A Rare George III Handbill Advertising a Performance by Samuel Saunders, Celebrated Equilibrist and Slack-Wire Performer
A rare surviving Georgian handbill advertising a performance by Samuel Saunders, one of Britain’s most celebrated eighteenth-century equilibrists and a leading member of one of the families whose careers helped shape the development of the early British circus. The performance was in Bristol on Wednesday 30th September 1772.
An equilibrist was a performer whose speciality was the art of balance. Unlike a traditional tightrope walker, Saunders performed upon the slack-wire—a wire suspended with a slight sag rather than stretched tight. Because the wire continually moved beneath him, it demanded extraordinary balance and control. The supporting performers on this handbill demonstrated stiff-rope dancing, performed upon a tightly stretched rope and involving dancing, jumping and acrobatic movement. The distinction was well understood by eighteenth-century audiences and the handbill proudly advertises both disciplines, with Saunders himself as the principal attraction.
Printed for a performance at the Old Assembly Room, St Augustine’s Back, Bristol, on Wednesday 30th September 1772, this remarkable survival records one stage of Samuel Saunders’ extensive national tour. Contemporary newspaper advertisements now allow much of his touring career to be reconstructed, documenting performances throughout England, Wales and Ireland in towns including Birmingham, Stafford, Shrewsbury, Coventry, Bristol, London, Dublin and many others. Rather than being attached to a single theatre, Saunders travelled continually, bringing his remarkable performances to audiences across Britain and Ireland.
The handbill immediately announces:
“Not perform’d in this City these SIX YEARS.”
making clear that this was a much-anticipated return engagement rather than an ordinary provincial performance.
Samuel Saunders is described as:
“The celebrated EQUILIBRIST.”
The advertisement proudly states that he had performed at the Theatres Royal in London and Dublin, at Sadler’s Wells, and before King George III, Queen Charlotte and the Royal Family at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. These claims appear repeatedly throughout contemporary newspaper advertisements and formed an important part of Saunders’ established public reputation.
The programme itself provides an extraordinary insight into eighteenth-century popular entertainment. Saunders advertised that he would perform on the slack-wire without the aid of a balancing pole, dramatically increasing the difficulty of his feats. Among the astonishing performances promised were standing upon his head on a pint bottle balanced on the swinging wire, balancing and playing a French horn without using his hands, beating military drum signals whilst balancing, performing seated balances upon a chair on the wire, balancing a ladder supporting a boy upon his chin, performing blindfold whilst enclosed within a sack, and concluding with his celebrated Peacock’s Feather exhibition, perhaps his most famous routine.
Such was his confidence that the handbill boldly proclaims:
“A HUNDRED GUINEAS to any Person in the World, who can perform the Like.”
The evening’s entertainment extended far beyond Saunders himself. It included Stiff-Rope Dancing by the “two celebrated Giants from Sadler’s Wells”, who were advertised to dance blindfold with naked swords beneath their feet, together with the clown Signior Vampognini and a troupe of continental tumblers and acrobats. The programme vividly illustrates the blend of balancing, rope dancing, tumbling, clowning and spectacle that characterised Georgian entertainment immediately before the emergence of the modern circus.
Samuel Saunders occupies an important place in British circus history. His younger brother was Abraham Saunders (1748–1839), who began his public career performing within Samuel’s company before becoming one of Britain’s best-known equestrian performers and later one of the country’s leading travelling circus proprietors. Together, the Saunders family established one of Britain’s earliest circus dynasties, with successive generations remaining connected with travelling entertainment well into the nineteenth century.
The surviving newspaper advertisements also chart Samuel’s own remarkable professional development. During the 1760s he appears principally as the country’s leading slack-wire performer, but by the later 1770s he was advertising and managing an increasingly sophisticated travelling company of rope dancers, singers, tumblers, clowns and speciality performers. His career therefore mirrors the wider evolution of British popular entertainment, from individual exhibition acts towards the organised travelling circus companies that would dominate the nineteenth century.
The Saunders family also formed part of the same pioneering world of performance as Philip Astley, whose innovations are widely recognised as marking the birth of the modern circus. Their careers overlap during the formative decades in which eighteenth-century rope dancing, equestrian display and travelling exhibitions gradually evolved into the circus as we know it today.
Ephemeral theatrical printing of this nature was never intended to survive. Produced to advertise a handful of performances before being discarded, genuine eighteenth-century circus handbills are exceptionally scarce. An earlier Saunders handbill advertising a performance at Salford in January 1766 survives in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The present Bristol example is a later and substantially different handbill, printed six years afterwards for Saunders’ return to the city as part of his continuing national tour.
Beyond its rarity as a piece of Georgian printed ephemera, this handbill is an important documentary record of early British performance history. It preserves not only the name of one of the country’s greatest eighteenth-century entertainers, but also an extraordinarily detailed description of the feats that made him famous. It is a rare survival from the formative years of British circus history and a tangible reminder of the remarkable Saunders family, whose influence upon travelling entertainment extended across several generations.
The handbill was almost certainly printed by Samuel Bonner of Castle Street, one of Bristol’s leading eighteenth-century printers and later printer of the Bristol Journal, further placing this ephemeral survival within the city’s rich printing history.
Presented in a later frame. The handbill survives with the expected folds, staining, tears and small losses associated with a genuine working piece of eighteenth-century theatrical ephemera, entirely consistent with an object intended for temporary public display rather than long-term preservation. There is evidence that the sheet has been laid onto a paper backing at some stage in its life, almost certainly as a means of stabilising and preserving this fragile survivors. But it survives.....
Measuring: (handbill) - 21 .5 cm x 26 cm
Bristol, England, 1772
