Jesting

“ Joe Miller was a fact, and Modern Research shall not rob us of that conviction!
The compiler of this volume has felt the importance of his task, and diligently sought how to distinguish true wit from false,—the pure gold from Brummagem brass. He has carefully perused the Eight learned chapters on "Thoughts on Jesting," by Frederick Meier, Professor of Philosophy at Halle, and Member of the Royal Academy of Berlin, wherein it is declared that a jest "is an extreme fine Thought, the result of a great Wit and Acumen, which are eminent Perfections of the Soul." ... ”

“ Another sort is a custom of inordinate jesting: this vein or disposition is so strong in some, that when they have a list to vent a jest, they cannot hold, but out it must come whatever it cost, and be it never so frivolous and vain, Eph. v. 4.
7. Another sort is foolish talk, that hath not wit enough to make it edifying, Eph. v. 4. And among idle talkers how much of it is foolish! How weary would it make a man to hear the talk of many babblers! ”

“ We hear this same hero whom pride, sense of honour, spirit of independence, and intrepidity inspire with the sublimest utterances, at other times chatting, jesting, and even talking nonsense. The jests and nonsense are an integral part of the real human being; in them, too, one side of his nature reveals itself (iii. I) :—
"Hotspur. ”

“ She remains good-natured, but has acquired a singular tendency to irony and sharp jesting. Nothing is more curious than to hear her after a sitting when she has received a visit from strangers who wished to see her asleep. ”

“ Yet more,—a Jester who failed to jest; a man seeking for art, for guile, wherein to hide his heart, yet clothing it ever in truth, though truth carved to poetic fancy.
“Dogs are we!” so had cried his sire. No dog was he to fawn and cringe at the foot of his mistress, but in very sooth a man kneeling in adoration at his lady’s shrine. And as he was, so she accepted him, this Jester who could not jest. She saw the man beneath the fool, and stooping from her heights recognized his manhood. Even so might the Gracious Mother of God bend from Heaven to a suppliant son of earth. ”

“ Shakespeare uses also such verbs as to glad, to mad, such phrases as a seldom pleasure, and the fairest she. Dr Abbott says, “In Elizabethan English, almost any part of speech can be used as any other part of speech. An adverb can be used as a verb, ‘they askance their eyes’; as a noun, ‘the backward and abysm of time’; or as an adjective, ‘a seldom pleasure.’ Any noun, adjective, or neuter verb can be used as an active verb. You can ‘happy’ your friend, ‘malice’ or ‘fool’ your enemy, or ‘fall’ an axe upon his neck.” Even in modern English, almost any noun can be used as a verb. ”

“ This subject, however, is too serious to admit of a jest even between two persons who understand, so well as you and I do, the secret cipher by which each other’s outward style of jest is to be gravely interpreted into the irony which says one thing and means another. My dear boy, you are very young; you are wandering about in a very strange manner, and may, no doubt, meet with many a pretty face by the way, with which you may fancy that you fall in love. ”

“ In the Middle Ages kings and noblemen had in their courts jesters to make sport for the company; as everyone then wore a dress indicating his rank or occupation, so the jester wore a cap hung with bells. The fool of Shakespeare's plays is the king's jester at his best. ”

“ And each one wants to show his wisdom, his skill, and all kinds of speculations come as fast as hail. All tell stories and make allusions to strangers who had visited them in such and such a year; jesters relate anecdotes about it, and they are not always within the bounds of propriety; men twirl their beards and smile; old women jokingly scold the jesters, angered and laughing at the same time; young married women stealthily look upwards with their drooping eyes, hold their hands before their mouths and choke with laughter. ”

“ All of us have been present when a fine speaker having what may be called the wit of speech where a laugh was loaded with a principle where the address was clear, sparkling, above all things witty, wit being the rarest of qualities and surest of appreciation, the audience worked up by the rough and ready eloquence of a popular orator, reaching indeed an extraordinary pitch of excitement, has swept everything with the weaker side of the case. ”

