A great clown will not stoop to caricature. We caricature only those things we despise. To ridicule the things we love demands the higher art of parody. Just as the Greeks would parody a sacred drama immediately following it’s first performance, so the clown in the modern circus will parody the things we hold most sacred today. To do this he must be a great clown.
Antony Hippisley Coxe, A Seat at the Circus
That is too tantalising! Does he give any examples?