Modern circus rings began with Astley’s horses in 1768
Philip Astley, a cavalry-trained rider from Newcastle-under-Lyme, opened trick-riding shows at Ha'penny Hatch by the Thames in 1768. By 1770 he filled the gaps with acrobats, rope-walkers, jugglers, and a clown—the template historians still call the modern circus.
A circus company mixes clowns, acrobats, animals, trapeze, musicians, jugglers, and other stunt artists; the word also names that whole performance culture across some 250 years of modern history. Latin circus and Greek kirkos point to a circle or ring. Ancient Rome staged chariot races and animal displays in venues like the Circus Maximus—eventually stone, about 400 m by 90 m, with a reputed 250,000 seats. Historian George Speaight warns against equating those rectangular arenas with the modern show, while others trace a line through Constantinople’s Hippodrome and medieval fair performers.
Philip Astley, born in 1742, opened his Lambeth amphitheatre on 4 April 1768 and is the usual founding figure, though he invented neither trick riding nor clowning. His insight was to gather such acts in one space and to ride in a circle rather than a straight line. He settled on a ring about 13 m (42–43 ft) across, the smallest in which a rider could stand upright on a cantering horse, and that diameter remains standard.
Rivals followed quickly. Charles Dibdin, who coined the word circus, opened the Royal Circus in London on 4 November 1782, and Astley launched Paris’s Amphithéâtre Anglais that year. John Bill Ricketts opened the first US circus building in Philadelphia on 3 April 1793, and George Washington came to see it. Joshuah Purdy Brown pitched a canvas tent in 1825, and P. T. Barnum and William Cameron Coup later added multiple rings and circus trains.
Since the late 1970s, new circus or cirque nouveau groups have often dropped animals to stress human skill and theatrical storytelling. From the 1990s a more avant-garde strand, labelled contemporary circus, has pushed the disciplines toward dance and performance art, often moving indoors into theatres.
Source: Circus
