Page 87 - The Language of Humour

74 WRITTEN TEXTS—LITERATURE
audience. These humorous interludes are also signalled by a change in
style—prose for the comic characters, poetry for the tragic—and noble!
—characters. This tendency to stereotype social classes as inherently
either ‘comic’ or ‘tragic’ still happens in today’s dramas—more so in
films than in stage plays perhaps.
The humour in Shakespeare plays tends to rely on wordplay, often
with a sexual innuendo. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio teases Juliet’s
Nurse with a play on the words ‘hare’ and ‘hoar’, meaning grey with
age, but sounding like ‘whore’.

No hare sir, unless a hare sir in a lenten pie, that is something
stale and hoar ere it be spent. (Act 2 scene 4)

He can make a pun, even when dying:

Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. (Act 3
scene 1)

Activity with text
Apart from double meanings, there are other ways of creating verbal
humour. The comic plays of Oscar Wilde may be termed ‘comedy of
manners’ as they deal with the romantic intrigues of a leisured,
moneyed class. The overall stance is a wittily cynical view of society’s
accepted attitudes.
Comment on the ways in which humour is constructed in these
examples from the play The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar
Wilde. His plays are noted for their wit, but this is not based in double
meanings. You should find below examples of the types of humour
discussed in Unit 3.

1 The amount of women in London who flirt with their own
husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is
simply washing one’s clean linen in public.
2 You don’t seem to realise, that in married life, three is
company and two is none.
3 I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural
ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it
and the bloom is gone.