TILE THEATRE.
SOME REFLECTIONS ON FAIRS AND THE CIRCUS.— AT OLYMPIA, THE AGRICULTURAL HALL, AND THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
CantsxmAs brings the circuses and fairs that have been taking romance and strange ambitions to the provinces here to London —into the strong concentration of Mammoth Attractions.' There are the " Nymphs on horseback, whose feats have never before been accomplished by women." There are the " great clowns " who made their debut before the Tsar at the age of two; there are the strange creatures, " the first of their kind to walk the slack rope." There is the " Wonder Circus," consisting of :- " Forty different acts, including wonderfully trained Horses, Shetland Ponies, Dogs, Sea Lions, Elephants, and Kangaroos. The feats of horsemanship are entirely new to this country, and include the complete studs of two Continental Circuses. Twelve Clowns will take part in the performances, and there are Acrobats,. Tumblers, Comedy Cyclists, Japanese Op/masts, and, finally, the great sensation provided by The Globe of Life—a huge lattice ball in mid-air, in which the performers loop and loop on motor- cycles. Altogether two and a-half crowded hours of continuous enjoyment."
What is the origin of the circus ? The bull-fight is, I suppose, in the direct line of descent from the Roman circus. Caesar's ten-foot wide canal of the Circus Maximus would not be an inappropriate precaution to protect the spectators of the Spanish combat, nor can the emotions roused in the breasts of the modern onlookers be much superior to the pagans'. But in England and America—the circus seems to have reappeared almost simultaneously in the two countries—the cruelty of the original has all been turned, if not " to favour and to pretti- ness," at least to perfect good humour. I am not clear whether Mr. Astley, who about the end of the eighteenth century " popularized the circus in England," was an antiquarian as well as an amateur of the " High School," as the modern circus pro- grammes still enchantingly translate " Haute Ecole." Probably, as he lived when Hadrian's villa was in the digging up, he was. Chariot races would then be among the best established turns, and tinsel togas and faintly absurd milk-floats the most traditional of circus properties. But because the circus as a whole has not got an unbroken tradition behind it, that is not to say that the individual turns have not. The circus is a sort of conglomerate. The clowns and the lady who, clad in a ballet dress, poises on a horse upon one toe, came out of the harlequinade ; the lion-tamer out of the travelling wild beast show. The "Haute Ecole" was and is French, and was, I believe, the post-mediaeval successor of the tournament.' Why has this last, by the way, left so little trace behind it ? According to the rules generally followed by tradition, there should surely still be a sort of " vestiginal " comic mounted combat, but I have never seen such a turn billed.
At Olympia there is a fair as well as a circus. Here, to be sure, is an institution with a long direct tradition. For a fair is of course really the lighter side of a market, and so is perhaps nearly as old as the first exchange of bulls, rams, and billy goats, or of fleeces for plaited willow baskets. But as it is seen to-day in London the fair has, as it were, not worn well.
In the first place a fair suffers even more, and in a more complicated way than does a circus,from being too big. The fact that in several of the present circus rings it is impossible to hear any of the clown's gags or to realize the acrobats as human beings, and so get full value from their almost miraculous skill, makes it a little difficult to attend to what is going on in the ring. But at a fair, where wo must be actors too, a. colossal uncrowded building is fatal. Then, too, the fairs have become, as it were, " academic." The function of a fair booth is admittedly to swindle, just as it is the function of food to nourish or of a weekly newspaper to inform. But, as the consumer must be lured on by a sauce in one ease and by a trope in the other, so at a fair he must be led along by an occasional flattering success. Either the mermaid's tail can be attached by palpable patent, fasteners, or the man-eating alligator can be stuffed, or the giant can be six foot two and make up the rest with a bearskin and clogs. The organizer of the fair can decide, but they cannot all unanimously deceive us. He should know enough of human nature to be aware that being successively and invariably swindled out of sixpences is apt.
to induce in the visitor a moralizing frame of mind as little in accordance with the spirit of a fair as was Christian's.
I think, however, it is not the unrelieved bamboozling alone that makes these London fairs seem a little flat. May it not perhaps be that a really live fair is one of the things we give up when we cease to live in a small community ? To watch familiar neighbours being " had " in the " Guess-Your- Weight " Machine and the " Fat Girl and Midget " Stall—to see them lose their bats in the " Four Abreast Gallopers " and their nerve on the Seethe Railway, makes all the difference to one's enjoyment. That, I think, is perhaps the secret of the matter. It is only objective amusement that can be enjoyed with a single companion or even in solitude. At the dance and the coco-nut shy and in our contemplation of the " Freak Show (Half Lady) " we must have the countenance of our familiar fellows of the herd.
The case of the Christmas pantomime is different ; but I hope to refresh a rather hazy memory next week. TAM.
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