Send In The Clowns- Meaning?

[Zeitoujo]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 10:35am

I was wondering what the song "Send in the Clowns" meant.
Thanks!

[Hest882]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 10:53am

You've got to experience it within its context in "A Little Night Music" to fully appreciate it, in my opinion.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 10:58am

The term "send in the clowns" is a reference to Shakespeare's tragedies. Whenever the plot became too intense, he brough in a comic character to lighten things up. (The drunken porter in MACBETH and the gravegiggers in HAMLET, are just a few). From there, the plot became even more intense.

In A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, the reference is to the end of a love affair which is certainly a personal tragedy.

[wonkit]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 12:16pm

*SPOILERS*

Desiree has just proposed a relationship to Frederick, and he has refused her. She is angry and disappointed and resigned to the fact that this might have been her last chance at real personal happiness. But being an actress, she is also a trouper used to making the best of bad situations, so she mocks herself (and Frederick) very poignantly as actors who have played out their bad scene with very poor timing and now the stage manager should send in the comic relief. By the end of the scene, she realizes they themselves are pretty comic, trying to re-establish a relationship more typical of young love than middle aged regret. "Don't bother, they're here."

[ljay889]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 12:18pm

The meaning is too complicated for Zeitoujo to understand.

[Producer2]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 12:26pm

It means we need a revival of Barnum

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 12:52pm

Wikipedia actually explains it well...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_in_the_clowns

[EponineAmneris]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 1:08pm

JUST WHEN I STOPPED
OPENING DOORS
FINALLY KNOWING THE ONE THAT I WANTED WAS YOURS

It's an ironic lament.

He wanted her, she didn't want him. NOW, 20 years later, she wants him... and he's not interested anymore.

[husk_charmer]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 1:15pm

And yet it still ends happily!

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 1:22pm

I always thought she was calling for someone to come in and get the bitter old lady in a wheelchair off her hands.

[husk_charmer]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 1:23pm

For the record, the "context" section of the wikipedia page is pretty much wrong.

**SPOILERS**
Fredrika is the love child, not his 20 year old son Henrik who lives with him.

Act II opens AFTER the realization and they have all been invited to the house in the country.

[iamchanging9]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 2:15pm

In old shows and circuses when a performer would get hurt or fumble, they would send in clowns to distract the audience.

[ljay889]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 2:16pm

NO
NO
NO
AND
NO

Sondheim has said time after time it has NOTHING to do with circus clowns. I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but you are WAYYYY off.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 2:25pm

Love makes "fools" of us all.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 2:27pm

"Sondheim has said time after time it has NOTHING to do with circus clowns."

Sondheim says lots of things he doesn't mean. I think sometimes he says things just to confuse people. Try to pin him down on the meaning of "Children Will Listen". I've heard him give three different interpretations on that one.

[ljay889]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 2:38pm

But it's pretty obvious the song isn't about circus clowns.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 2:45pm

Sondheim was being specific to what he had in mind when he chose "Send in the Clowns" over "Send in the Fools."

But he's being a little misleading: the principle of "sending in clowns" is as true about the circus as it s about other forms of theater, and he always knew the word "clown" was more evocative of circus than "fool" would be. But clown, as he points out, is a much more striking and intriguing word.

Another reason that he might have preferred "clowns" to "fools" is that there is a somewhat obscure Cole Porter song called "Weren't We Fools?" that expresses the same rue and uses questions:

Weren’t we fools to lose each other?
Weren’t we fools to say goodbye?
Thogh we know we loved each other,
You chose another,
So did I.

[EugLoven]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 3:27pm

Joseph (DollyPop) surmised it perfectly (with classical references to-boot!).

My interpretation: It's an expression one may say when things in life are just so dramatic, unnerving, off-kilter or ridiculously depressing that you throws their hands in the air, ("I give up! This HAS to be a joke!") because you feel there's no way out of the misery than to simply laugh at it.
Updated On: 10/13/08 at 03:27 PM

[jv92]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 4:00pm

"Sondheim says lots of things he doesn't mean. I think sometimes he says things just to confuse people."

I think he's affraid of just saying what the hell he wants to say after that vicious Times article from 1976 that made him out to be a narcisistic, pretentious jerk. You'll notice that he had no problem criticizing things, explaining thing and so forth before that. Damn Clive Hirschon!

[jv92]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 4:00pm

Double post. Updated On: 10/13/08 at 04:00 PM

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 4:22pm

"I think he's affraid of just saying what the hell he wants to say after that vicious Times article from 1976"

That, and Elaine Stritch knows where he lives.

[Paul W. Thompson]

Posted: 10/13/08 at 4:24pm

Barbara Robertson (who seems to be the second-string Morrible in the Chicago "Wicked" these days, behind Rondi Reed) gave a masterful reading of this number at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre about three years ago, directed by Gary Griffin. I finally understood it after seeing Barbara perform it, with Kevin Gudahl (I believe) as Frederick.

[regnad kcin]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 1:29pm

My father said that in old rodeos, when an animal was about to harm someone, they would "Send in the Clowns" to distract the animal and the clowns would get hurt instead of the other performer. It seems obscure but I think it makes a lot of sense. Is Desiree the clown, or does she need the clowns to distract?

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 1:45pm

"Is Desiree the clown, or does she need the clowns to distract?"

In your analogy, Desiree would be the performer that doesn't want to get hurt, so she's calling for the need for a distraction. But in the end she says "Don't bother, they're here" so I think during the song she realizes how foolish the game has been.

Updated On: 10/14/08 at 01:45 PM

[Gener920]

Posted: 1/19/15 at 2:15pm

You are correct in most of what you have said but one has to have seen A Little Night Music to fully understand what has proceeded to get to this point. As I recall Desiree's mother shared: "the moon will smile three times tonight, for the young (referring to the son and young wife of the person Desiree is singing to), the old and the foolish, (referring to Desiree and her love interest)" In the third verse you will note that Desiree is asking "And where are the clowns Send in the clowns Don't bother, they're here" realizing that they are the clowns.