4. Ricketts' Circus in the Capital City, Part Two

(© Podcast text copyright - Peter Schmitz. All rights reserved.)

Hello, and welcome back to Adventures in Theater History. This is Part Two of our Episode on Ricketts Circus in the Capital City. Last time, we introduced you to John Bill Ricketts, and how he had brought his equestrian circus to Philadelphia in the 1790s, perhaps the first circus in America. We ended the show by referencing Philip Astley, often credited with inventing the modern circus. Well, who was this Philip Astley? Let’s begin with him, and then I promise this leads us back to Philadelphia and the story of John Bill Ricketts again.

The mid to late 18th Century, a time when our own nation was just taking shape, was a period when large urban centers were growing throughout Europe and America,  and one of the things about large urban populations is that they often have spare time, and to fill that spare time they desire entertainment. And as a result of all the frequent warfare of that century, conducted by increasingly large and professionalized armies, there was also an increasingly large number of former professional soldiers and cavalrymen living on only rather skimpy pensions - men with a Very Specific Set of Skills, who were now looking for further employment. Sometimes these men founded what are called ‘Riding Schools’ - large enclosed buildings which had an open area in the center, and galleries around it. This school would be used to teach wealthy people the skills needed to display oneself properly on horseback on such new urban public venues as the “Circus”, a large oval riding track in Hyde Park in London. (“Circus” was also used for large traffic intersections which required coaches and horses to travel in a roundabout - such as ‘Piccadilly Circus’, built in 1819). The riding schools would also train your horse in fancy steps and to obey commands. The instructors (often wearing military red coats to make them stand out) of such Riding Schools, to supplement their income, would also stage exhibitions of trick riding where they could show off their ability to stand on horses, jump from one horse to another, fall off and remount, vault over moving horses - and generally to show off the training and grace of the horses of the stable. Moving large numbers of horses in tandem to very specific commands was essential in warfare of the era, and the most talented and responsive horses were bred and trained to do very elaborate dance moves. Philip Astley was one of these men.

[TRANSITION]

A tall, charismatic, and commanding figure, the former cavalryman Philip Astley is usually given the credit for having invented what came to be called the “modern circus”. True, Astley himself never actually used the word “circus” to describe his shows. 

Astley began using his accumulated capital from the riding instructor business, and constructed amphitheaters (always at what his posters described to the public at “considerable expense” - you can see the beginning of a trend here - a promoter of popular entertainment always mentions how much money HE has spent, how luxurious the accommodations for the public are, for which they only had to pay a small admission fee) 

Anyway Astley built a succession of large equestrian amphitheaters on the south side of the Thames River, close to the end of the Westminster Bridge. (Waterloo Railway Station now occupies the site.)  From his grandstands and boxes one could view Astley’s regular shows, exhibited in an open circular arena (he had decided 42 feet was the perfect diameter) around which his horses would canter and perform. These proved to be highly lucrative businesses, and he would eventually build similar amphitheaters in Paris and Dublin. The first London performance space was uncovered, but it was replaced by a succession of larger and fancier roofed structures that we would today recognize as a theater, usually with a large proscenium stage at one end. The equestrian ring was on the floor of the “pit”, in front of the stage, and ramps were often used to allow horses to travel from pit to the stage. But Astley’s particular innovation, the one that made him stand out from all of the previous trick riders and equestrians that had entertained at European fairgrounds and riding schools for centuries, was interspersing the equestrian portion of the show with theatrical elements: clowns, acrobats and pantomime entertainments. Such enticements were already commonly used at many popular London theaters, and Astley simply incorporated them into his horse shows. Italian clowns, tumblers from Sadler’s Wells Theatre, comic actors, writers of pantomime sketches - all found employment in these increasingly spectacular equestrian entertainments. This is why he, and other early practitioners of professional circuses, are part of the history of the Theater.

Astley made famous what was likely, even then, a venerable and reliably entertaining equestrian comic skit, in which a supposedly clumsy and intoxicated rider is outmaneuvered by a wily and disobedient horse who refuses to move on command. This skit was usually given some variant of the title “The Tailor of Brentford”. Astley himself would often play the tailor character, which in his version was a tipsy dandy wanting to ride off to the nearby town of Brentford to cast his vote in an election for the Radical English politician John Wilkes. The tailor fails comically, and repeatedly, to mount the horse - falling off, getting on backwards, putting the saddle on wrong, and so forth. The horse was trained to lie down obstinately on the ground, and then comically rise when offered a drink. Despite a storm of ineffective remonstrances, the mount would pull off his own saddle and steal the tailor’s hat, bottle, handkerchief, and his whip - fueling his master’s increasing annoyance but delighting all the onlookers. Eventually, the horse ended up chasing the chastened tailor offstage, his vote never cast. This act, with its sure-fire gags and its simple narrative, was a consistent crowd-pleaser. It was thereafter used at the end of almost every equestrian performance the world over, and remains a staple of many equestrian shows and rodeos today.

