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HOW
TO TELL A JOKE
An Ancient Guide to the Art of Humour
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Trans and intro by Michael Fontaine
Princeton
The first half is extracted from Cicero’s On The Ideal Orator,
the second is Quintillian’s On The Art of Humour.
Cicero was renowned in his time for his oratorical skills, often
employed in forensic circumstances. Both authors are concerned with
humour as a feature of oratory, that is , they aren’t anatomising
the techniques of the stand-up, the person who plays to the gallery,
for whom there are no limits, who will descend to the lowest common
denominator, in short, anything for a laugh. There is, of course,
another point: stand-ups are trying to make money; Cicero and
Quintillian are more on the side of humour as a weapon in the fight
for justice, a way of getting behind pretentions and exposing
fakery.
Cicero employs three speakers as examples: Julius Caesar, Crassus
and Mark Antony (not the famous ones).The essential question, raised
by the last of these three, is whether humour can be taught.
Needless to say, the book draws no conclusion, but it suggests that
though a certain degree of tutoring humour can be effective, it’s
probably true that the comic mind has an innate quality. Throughout,
there’s an attempt to find the rules. Caesar argues there are two
kinds of joke: the one which rests at the core of a speech and
shapes it and the quick-fire, razor-edged sort. Antony claims that
come-backs are a sign of politeness, in that they suggest we would
not have made a joke had we not been provoked. Quintillian thinks
humour resides in “saying something in a different, wrong and untrue
way” and that it emanates from inventing beliefs, either our own or
other people’s, or from saying something impossible. He also argues
that laughs come about from the body of the person we’re talking
about, his mind as inferred from his behaviour or external
circumstances. Eschewing the possibility of hunting down every type
of joke and their sources, he provides, as does Cicero, catalogue of
examples: when Cicero in his sixties married a young virgin, he is
reputed to have quipped, “She’ll be a woman tomorrow.” It has a
certain sharpness, but it’s cynical and self-excusing. A man is
bemoaning the loss of his wife who has hung herself from a fig tree.
The quip in response is: “Any chance I could get a cutting from that
tree for grafting?” Jokes about the trials of marriage are legion,
essentially because it makes demands few can measure up to. Perhaps
the jokes should be aimed at the institution rather than its
victims. In this instance, the response is a little too wordy. All
that’s needed is: “Any chance of a cutting?”
Cicero goes to heart of the matter when he tries to specify the
sources of laughter: surprises, making fun of other people’s quirks
or giving a clue to your own, comparing a thing to something worse,
disingenuousness, non-sequiturs and criticizing stupidity. Groucho
Marx opined that comedy is much harder to write than tragedy because
everyone cries at the same things but everyone laughs at different
things. Henri Bergson, in one of the most pertinent modern
examinations of the question, believed that humour lies in “du
mécanique plaque sur du vivant” (something mechanical layered over
something living). The classic example is the person who slips on
the banana skin, instantaneously transformed from a living creature
in control of her actions, to a mere mechanism at the mercy of a
slippery item. Perhaps the most intriguing suggestion, however, is
found in Ramachandran’s work on the brain. His theory is that humour
results from the disappointment of expectations. A joke leads us up
the garden path only to shatter what we have imagined will follow:
Wife: I’m going to put the ladders up and paint the bedroom
ceiling.
Husband: Do nothing till I’ve checked the insurance.
The response subverts in more than one way: first of all because the
husband should be more concerned for his wife’s safety than for what
he could claim if she fell and killed herself; secondly because the
content of the conversation switches suddenly from domestic banality
to the possibility of death; thirdly because the exchange points to
a wider cynicism, a culture in which putatively devoted spouses
calculate about financial gain.
Humour, like language is exclusively human. Many animals exhibit an
ability for play, but as far as we know, none makes jokes or laughs.
Both Cicero and Quintillian observe that much humour comes from
word-play, ambiguity, double-entendres. It may be the connection is
vital. Is humour an adaptation? Are
there people who don’t find anything funny? It seems unlikely, but
perhaps humour is more like music than language. Music is found in
all cultures but not everyone is musical in the way all people
(short of brain damage) are linguistic. Maybe humour is an
exaptation and the cascade of neurons which brings the sense of
amusement we experience when what we anticipate is subverted,
evolved for some other purpose, maybe as a warning. Humour usually
contains a little edginess, it rests on a willingness to play with
ideas and meaning, which is why it’s useful for mocking dictators
and why tyrants tend not to favour satirists.
How to tell a joke is not the same thing as how to write a joke.
Great comic writers – Terence, Rabelais, Chaucer, Molière, Orton –
employ techniques similar to those of the professional purveyors of
jokes, but their humour is embedded in works whose overarching
purpose is serious. Jokes told by politicians or stand-ups tend not
to be associated with such high-mindedness. Humour is part of our
biological inheritance. The uses it is put to are cultural. Michael
Fontaine has made a fascinating selection to convey how humour was
employed by some of the great orators of the ancient world. If the
book leaves us with the question of what humour is, so much the
better.
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