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This chapter suggests that we should read Shakespeare's drama written after 1597 as generally responding to the direction in which Ben Jonson was taking the evidential plot and its rhetoric of probability. It argues that as Jonson increasingly translates ‘probability’ from its ethical/rhetorical sense into a sense which privileges the power to predict and calculate, Shakespeare, in turn, increasingly demonizes the dramatic figure of the man who can invent probable arguments of suspicion. The chapter illustrates this argument by looking at Jonson's The Alchemist, Epicoene, and Bartholomew Fair, and at Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello. It concludes by contrasting Jonson's assumption, in Every Man in his Humour, that inventions of sexual suspicion are easily exposed and harmless, with Shakespeare's sceptical dramatization, in Much Ado about Nothing, of the pointlessness of evidence where faith is lacking.

This chapter locates Jonson in the context of the recent return of critical interest in the Romantic theatre, and argues that his plays, long thought to have left the stage with the retirement of David Garrick in 1776, in fact remained part of the repertory up to 1832. In doing so, it takes up and explores various examples: an annotated promptbook of Every Man In his Humour, printed in 1776, but containing preparations for, and records of, professional theatre productions from 1816, 1828, and 1832; George Colman's 1776 revival and revision of Epicoene, a production unhappily starring the young Sarah Siddons; the continued popularity of Francis Gentleman's The Tobacconist, a 1776 adaptation of The Alchemist, that increasingly attracted political responses through the period; and the history of Every Man In his Humour in productions mounted by J. P. Kemble, starring G. F. Cooke as Kitely, and later those in which Edmund Kean dazzled in the role. These examples place Jonson in the professional London theatre, in the professional theatres of York and Bath, and in the amateur theatre of the period. The chapter closes with some reflections — produced from an allusion in Walter Scott's account of the Romantic stage to Jonson's earlier spat with Inigo Jones — on Jonson's place in all of this: a period in which his texts move agilely from Garrick's last years at Drury Lane, through Kemble's difficulties during the OP riots at Covent Garden, and finally into the pages of John Genest's pioneering Some Account of the English Stage, published in 1832, the same year in which Every Man In his Humour was last annotated for performance in the promptbook with which the chapter began.

This chapter looks at the unique presentation of epiphany in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Consideration is first given to the function and qualities of epiphanies elsewhere in the Homeric Hymns and other early epic. It is then shown that the Hymn to Hermes, while not containing a conventional scene of epiphany, treats epiphany according to the mode of the god's presentation in early Greek literature. Hermes' epiphany is enacted in performance and effected in part through the humour of the poem.

This introduction will briefly discuss the ways in which the January 2015 attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo provoked debates about humour and freedom of expression, as well as the limits of humour. It will argue that debates surrounding Charlie Hebdo are symptomatic of tensions and contradictions within French society when it comes to exploring multiculturalism and humour. It will also show that it is necessary to take a wider view that traces the evolution of debates about humour and the career trajectories of leading humourists. The last decade is a period during which stand-up comedy has grown in stature in France, and differing ways of evoking socio-political issues about French society have emerged.

Humour and radical politics are often seen as antithetical. When it comes to lesbian radicalism, this perception is even more extreme. Utopias, on the other hand, are most often places of, if not necessarily humour and pleasure, than at least harmony and contentment. Utopian politics in which the comedic is key have figured as an integral part of the most successful strains of French lesbian radicalism since the early 1970s. This chapter brings three “moments” in the history of French lesbian radicalism into dialogue: 1974, via a utopian manifesto written by a member of the Gouines Rouges (one of the first French lesbian radical groups); 1980, via the Lesbian Radical Front; and 1989, via a socio-cultural initiative now known as BagdamEspaceLesbien. These moments show not only the importance of “utopian gaiety” as “a political value for progressive social activism,” but also demonstrate that without attention to the pleasure, French lesbian radicalism, whether as a political agenda or as a social movement, has—thus far—simply not been sustainable. This chapter suggests that paying attention to lesbian humour and pleasure can help us better understand the complicated relationship between radicalism and queer utopias, writ large.

