How to write jokes like Shakespeare – five-step guide
Shakespeare is perceived as many things today: brilliant or dull, timeless or old, difficult or mesmerizing – but the truth is he probably would not have seen himself in any of those words. The sad thing is that most people these days simply do not understand his works, either making them all deep and philosophical, or simply not getting past the unusual language. However, as I have hopefully demonstrated in the two previous posts in this series (insults and dirty lines) Shakespeare was by no means just old, boring and wise. His plays are littered with sick burns and sexual reference (which, at the time, were not as well hidden as linguistic evolutions have made them today). Therefore, let us simply continue with the natural progression: jokes.
Step one: double meaning
Shakespeare was a master of the double meaning – like it was clearly demonstrated in the previous post about sexual inuendoes with these two beauties:
This makes it’s twice as funny to hear Benedict exclaim this:
In this example there is no real double meaning, Beatrice quite literally means it when she says “against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner”, but Benedick, being a fool in love (or a man in love, if you prefer that synonym) reads a double meaning into it because he wants to.
When writing your own try to use the double meaning in surprising ways: Shakespeare made the romantic sexual, and the doubled layered plain and stupid.
Step 2: smart(ass) logic
Superior intellect can be one of the best sources of humor, especially if you are standing across from someone who is supposedly your equal or your better. Hamlet is the all-time champion of this, for example when he calls his stepfather a woman by referencing the bible.
Hamlet: Farewell, dear mother.
Claudius: Thy loving father, Hamlet
Hamlet: My mother. Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother.
Hamlet, Act IV scene III
Or when the king is looking for Polonius and Hamlet gives us this golden nugget of double meaning.
The fact that Hamlet is supposedly gone mad by this point and yet is still the smartest, savviest, most philosophical character makes both him more appealing and the jokes that much funnier.
Step 3: be mindful of who speaks the line
Insulting a fool is funny, but letting the fool insult himself is hilarious.
Like here, where the fool calls himself an ass repeatedly.
Conrade: Away! you are an ass, you are an ass!
Dogberry: Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? Oh, that he were here to write me down an ass! But masters, remember that I am an ass, though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. […] Oh, that I had been writ down an ass!
Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV scene II
Seeing this selfrightious fool who uses bigger words than he understands repeatedly call himself an ass is so much funnier than hearing Conrade calling him an ass.
Step 4: Misunderstandings (of metaphors)
Misunderstandings will never go out of fashion, as long as you do it right. We have already seen Polonius misunderstanding Hamlet, and mistress Quickly hilariously insulting herself – both of which are prime examples of misunderstandings. This next one is less a misunderstanding of a word and more a misunderstanding of what a job is, but it is just as hilarious.
This is just good fun, a bit of comedic relief (in a comedy… do people usually put comedic relief in comedies? What is it supposed to relieve from?) Anyways, it is still good fun.
Step 5: Be mindful of who you make fun of
Here we have two opposite examples: Hamlet making fun of Polonius who thinks himself above Hamlet in wisdom, and Hal making fun of Francis who is clearly below him both in wits and status.
Maybe this is too PC of me, or maybe I am being butthurt, but I do think that a joke told from a position of power is less fun. Francis is merely doing his job and being polite, whereas Polonius is being pompous and a wisecrack. Polonius I feel justified in laughing at, Francis I feel sorry for.
So there you have it, five steps to writing jokes like Shakespeare (or, well, maybe this turned into more of a “here’s a bunch of Shakespeare jokes and some advice mashed together. I’m sorry if that is how it reads, I promise I had good intentions when going into this post).
