CLOWNS AND LAUGHTER

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3262, 19 February 1931, Page 3

CLOWNS AND LAUGHTER

FROM VILLAGE fDIOT TO CHARLIE CHAPLIN. ■v■ , , XT By Edgar Holt. '’ "When I was veryyoung I knew he \was a; lugubrious fellow, and his melancholy face always made me laugh, ijuce he chalked his face for rne around the room while ; I struck him with a toy whip. • Why his glum face and his impotent attempts to evade the whip made me laugh I cannot say. He suffered from some facial distortion, which gave him a permanent grimace. A few years after I first saw him he yras operated upon, and his face was made to appear normal. It no longer made me laugh. Nor did it make his public laugh. He gave up the circus ring and became an undertaker. V,.. It appears to be natural to laugh at- the misfortunes of other people. -Clowning is really the other side of tragedy. The clown makes mockery —a grotesque, stumbling, pathetic mockery—of the pathos of life. Grock, the great clown who has just retired from the London' and Parisian music halls, achieved that fine balance between the ridiculous and the tragic which made him a worthy successor to the immortal Grimaldi, the clown of;the days of the Regency. Grock was not merely big feet and a bald : head. He saved the tradition of clowning from the dull "clowns who degenerated ; a noble art by tumbling about in a circus ring and hitting l one another with soft turnips. Grock had one equal only—Charles Chapin. The more one examined the soul of Grock the funnier he was. His struggle with his piano became man s struggle with fate. His fiddle and bow pathetically expressed the hopes, the joys, the sorrows,, and the trials of life. In three notes of fate- 1 - groans, expostulations, and gurgles of joy-—he summarised the absurd efforts of man to avoid the pitfalls of life. It has been truly said that if the clown can satisfy the desire of his audience for the rediculous it will accept his idea of the sublime. Grock, after having made his audience giggle hysterically, would —after how many unsuccessful attempts ?—play Verdi on a concertina while the audience listened to the music with ven-

eration. The ancestor of the clown -was the village idiot. He sat at the table of his lord and amused him after dinner. Folly became profitable, and cunning' young men began to study the anatomy of mirth, dividing it into falls, knavery,, blows, mimicry, surprise and stupidity. They stole what they could in the way of clothes from the Italian pantomime, and became an incongruous mixture of Scaramouche and harlequin, acknowledging also a debt to the sooted cheeks . of the Roman fools and the red noses of medieval devils. > . - In England they were at first the . fools in Elizabethan masques. But it was Joseph Grimaldi who wove the tangled threads of clowning into one delightful piece. of the early nineteenth century were :n----complete without the drollery of Grimaldi, who, like the great clowns touched -the deepest emotions of his audience with clownish satire. The end of the century saw many other famous clowns. Their lives were tinged with the tragedy which they mocked. • Dan Leno—a wonderful dame—went mad; George Formby, p dying of consumption, made a jest of his cough to' provide for his wife, and children; Mark Sheridan committed suicide. ;j ; . . Of all clowns, buffoons, and jesters, however, Chaplin is the most sophisticated. , A sensitive artist, he is an arch-satirist. Ini his hand even the custard pie becomes eloquent. So artfully does he alternate the ridiculous and the pathetic that he makes tears as quickly as laughter. From the ragged wardrobe of clowndom he has created a garb which is symbolic of the type at which he mocks. This is how he describes his clownish masterpiece:—“ That costume helps me %o express my conception of the average man, of myself. The derby, too small, is a striving for dignity. The moustache is vanity. The tightly buttoned coat and the stick are a gesture towards gallantry and dash. . . He is trying to meet the world bravely, to put up a bluffi and he knows that, too.’’ ■■ The evolution of the clown from/'Uhe village idot to Grock and T Chao!in epitomises the march of civilisation from simplicity to sophistication.