Sim
As raízes dessa piada são muito antigas e estão associadas a uma variedade de palhaços desde a sua criação.
Como mencionado aqui :
That's a famous story, sometimes told as a joke, often related as fact. It's really your archetypal "sad clown" story, and indeed exactly the same tale has been told of other clowns, most notably the Swiss clown Grock (Charles Wettach, 1880-1959).
Aqui é uma versão anterior a Watchmen , contada do comediante Joseph Grimaldi :
It is said of Grimaldi that he felt his work so keenly that as soon as his performance was over, he retired to a corner and wept profusely. Here was a man of tender heart and generous impulses.
There is a story about him which has been handed down by many generations of clowns. It goes on to say that once Grimaldi became very ill and despondent. He went to consult a great London specialist. The great man looked him over and then remarked:
"Go to see Grimaldi, and laugh yourself well."
The clown looked at him sadly and replied:
"I am Grimaldi."
Outra versão foi contada do palhaço Grock :
Uma versão antiga pode ser encontrada no poema "Raim Llorando". / a> "or" Laugh Crying ", por Juan de Dios Peza . Começa:A story you may or may not have heard relates how, in the mid 1930s or thereabouts, a prematurely old-looking man asked his chauffeur to drive him to the consulting rooms of Charles Prelot, Academician, doyen of French psychologists and you name it, who'd set up his trading pad in a small palace behind the Quai d'Orsay. After half-an-hour of the usual rigmarole, it emerged that the worried patient was very rich, acutely depressed, and given to bouts with bottles of green stuff that smelt of aniseed balls. He remained somewhat vague about where his bread came from.
The face of the great savant lit up. He saw both the problem and the remedy before you could say two thousand francs.
"What you need," he said, "is a change. Go out and enjoy yourself. Spend a little money. Start tonight. Buy a ticket to the Olympia. Laugh with Grock for he is, you must admit, the greatest clown in France, if not the whole world.
The patient shook his head. "Impossible," he said. How was that?
"Because," said the man sighing deeply, "I am Grock."
Una vez, ante un médico famoso, llegóse un hombre de mirar sombrío: «Sufro le dijo, un mal tan espantoso como esta palidez del rostro mío.»
Ou
Once, before a famous doctor, there arrived a man of somber demeanor. "I suffer, I tell you, an evil as frightening as the pallor of my face."
O médico, é claro, sugere que vá ver o grande palhaço Garrick: "todos os que o vêem morrer de rir" e "ele tem um dom artístico surpreendente".
E o homem responde:
¿Y a mí, me hará reír?
¡Ah!, sí, os lo juro, él sí y nadie más que él; mas... ¿qué os inquieta?
Así dijo el enfermo no me curo; ¡Yo soy Garrik!... Cambiadme la receta.
Em inglês:
And me, he will make me laugh?
"Ah, yes, I swear to to you, he will, and no one other than he, but...what bothers you?"
The patient said, I will not recover thus: I am Garrick! Change my prescription.
Como esse poema pode ser encontrado aqui , a piada já tinha pelo menos 100 anos quando Alan Moore a usou.
Existe até um versao que referencia um" palhaco "inespecífico de três anos antes de Watchmen foi publicado.
The disturbed man blurted out, "But Doctor, I am the clown!"
Each of us, even the clown, is subject to periods of depression and blues.
Isso também deixa claro que, mesmo antes de Watchmen , o contexto era geralmente menos humorístico e mais filosófico. Então não há tambores.
Vale a pena notar que a palavra Pagliacci traduz para " palhaços ", e assim pode substituir um palhaço genérico.
Também é muito provável que seja uma referência (direta ou indireta) à ópera Pagliacci . Em particular, o assunto de Smokey Robinson e os milagres " As Lágrimas de um Palhaço " é bastante apropriado e pode ter servido como uma inspiração:
Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my sadness hid
Smiling in the public eye
But in my lonely room I cry
Isto é espelhado na ópera original. Canio faz o papel de Pagliaccio, ou "palhaço", um palhaço em um circo. Ele descobriu que sua esposa está com outro homem e está "destroçada pela tristeza". Na tradução :
CANIO:
Perform the play! While I am racked with grief,
not knowing what I say or what I do!
And yet...I must...ah, force myself to do it!
Bah! You are not a man!
You are Pagliaccio!
Put on the costume, the powder and the paint:
the people pay and want to laugh.
And if Harlequin steals your Columbine,
laugh, Pagliaccio, and all will applaud you!
Change all your tears and anguish into clowning:
and into a grimace your sobbing and your pain...
Laugh, Pagliaccio, at your shattered love!
Laugh at the sorrow that has rent your heart!
(Grief-stricken, he goes out through the curtain.)