Though Astley usually gets the credit as the first man of the circus, the word circus was only permanently attached to this form of entertainment in the 1780s by the efforts of two other London theatrical entrepreneurs: the impresario and songwriter Charles Dibdin, and a “master of horse” named Charles Hughes. Their business establishment (which included a theater, a riding ring, a school, and a coffee house) was christened “The Royal Circus”, and was built to the East of Astley’s Amphitheatre, in South London. Elaborate pantomimes and musical entertainments were offered to the public, combined with the feats of trained riders. 

The laws and statutes governing London commercial entertainments - the Theatre Licensing Act of 1737, the Vagrancy Act, and the Disorderly Houses Act - were used against circus practitioners once they began to establish their own premises with such elements as clowns, pantomimes, acrobats, and to employ both comic and dramatic scenarios. In 1782 the Patent-Holders of the legitimate theaters (Covent Garden and Drury Lane) brought suit, and both Astley’s and The Royal Circus were briefly closed after a court trial. But Parliament eventually allowed a solution where the circuses were given licenses of their own as long as they did not perform plays, and did not use spoken dialogue. Under these curious rules the circus managers were mostly willing to comply, horses don’t talk, after all . . .  though the rules for humans were often bent by various ingenious ruses.

To avoid conflict with theses established “licensed theatres” in London, which had the legal right to perform all professional spoken drama, Dibdin and Hughes had also initially used the dodge (dating back to the days of Elizabethan ‘boys companies’) of having their performing company made up not by adults, but by a company of young apprentices attending the organization’s training school. It is likely that John Bill Ricketts was one of these young performers. Certainly many of his biographers pointedly mention that Ricketts had been trained at Hughes’ Royal Circus. If indeed he was one of these performing apprentices, at an early age he had the opportunity to gain considerable experience in front of large crowds (the Royal Circus held an audience of over a thousand at full capacity). 

Most standard accounts of Rickett’s career emphasize his years in America, and pay little attention to his early career in Britain. But recent research by the historian Kim Baston has done a great deal to fill gaps in Ricketts’ early story, noting how he developed his equestrian skills, his management abilities, his troupe of fellow performers, and his showmanship. It was in this period that Ricketts learned all the elements of running an equestrian circus key to his later success in America. 

After the financial collapse of the Dibdin and Hughes enterprise, Ricketts became a working member of another equestrian troupe that took over the Royal Circus’ establishment. This company was often away from London touring the north of England, and even established a new performing base in Edinburgh, Scotland. During this time Ricketts met and formed professional relationships with a varied group of international performers who would later join him in America: Antonio Bartolomeo Spinacuta, an Italian clown and acrobat, his wife Helena Spinacuta (nee Petterson) from Sweden, and a Scottish clown named McDonald. He also took into the profession his younger brother, Francis Ricketts. By comparing descriptions of the performances of this company in Great Britain with those in America, we can see how much of the Ricketts Circus act was developed during those formative years. In March of 1792 Ricketts’ troupe was in Scotland, offering “. . . the most brilliant spectacle ever exhibited.” Baston notes that one spectacular act that Ricketts would later bring with him to America, the “leap through the blazing Sun”, was first presented in Edinburgh. The feat involved “leaping over a garter twelve feet high, in performing which he will force a Passage through a Balloon in Fire, suspended in the air”.

An artist who lived in Newcastle named Thomas Bewick became interested in this troupe when it traveled through the northern English town in 1789. Not only did he make fascinating sketches of the equestrian performances (now in the collection of the British Museum - I’ve posted them on the website, see the program notes) but he also seems to have clearly drawn John Bill Ricketts at an early age. One drawing is entitled “Mr Rickett’s Night” and depicts a young performer emerging from a suspended barrel, preparing to leap upon the backs of two horses galloping underneath. He also is seen performing the trick of catching oranges on a fork while galloping along on horseback. During his “benefit night” in Edinburgh in 1790 he performed his version of another classic equestrian comic sketch, entitled Metamorphosis, or the Peasant’s Frolic on Horseback. Ricketts, pretending to be an inexperienced and inebriated farmer in the audience, would be invited into the ring to ride the horses. After demanding a huge sack to cover him while he rode to protect him from the cold, the farmer then would awkwardly mount the horses, begin to ride, disappear into the sack, swiftly remove the peasant costume, and then dramatically emerge in a glamorous equestrian outfit, revealing to the delighted audience his true level of expertise. 