“ The brilliant phrase, like good wine, needs no bush. But just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising or lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweller—an excusable love of one's art, not all mere vanity, I like to think"—all this with the most pleasant smile and manner. ”

“ The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang. Every day a nameless poet weaves some fairy tracery of popular language. It may be said that the fashionable world talks slang as much as the democratic; this is true, and it strongly supports the view under consideration. Nothing is more startling than the contrast between the heavy, formal, lifeless slang of the man-about-town and the light, living, and flexible slang of the coster. ”

“ Singer, [216] however, explains the words thus: “Tailors, like weavers, have ever been remarkable for their vocal skill. Percy is jocular in his mode of persuading his wife to sing; and this is a humorous turn which he gives to his argument, ‘Come, sing.’ ‘I will not sing.’ ‘’Tis the next [i. e., the readiest, nearest] way to turn tailor, or redbreast teacher’—the meaning being, to sing is to put yourself upon a level with tailors and teachers of birds.”
Gull. Shakespeare often uses this word as synonymous with fool. Thus in “Henry V.” (iii. 6) he says:
“Why, ’tis a gull, a fool.” ”

“ A writer with a feeling indeed for the delicate effects of word combination, if his humor had been less chilled by hate, if his wit had been of a lighter and more playful vein, he might have laughed superstition out of England. ”

“ For as satiety of food and disgust is either relieved by some rather bitter taste, or is at times appeased by a sweet taste; so a mind weary with listening is either reinstated in its strength by astonishment, or else is refreshed by laughter.
XVIII. And these are pretty nearly the main things which it appeared desirable to say separately concerning the exordium of a speech, and the topics which an orator should use for the purpose of insinuating himself into the good grace of his hearers. ”

“ AN Attempt to describe the precise Limits of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire and Ridicule, I am sensible, is no easy or slight Undertaking. To give a Definition of Wit, has been declared by Writers of the greatest Renown, to exceed their Reach and Power; and Gentlemen of no less Abilities, and Fame, than Cowley, Barrow, Dryden, Locke, Congreve, and Addison, have tryed their Force upon this Subject, and have all left it free, and unconquered. ”

“ Singing and joking, we were in no humor for, and, in fact, any sound of mirth or laughter would have struck strangely upon our ears, and would not have been tolerated, any more than whistling, or a wind instrument. ”

“ Avoid in writing, as in talking, all words that do not express the true meaning. We are sorry to say that sometimes even among educated people, when attempting smartness or wit, we find a sort of conventional slang that has, in truth, a strong tinge of vulgarity, being the wilful substitution of bad words or bad phrases for good ones. When we find them 168issuing from the lips or the pen of a lady, we fear she is unfortunate in a reprobate husband, or brother, from whom she must have learnt them. ”

“ For, tell the most impassioned orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, or his shirt-lap hanging out, and that he is tickling people by the oddity of his person, instead of thrilling them by the energy of his periods, and you would infallibly dry up the spring of his eloquence. ”

“ Let us get back in everything to the spoken word, even though we have to speak our lyrics to the Psaltery or the Harp, for, as A.E. says, we have begun to forget that literature is but recorded speech, and even when we write with care we have begun ‘to write with elaboration what could never be spoken.’ But when we go back to speech let us see that it is either the idiom of those who have rejected, or of those who have never learned, the base idioms of the newspapers. ”

“ The Third Study should have convinced you that a sense of good humor is a safe and desirable thing to cultivate; that the whimsical tone in interpretation will leaven almost any lump of sheer learning and counteract a serious overdose of sentiment; that fable, fairy tale, and nonsense rhyme depend too for successful interpretation upon this element of whimsicality in the reader; that the secret of the whimsical element in vocal expression lies in a use of pause and inflection. ”

“ It may be that for some of the more elaborate kinds of poetry, such as the formal epic, dialect is useless; let it be reserved, therefore, for those kinds which appeal most directly to the hearts of the people. The poetry of the people includes the ballad and the verse tale, lyric in all its forms, and some kinds of satire ”

