Clowns, laughter, and macaroni

My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020).

The origin of Harlequin is now known, while clown partly languishes in limbo. Among other things, it remains a puzzle how clown has conquered half of the world. As a general rule, words travel with “things.” The street theater of late medieval Italy was popular in many countries, and that is why we know such words as buffoon (opera buffa “comic opera”), zany, scaramouch (Molière’s Scaramouche), Punch, and Harlequin. Harlequin has solid Germanic and even English roots but was made famous by Italian comedy. But how did clown transcend England’s borders? What itinerant companies spread its fame? The Italian word pagliaccio “clown” has more or less remained at home despite the fame of Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci. Against this predominantly Italian background, clown looks like a solitary guest from Germanic and English, and as noted, the origin of this word, to use the polite jargon of professional etymologists, remains debatable.

Most words mentioned above were recorded relatively late. Though they denote comedians, their names had nothing to do with witticisms in our sense of the word. Clowns provoked laughter by finding themselves in improbable situations. They paraded long noses, wore bizarre clothes, fell head over heels, pretended to have accidents, and when they were not mimes, indulged in obscenities. Medieval people also laughed in triumph at the sight of a vanquished enemy. That is why the words humor and witty have such unexpected origins. Witty means “having wits,” while humor refers to a liquid in the body (compare humid). The situation had to be incongruous, in order to be amusing. Even Shakespeare’s humor is still rude. Oscar Wilde, however earnest, would have had no success if transposed to the past.

I needed this long introduction to approach the subject of the forgotten word macaroni “dandy.” Those late eighteenth-century fops were perfectly ridiculous, but unlike such words as dandy, masher, and dude, macaroni (not the food, but the appellation) has an obvious origin, except for why macaroni? The appellation, as explained everywhere, goes back to the Macaroni Club, whose members introduced Italian macaroni (I mean the food) at Almack’s (the name of several fashionable clubs). Among other things, that establishment presaged, rather obviously, many clubs popular in the Weimar Republic and are reminiscent of today’s drag culture. All things that came from abroad enjoyed popularity among those affected busybodies. Foreign meant “great.” People’s tastes and predilections change slowly, but it must amuse us that macaroni happened to share the status of something exquisite and fashionable. However, there is a hitch. The word macaron or macaroon “blockhead; buffoon; fop” antedates the popularity of the club.

The connection between the coxcombs of long ago and macaroni cannot be questioned, but one point needs clarification. The idea, as we have seen, is that in the beginning the macaroni members of the fashionable club chose to call themselves macaroni because of their predilection for this food. And here I have some doubts. Let us see what Joseph Addison wrote in The Spectator, No. 47 (178/2), Tuesday, April 24, 1711, that is, more than half-a century before the emergence of the Club:

“In the first Place I must observe that there is a Set of merry Drolls whom the Common People of all countries admire, and seem to love so well that they could eat them, according to the old Proverb: I mean those circumfareneous [traveling from place to place, from market to market] wits whom every Nation calls by the Name of that Dish which it loves best. In Holland they are called Pickled Herrings; in France Jen Pottages [sic]; in Italy Maccaronies [sic], and in Great Britain Jack Puddings. These merry Wags, from whatsoever Food they receive their Titles, that they may make Audiences laugh, always appear in Fool’s Coats, and commit such Blunders and Mistakes in every Step they take, and every Word they utter, as those who listen to them could be ashamed of.”

Still earlier John Donne wrote in one of his satires: “I sigh and sweat / To hear this Makaron [sic] talk.”

The explanation in bold is unnecessary, but Addison’s statement is usually disregarded, because, allegedly, the word maccaronies never existed in the sense he attributed to it and because the Italian word is maccheroni. The second objections is irrelevant, but the evidence of Donne and Addison cannot be shaken off too easily. A correspondent to Notes and Queries (7/VII, April 13, 1889, p. 298) wrote: “I find in such an ordinary book of reference as Graglia’s ‘Pocket Dictionary’, besides ‘maccheroni, a sort of pastemeat’, un maccherone ‘a blockhead’; also maccheronea, macaronicks.” The reference is accurate (I checked it), and Addison’s train of thought deserves attention. Clowns were supposed to be (pretended to be) abnormally fat and arouse laughter. This is certainly true of the German Hanswurst, Hans Wurst (“Hans Sausage”), who, five hundred years ago, appeared in front of the audience, the very picture of obesity. He was a near-contemporary of the English Jack Pudding. As already noted, those spectators had a rather primitive sense of humor. Real humor is contemporary with the emergence of metaphorical thinking. Mocking people for their food has always been people’s favorite entertainment. Someone eats macaroni, others eat frogs, still others gorge themselves on pumpernickel. So funny!

Therefore, I would like to suggest that macaroni existed as an ethnic slur and perhaps as a euphemism for “penis.” When a group of Londoners founded the club and proclaimed (rather than chose) macaroni as its favorite dish, they might use macaroni in defiance of the word’s opprobrious sense, to stress their “otherness,” as we would today say. No one has seen their earliest menu cards, even if later they began to live up to their name. The quotation from The Scots Magazine for 1772, reproduced by Gerald Cohen in 2017, says that macaroni “was imported by our connoscienti in eating, as an improvement to the subscription-table at Almack’s. In time, the subscribers to those dinners became to be distinguished [sic] by the title of Macaronies.” In time! It does not look as though the impulse for the club’s name came from the food. Rather, the association appeared in retrospect. Obviously, all this is mere guessing.

That history is forgotten, and only a British song ridiculing an American country bumpkin who wanted to look like a London swell is its reminder: “Yankee doodle went to town / A-riding on a pony. /Stuck a feather in his cap / And called it macaroni.” And we also have macaronic verse (a mixture of native and Latin words; any bilingual mixture of this type in poetry), another invention of the late Middle Ages. Macaroni seems to have always evoked laughter, a fact that may perhaps boost my guess that the word macaroni once had an opprobrious meaning. But the Greek jester Maccus has nothing to do with our story.

_{Featured image by I.W., Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0.}