‘Humours of the General Strike’ illustrates the ways in which a variety of humorous verbal genres, dramatic forms, and satirical cartoons proliferated during the strike. Observers and participants of all stripes employed bus slogans, joking riddles, narrative jokes and anecdotes, as well as personal experience narratives, to refer to and comment upon the behaviour of strikers, volunteers, government officials, observers, and other participants. From across the political spectrum, the British media used the “humours of the strike” to frame the actions of the volunteers as transforming the strike into one big lark. Volunteers and their journalistic cohorts at university and society publications most often employed those forms to jokingly discount and thus downplay the impact of volunteer activities--especially those of Society women. While individuals, no matter their class or politics, were quite explicit about the volunteers' actions merely reflecting the “natural” state of affairs, the working-class media directed their criticism at the inherent unfairness of that seemingly natural order. Both responses reveal a more complex reading of the volunteers' performance and a critique of their misappropriation of traditional forms to defeat the strike.

Among Tony Harrison’s outstanding achievements are the elegies written for his parents that appear in his School of Eloquence sequence and his long narrative poem ‘v.’. Morrison’s chapter explores the various ways in which these poems challenge and disrupt the conventions of the genre, by introducing subject matter and themes usually considered alien to the form—among them class, politics and personal identity—and by rooting them in a contemporary urban setting. The chapter also argues that Harrison’s elegies are cerebral as well as highly emotive; public as well as private; laboured rather than fluent (thereby expressing solidarity with the poet’s proletarian ancestors); and that they occupy a zone between inarticulacy (as exemplified by his father) and learned discourse. The poet’s acquisition of language is seen to come at a price: that of guilt towards his parents, from whom he feels cut off by virtue of his education and profession. After noting performative and acutely self-conscious elements in Harrison’s work, highlighting moments of humour, and touching on links to or departures from other poets (including Milton, Meredith, Yeats and Seamus Heaney), the chapter examines a single poem, ‘Marked with D’, in extensive detail. It concludes that although the poems under consideration were published over thirty years ago they are still striking relevant today—and indeed might be said foresee the key issues (of social class, affluence, regionalism and racism) that divide and disfigure the British nation today.

Released in 2001, Not Another Teen Movie was released to a public that had become familiar to the point of exhaustion with the genre’s conventions. Along with other similarly-titled spoof films, including ScaryMovie, Date Movie and Dance Flick, Not Another Teen Movie was intended as disposable fare that would capitalise on the vitality of teen movies in the 1990s whose popularity reached well beyond their intended youth audience. Not Another Teen Movie is a pastiche – both in the sense of a knowing imitation, and as an indiscriminate mish-mash of the teen movie’s typical attributes. Thus, the film is set at John Hughes High, in tribute to the veteran director, and the plot is loosely modelled on the makeover narrative of She’s All That while also incorporating elements from other recent teen movies.

This chapter looks at Sa’di as an ethicist whose perspective on ethics shows an understanding of the pragmatic and this worldly conditions necessary for educating oneself. In this regard, the chapter compares Sa’di’s ethical perspective to Michel Foucault’s “care of the self.”

This chapter discusses the light-hearted ways in which Sa’di connects to his readers as a comedian. His goal the chapter argues is to infuse the most sacred and serious moments with laughter. For this purpose the chapter makes use of Sa’di’s long and celebrated poem the tarji’band, and provides the full translation of the poem.

This chapter argues that Ben Jonson, John Marston, and others positioned city comedy as a sophisticated sonic alternative to the booming (in every sense) revenge plays of the 1580s and 90s. To hear and appreciate city comedy was said to require a more selective ear, being able to tune out unwanted noises while making sense of the sounds that matter. Listening well becomes in these plays one of the social skills that must be mastered in order to participate fully in city life -- in short, it becomes the stuff, or the subject matter, of city comedy. Ultimately, city comedies train men and women to hear in the very ways they suggest only the privileged few could, introducing playgoers to new auditory practices that could fundamentally transform their experience of London’s soundscapes.

Elisabeth Wesseling introduces an intersectional approach to Hector Malot’s French classic of children’s literature, Sans famille, showing how the various characters are all positioned at the crossroads between the parameters of age, gender, class, temperament (humour) and nation or ethnicity. The chapter details how the intricate interplay between these markers determines the characters’ life course and intergenerational relationships. Wesseling analyzes how Vitalis’s senescence supports his suitability and effectiveness as Rémi’s principal teacher and guide in the school of life. At the same time, the novel articulates an intense longing to overcome these social constraints through art, more specifically through the supposedly universal language of music, which is celebrated as mankind’s means par excellence to transcend all social barriers.

