How universal is humor? You decide.
To my great delight, Amazon.com just sent me a famous joke book: Joe Miller’s Jests; or, The Wits Vade-mecum (N.Y.: Dover, 1963; facsimile of the original 1739 edition). If you imagine two-hundred-plus-year-old humor as prudish, check out #5:
“When the Lord of Ormond was young, and came first to Court, he happen’d to stand next my Lady Dorchester, one Evening in the Drawing-Room, who being but little upon the Reserve on most Occasions, let a Fart, upon which he look’d her in the Face and laugh’d. What’s the Matter, my Lord, said she: Oh! I heard it, Madam, reply’d the Duke, you’ll make a fine Courtier indeed, said she, if you mind everything you hear in this Place.”
Joe Miller, like Jay Leno or any jokester, gets you to laugh at his story by using shorthand–recognizable people, places, and things. (For Lord Ormond and Lady Dorchester, think Clinton and Lewinsky.) And Joe, like Jay, uses people-as cliches. Jay knows you’ll recognize and chuckle at yuppies, hippies, and Senators. Joe knows the same about Bishops, fishmongers, and cabin boys on leave from a man o’ war.
One of my favorite Joe Miller jokes (if you didn’t grow up going to Mass every Sunday, will you get it?)–is #82:
“Two Gentlemen disputing about Religion, in Button’s Coffee-House, said one [of] them, I wonder, Sir, you should talk of Religion, when I’ll hold you five Guineas you can’t say the Lord’s Prayer, done, said the other, and Sir Richard Steele shall hold Stakes. The Money being deposited, the Gentleman began with, I believe in God and so went cleverly thro’ the Creed; well, said the other, I own I have lost: I did not think he could have done it.”
Some witty people claim that humor is universal and all good jokes are old jokes. Oh yeah? May I just point out Joe Miller has not one light bulb joke.