Like the “Tailor of Brentford”, this Drunken Peasant routine seldom failed to please, and it also was to be repeated down through the years by many circus troupes. Thanks to Bewick’s drawings, we can also see an illustration of another skill Ricketts often performed throughout his career - while riding on the backs of two horses simultaneously, a child performer would balance gracefully on his shoulder, and the child to the delight and amazement of the crowd, would balance on top of his master as he galloped around the ring, standing on one leg “in the attitude of Mercury”.

If we compare this program to that of other equestrian circus companies around Britain and the rest of Europe during this period, we can see that Ricketts was now fully skilled in all aspects of this burgeoning popular theatrical form. For it needs to be stressed that when John Bill Ricketts made his journey across the ocean to America, not only was he not the first equestrian circus master, he was one of a multitude of international touring equestrian circuses that were giving performances in cities such as St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Berlin, Edinburgh, Dublin, London, and Paris. Rather than being seen as a historic inventor of American circuses, he is properly viewed as an important representative of a worldwide commercial trend in popular entertainment, which he imported to America in an already sophisticated and highly specific form.

What we don’t have a lot of information about (or at least I’ve never seen it) is why Rickett’s decided that his future lay not in England but America. It may simply have been a matter that he, an ambitious young businessman, found the market in Great Britain rather saturated (as they say nowadays), and taking advantage of a brief break in the hostilities between European powers, thought it would be could be a propitious time to break ground on new markets in North America. 

Ricketts sailed from Edinburgh and arrived in Boston in the autumn of 1792, transporting his trained horses with him on the ship. As we know, by April of 1793 he had begun performances in Philadelphia. But, and this is another important thing to stress, he had no intention of staying in only one city, ever, over the course of his American career. Equestrian performers depended on touring - it was an expected part of the business. Ricketts and his company would eventually travel as far north as Montreal, and as far south as Charleston, South Carolina. There would be many additional performances in between: in such places as Baltimore, Albany, Providence, and Norfolk. The performances in New York City rivaled those he offered in Philadelphia. To this extent Ricketts' business model was quite similar to the practices of troupes of actors such as Hallam’s (which we talked about in Episode #2), who had been touring America since the middle of the 18th century. 

So, how big was his potential audience in late 18th Century Philadelphia? According to U.S. Census figures, Philadelphia began the 1790s with a population of 28,522. By 1800, it had grown to 41,220. New York City was swiftly moving to outpace its rival, with a population of 33,131 in 1790, and surging to 60,515 in 1800. However, if one includes the adjacent townships, the entire Philadelphia area had an urban population of about 45,000 in 1790, and 70,000 in 1800.  In point of fact, no American city was yet large enough to support even a regular theater company year round, and enterprising thespians and equestrians had to be ready to travel from one town to another if they wanted to maintain a consistent income. 

Moreover, a circus company faced a particular issue: because they relied upon the exhibition of trained animals, they couldn’t vary their repertoire in the same way all-human companies could. A typical stock theater company of the 18th and 19th century might have dozens of plays, sketches, and after-pieces they could rely upon to vary the bill night after night - indeed their audience would have expected it. Enticing the audience to return again and again to the theater was essential for the box office, and for that a variety of material was needed. Circus performers frequently re-packaged their basic routines, and then advertised these “all new” innovations extensively. New costumes, new character names, new scenery - all of these were employed for variety’s sake. As a programming technique this indeed proved to be highly successful. The legitimate theater companies in every American city Ricketts visited often saw a significant drop in attendance upon his arrival. They were often forced to schedule their own performances on alternate nights as the circus, but at least they knew Ricketts would eventually have to move on to a different location, once the local audience had had a good view of everything he offered.

We’ll break it off here, as they say, and pick up the story of John Bill Ricketts and the early days of theater and popular entertainment in Philadelphia when we meet again.  Thanks for coming along on this Adventure in Theater History.