Clowns

A clown is a comic performer who employs slapstick or similar types of physical comedy.

Clowns have a varied tradition with significant variations in costume and performance. The most recognisable modern clown character is the Auguste or "red clown" type, with outlandish costumes featuring distinctive makeup, colourful wigs, exaggerated footwear, and colourful clothing. Their entertainment style is generally designed to entertain large audiences.

Modern clowns are strongly associated with the tradition of the circus clown, which developed out of earlier comedic roles in theatre or Varieté shows during the 19th to mid-20th centuries.

Many circus clowns have become well known and are a key circus act. The first mainstream clown role was portrayed by Joseph Grimaldi (who also created the traditional whiteface make-up design). In the early 1800s, he expanded the role of Clown in the harlequinade that formed part of British pantomimes

The "clown" character developed out of the zanni "rustic fool" characters of the early modern commedia dell'arte, which were themselves directly based on the "rustic fool" characters of ancient Greek and Roman theatre. Rustic buffoon characters in Classical Greek theater were known as sklêro-paiktês (from paizein "to play (like a child)") or deikeliktas, besides other generic terms for "rustic" or "peasant". 

In Roman theater, a term for clown was fossor, literally "digger; labourer".

The English word clown was first recorded c. 1560 (as clowne, cloyne) in the generic meaning "rustic, boor, peasant". The origin of the word is uncertain, perhaps from a Scandinavian word cognate with clumsy. It is in this sense that "Clown" is used as the name of fool characters in Shakespeare's Othello and The Winter's Tale. The sense of clown as referring to a professional or habitual fool or jester developed soon after 1600, based on Elizabethan "rustic fool" characters such as Shakespeare's.