‘Hey are those guys here? Congrats!’ –Tim Geoghegan
Whether in Greek theaters or Roman courts, buying people to clap for you was once common practice. In fourth century BC Athens, for example, comic playwright Philemon defeated his contemporary Menander in theatrical competitions, not because he was better (he wasn’t) but because of hired hands that swayed the judges. The Roman emperor Nero went further, establishing an entire school of applause and keeping in his train a claque of five thousand; all soldiers, they would sing Nero’s praises before subjecting the citizenry to His Majesty’s stagecraft.
The claque was revived in sixteenth-century France, when poet Jean Daurat bought tickets to his own plays and gave them to people on the condition that they like it loudly. By the early 1800s, the claque racket in Paris had reached boutique proportions: one could shop for rieurs (to laugh), pleureurs (to cry), or commissaires (to nudge neighboring audience members about upcoming good scenes).