This chapter explores particular sitcom moments in detail, in order to outline the frameworks that can be used to carry out such a task. This analysis draws on Humour Theory, which is traditionally categorised as three different approaches: Superiority; Incongruity: Relief. The chapter outlines these approaches and applies them to specific sitcom moments, in order to explore their value. The chapter also posits a Cue Theory, arguing that the comedic nature of sitcom is something that must be consistently cured by texts.

The metaphysical themes explored in previous chapters are amplified when Beckett is shown to engage explicitly with the ethics of Plato and Aristotle, as well as Greek and Roman Stoics. This chapter delves deep into Beckett’s comedy of ethics, examining his exploitation of Socratic method and ancient philosophies of education or paideia, morality and “natural order” to frame the journey of his “I” and the “I”’s recitation of his narrative as ethical acts. Beckett’s “I” contrasts these ideas with modes of Christian asceticism, filtering his conception of his own “flight into Egypt” through images in his mind that derive from the painting of religious motifs in Rembrandt, Elsheimer and others. Beckett’s ironic regard for his “I” is considered in terms of his ethics of laughter and his philosophically inflected notion of the risus purus (the laughter that laughs at itself), which emerges as a driving force in the novel’s ethical comedy.

This chapter argues that part of settling in and making a new home is being able to tell one’s own story and to have others listen. It also argues that in such situations humour is a particularly effective way of winning over an audience. In her one-woman performance, C’est pratique pour tout le monde, Ayşe Şahin adopts the perspective of a devout young immigrant recently arrived from Turkey, who finds herself working in the cloakroom of a sex club. Like Montesquieu’s wide-eyed Persians, Şahin’s character at first sees everything as exotic and new. Yet as she copes with the exploitative business practices of her employer or the sexual particularities of the customers, the heroine takes control of the situation – and the narrative, thus demonstrating the constructive power of humour for immigrants as they create homes for themselves. As Şahin’s character breaks the fourth wall of the stage and interacts with the audience, she occupies the position of host, inviting the audience into and explaining both the world of her immigrant background and the world of the sex club where she works. Assuming this position of knowledgeable insider, Şahin’s character inverts the usual hierarchy between misplaced immigrant and settled native.

This chapter argues that one sign of settling is an artist’s ability and willingness to critique not only the host culture, but also his or her own culture(s) of origin. Puppeteer Ruşen Yıldız uses the traditional genre of Turkish shadow theatre (referred to as “Karagöz,” in reference to the main character), but writes his own scripts and performs in French, albeit a French inflected by the slang of immigrant housing projects. Even while Yıldız avoids simply recreating exotic folklore for a Western audience, he also draws on the historical and cultural roots of Karagöz to criticize both the structures of immigration and the patriarchal tendencies of some immigrant communities. Exploiting the possibilities of this inherently anarchic and subversive genre, Yıldız’s work continues the evolution of this traditional art form, introducing new stories even as he remains faithful to the original political intent of the form. Yildiz begins his productions by taking on easy targets, such as immigration laws and French politicians. Yet once he has lulled his audience into the colourful world of his puppets with humorous critiques sympathetic to his audience, he also asks them to confront their beliefs about gender roles, honour, and loyalty to the ‘home country’.

The final chapter considers aspects of the Playboy–Bond connection from the mid-1960s onwards, reflecting on the legacy of past associations and outlining some of the broader transformations that tested the limits of James Bond and Playboy as cultural icons. The nature and general patterns of the relationship formed between Bond and Playboy magazine in the early- to mid-1960s proved to be influential in the decades that followed, but were also negotiated in relation to social and cultural change. These changes include perceived shifts in gendered power relations and feminist critiques, meaning that strategies like humour and nostalgia became increasingly prominent ways to address cultural anxieties and the ongoing struggle to maintain some kind of contemporary relevance. In particular the chapter discusses the mid-1960s Bond parodies, the women of the Bond films in Playboy, the Bond of the Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig eras, and challenges to the playboy post-1960s. In the later sections of this chapter the importance of nostalgia to the Playboy–Bond relationship, and contemporary popular culture more generally, becomes especially apparent. The chapter concludes that the foregrounding of nostalgia is a key strategy used by Playboy and Bond to mediate and (re)narrate the relationships between past, present and future.