Page 95 - The Language of Humour

82 WRITTEN TEXTS—LITERATURE

So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way,
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad!
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.

Sporus is described in animal imagery: ‘this bug’, ‘well-bred spaniels’,
‘familiar toad’. The images have negative connotations and the point is
given more force by the use of rhyming couplets and a neatly balanced
structure: ‘This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;/Whose buzz
the witty and the fair annoys/Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er
enjoys.’ Sporus’s surface pleasantries are captured in the image: ‘Eternal
smiles his emptiness betray,/As shallow streams run dimpling all the
way.’ Yet Pope is criticising Sporus’s own tendency to destroy with
words: ‘Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,/In puns, or
politics, or tales, or lies,/Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.’

Activity with text

This modern poem by Adèle Geras—apparently a letter from Helen of
Troy—may seem to be more innocuously humorous. Comment on how
humour is created by the anachronistic register. Is there any target for
the humour?

A Letter from Helen of Troy
Menelaus, darling
I do think this is all a bit excessive!
I can see you from the walls, you know,
don’t think I can’t,
beseiging away like mad, down on the plain.
Ye Gods, I thought, watch out, the gang’s all here:
Hector and Agamemnon and Achilles
and that young man of his whose name escapes me,