent wooden buildings and theatres, to the development of itinerant 'tenting'. His collaboration with other artistes allows for an exploration of performance as display, whether it be the 'pseudo-art' of tableau vivants or 'race-science' with the exhibition of dwarfs, microcephalic children and peoples of other cultures. His performance material gives an insight into cross-fertilisation of popular music between Britain and the United States before the American Civil War. This period saw rapid change as an expanding middle-class wanted their leisure-time to include entertainments that reflected both their aspiring cultural values and a desire to understand the technological and scientific progress of their age. The book is supported by a complementary website:www.theclownking.com