Amazing Sondheim Captured the Zeitgeist

He wrote of our complexity, our depth. Like "I wake up and think about you; the coffee cup - I think about you" with a soaring tune that echoes our own despair. Or the ambivalent humor of "Barcelona" and truth of "Being Alive." His genius, his songs reached most of us. He was prolific and still writing. Send in the Clowns. 

                The "clowns" in the title do not refer to circus clowns. Instead, they symbolize fools, as Sondheim explained in a 1990 interview:

I get a lot of letters over the years asking what the title means and what the song's about; I never thought it would be in any way esoteric. I wanted to use theatrical imagery in the song, because she's an actress, but it's not supposed to be a circus [...] [I]t's a theater reference meaning "if the show isn't going well, let's send in the clowns"; in other words, "let's do the jokes." I always want to know, when I'm writing a song, what the end is going to be, so "Send in the Clowns" didn't settle in until I got the notion, "Don't bother, they're here", which means that "We are the fools."

In a 2008 interview, Sondheim further clarified:

As I think of it now, the song could have been called "Send in the Fools". I knew I was writing a song in which Desirée is saying, "aren't we foolish" or "aren't we fools?" Well, a synonym for fools is clowns, but "Send in the Fools" doesn't have the same ring to it.