Under the big top

Text 1: The Circus Comes to Town, by Arthur Pennock

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

My dear Ned, the circus has been here all week and the children talk of nothing else. I took them on Wednesday. The great tent was packed to the poles, and the smell of sawdust, horses and oranges was very strong. There was a lady who rode standing upon two white horses at full gallop and leapt through a paper hoop, and a clown called Mr Merriman who fell over everything and made the whole tent roar.

But the thing I shall remember was the rope dancer. He walked upon a line stretched from pole to pole, higher than our house, without any net beneath him, and halfway across he stopped and pretended to slip. A woman behind me screamed. I confess my own heart stood still, though I believe the rogue does it every night.

Next morning, passing the field early, I saw the same lady rider in an old shawl, washing stockings in a bucket, and the rope dancer mending a wagon wheel with his sleeves rolled up. They looked as tired as any labouring people. It struck me that what seemed to us a holiday was to them a very hard day’s work.

Text 2: No Lions, No Problem, by Simone Akerele

An original contemporary article.

I took my nephews to the circus at the weekend, half expecting to be bored. There are no animals in this one, just people, and the big blue tent smelled of popcorn and hot lights. A woman spun from silk ribbons near the roof, wrapping and unwrapping herself until she dropped, head first, and stopped a metre from the ground. A clown with a tiny bicycle got the whole audience, me included, helpless with laughter.

The act that got me was the high wire. A young man crossed a wire way above the ring, no safety net, carrying a chair. In the middle he wobbled violently and the whole tent gasped. I grabbed my nephew’s arm. Then he grinned and carried on, and I realised that the wobble was part of the act.

Afterwards, walking back to the car park, we passed the performers’ caravans. The silk artist was sitting on a step in a tracksuit eating noodles out of a pot, and the wire walker was hosing down a muddy van. They looked exhausted. For them, I suppose, it was not magic but a shift, the second of two that day.

Both writers describe a visit to the circus.

What are the similarities between the writers’ experiences of the circus and its performers?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.