Ja
Det här skämtets rötter är mycket gamla, och det har varit knutet till en rad olika clowner sedan starten.
Som noterat här :
That's a famous story, sometimes told as a joke, often related as fact. It's really your archetypal "sad clown" story, and indeed exactly the same tale has been told of other clowns, most notably the Swiss clown Grock (Charles Wettach, 1880-1959).
Här är en version som föregår Watchmen , berättade för komikern Joseph Grimaldi :
It is said of Grimaldi that he felt his work so keenly that as soon as his performance was over, he retired to a corner and wept profusely. Here was a man of tender heart and generous impulses.
There is a story about him which has been handed down by many generations of clowns. It goes on to say that once Grimaldi became very ill and despondent. He went to consult a great London specialist. The great man looked him over and then remarked:
"Go to see Grimaldi, and laugh yourself well."
The clown looked at him sadly and replied:
"I am Grimaldi."
En annan version fick höra om clownen Grock :
A story you may or may not have heard relates how, in the mid 1930s or thereabouts, a prematurely old-looking man asked his chauffeur to drive him to the consulting rooms of Charles Prelot, Academician, doyen of French psychologists and you name it, who'd set up his trading pad in a small palace behind the Quai d'Orsay. After half-an-hour of the usual rigmarole, it emerged that the worried patient was very rich, acutely depressed, and given to bouts with bottles of green stuff that smelt of aniseed balls. He remained somewhat vague about where his bread came from.
The face of the great savant lit up. He saw both the problem and the remedy before you could say two thousand francs.
"What you need," he said, "is a change. Go out and enjoy yourself. Spend a little money. Start tonight. Buy a ticket to the Olympia. Laugh with Grock for he is, you must admit, the greatest clown in France, if not the whole world.
The patient shook his head. "Impossible," he said. How was that?
"Because," said the man sighing deeply, "I am Grock."
En gammal version finns i dikten " Reir Llorando "eller" Skratta gråt "på Juan de Dios Peza . Det börjar:
Una vez, ante un médico famoso, llegóse un hombre de mirar sombrío: «Sufro le dijo, un mal tan espantoso como esta palidez del rostro mío.»
eller
Läkaren förvisar naturligtvis att han går och ser den stora clownen Garrick: "alla som ser honom dö av skratt" och "han har en förvånande konstnärlig gåva."Once, before a famous doctor, there arrived a man of somber demeanor. "I suffer, I tell you, an evil as frightening as the pallor of my face."
Och mannen svarar:
¿Y a mí, me hará reír?
¡Ah!, sí, os lo juro, él sí y nadie más que él; mas... ¿qué os inquieta?
Así dijo el enfermo no me curo; ¡Yo soy Garrik!... Cambiadme la receta.
På engelska:
And me, he will make me laugh?
"Ah, yes, I swear to to you, he will, and no one other than he, but...what bothers you?"
The patient said, I will not recover thus: I am Garrick! Change my prescription.
Sedan den här dikten finns här var skämt redan minst 100 år när Alan Moore använde det.
Det finns även en version som refererar till en icke-specifik" clown "från tre år före Watchmen publicerades.
The disturbed man blurted out, "But Doctor, I am the clown!"
Each of us, even the clown, is subject to periods of depression and blues.
Det här klargör också att även innan Watchmen var kontextet vanligtvis mindre humoristiskt och mer filosofiskt. Så ingen snara trummor.
Det är värt att notera att ordet Pagliacci översätter till " clowner "och kan därmed stå för en generisk clown.
Det är också mycket sannolikt en hänvisning (direkt eller indirekt) till operaen Pagliacci . Särskilt ämnet Smokey Robinson och Miracles "" Tears of a Clown " är ganska apropos och kan ha fungerat som en inspiration:
Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my sadness hid
Smiling in the public eye
But in my lonely room I cry
Dettaspeglasidenursprungligaoperaen.CaniospelarrollensomPagliaccio,eller"Clown", en clown i en cirkus. Han har upptäckt att hans fru är med en annan man, och är "förkrossad av sorg". I översättning :
CANIO:
Perform the play! While I am racked with grief,
not knowing what I say or what I do!
And yet...I must...ah, force myself to do it!
Bah! You are not a man!
You are Pagliaccio!
Put on the costume, the powder and the paint:
the people pay and want to laugh.
And if Harlequin steals your Columbine,
laugh, Pagliaccio, and all will applaud you!
Change all your tears and anguish into clowning:
and into a grimace your sobbing and your pain...
Laugh, Pagliaccio, at your shattered love!
Laugh at the sorrow that has rent your heart!
(Grief-stricken, he goes out through the curtain.)