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low brow humour - richard robinson - 11-13-2010
while preparing to be eye candy at the Ben Hur Spectacular the other week I made up a dumb but fun joke
"go polish your cheek pieces. I want to be able to see my face in them"
Is there any documented historical humour that is similar?
regards
richard
Re: low brow humour - Epictetus - 11-13-2010
Oh, yes. The ancients seemed to love playing with words. Didn't Cicero use a word to say the young Octavian should be honoured / should be killed?Of course, a play on words in another language may not translate well. There are some in Philogelos:
Quote:When a jokester saw an ophthalmologist busy rubbing away on a girl, he said: "Watch out, young man, that you don't, in healing her sight, ruin her 'I'".
(The doctor is rubbing ointment into her eye, but the jokester foresees a more sexual sort of friction. My use of "I" aims to capture some of the pun in the Greek word which means both "eye" and "girl". )
Quote:A misogynist paid his last respects at the tomb of his dead wife. When someone asked him, "Who has gone to rest?," he replied: "Me, now that I'm alone."
Quote:An Abderite shared a mattress with a man who suffered from a hernia. In the night, he got up to relieve himself. When he returned, he accidentally (since it was still dark) stepped right on the spot of the hernia. When the man let out a howl, the Abderite asked: "Why weren't you lying down heads-up?"
(Part of the joke plays on "head" as "tip of the penis". The collection plays on the obscene meaning of the word also in #251 & #262. Brushing up against an erect penis would have been a warning sign to the Abderite not to step down on the man.)
Mary Beard talks about Roman jokes to The Guardian.
Re: low brow humour - M. Demetrius - 11-13-2010
Quote:"go polish your cheek pieces. I want to be able to see my face in them"Reply: (with a demure smile) Well, Big Boy, you'll have to come a little closer, hmmm?
Re: low brow humour - Forty-One - 11-13-2010
Quote:while preparing to be eye candy at the Ben Hur Spectacular the other week I made up a dumb but fun joke
"go polish your cheek pieces. I want to be able to see my face in them"
Is there any documented historical humour that is similar?
regards
richard
There were of course comedy plays by both Roman and Greek authors. I recall quite a few good puns in them. For example in one of Plautus' plays one character is asked if he's a doctor (medicus), to which he replies something like:
"No, not a medicus but a word very like it",
"Aha, mendicus (a beggar) , perhaps?"
Also, Socrates' last words were reputedly an obscene pun. When he noticed the effect the poison was having on his "nether regions" he mentioned something about "owing a cock to Aesculapius", where the Greek word used for cock could mean the poultry animal as well as a male part.