“ In applauding an orator we usually applaud ourselves. He says what we were just ready to say; we seem to have suggested the idea. It is superfluous to remark that slowness without gesture, and especially without facial expression, would be intolerable. A tone must always be reproduced with an expression of the face.
2. The voice must not be jerky. Here we must keep jealous watch over ourselves. The entire interest of diction arises from a fusion of tones. The tones of the voice are sentient beings, who love, hold converse, follow each other and blend in a harmonious union. ”

“ For if Eloquence without this is nothing, but this, even without Eloquence, has such a wonderful efficacy, it must be allowed to bear the principal sway in the practice of Speaking.
If an Orator, then, who is ambitious to win the palm of Eloquence, has any thing to deliver which is warm and cutting, let his voice be strong and quick;—if what is calm and gentle, let it be mild and easy;—if what is grave and sedate, let it be cool and settled;—and if what is mournful and affecting, let his accents be plaintive and flexible. ”

“ The mouth, in fact, seems to be the feature where you may trace every kind of dissimulation, from the simper of vanity, to the fixed smile of the designing villain. Perhaps, the modulations of the voice will still more quickly give a key to the character than even the turns of the mouth, or the words that issue from it; often do the tones of unpractised dissemblers give the lie to their assertions. ”

“ But, though the language of Poetry is equally grand and ornamental with that of an Orator, she undoubtedly takes greater liberties both in making and compounding word; and frequently administers to the pleasure of her hearers, more by the pomp and lustre of her expressions, than by the weight and dignity of her sentiments. ”

“ But now I find a great many who have advanced to a slang beyond that of verbal expressions,—a slang of mind, a slang of sentiment, a slang in which very little seems left of the woman and nothing at all of the lady.
Newspaper essayists assert that the young men of the day are to blame for this; that the young men like it; and the fair husband-anglers dress their flies in the colours most likely to attract a nibble. ”

“ And while effusive utterance is always the prevalent mode, it will give place to the expulsive mode or to the explosive, when energy of thought or force of passion requires it so.
Thus, as the diction rises from plain discourse to the language of feeling, the appropriate vocal expression gathers intensity and becomes more varied, assumes, as may be said, brighter colors and displays greater contrasts; and so, in the third class of diction, the diction of passion, it displays its intensest and most vivid modes—its brightest colors, its deepest contrasts. ”

“ In common speech, sometimes it is the words of the poet that are called expressions, the notes of the musician, or the figures of the painter; sometimes the blush which is wont to accompany the feeling of shame, the pallor resulting from fear, the grinding of the teeth proper to violent anger, the glittering of the eyes, and certain movements of the muscles of the mouth, which reveal cheerfulness. ”

“ The child in order to speak must imitate those whom it hears speaking. If you would make a pudding, you must imitate the cook; if a coat, the tailor. But the imitation which is essentially vulgar, the very tap-root, as I have said, of vulgarity, is imitation for imitation’s sake. And that is why I think modern slang is essentially vulgar. If it is your real opinion—right or wrong matters not—that any slang phrase expresses any idea with peculiar accuracy, vividness, or humour,{53} use it by all means; and he is a narrow blockhead who sees any vulgarity in your doing so. ”

“ Yeats The Countess Cathleen with which we began, The Shadowy Waters, The King’s Threshold, and the rest. They have sometimes seemed to go out of sight because the prose plays are easier to put on and to take from place to place; yet they will always be, if I have my way, a part of our year’s work. I feel verse is more than any prose can be, the apex of the flame, the point of the diamond. The well-to-do people in our stalls sometimes say, “We have had enough of verse plays, give us comedy.” ”

“ For Elegance is no essential Property of Wit. Pure Wit resulting solely from the quick Elucidation of one Subject, by the sudden Arrangement, and Comparison of it, with another Subject.--If the two Objects arranged together are elegant, and polite, there will then be superadded to the Wit, an Elegance and Politeness of Sentiment, which will render the Wit more amiable. ”