“You may humbug the town as a tragedian, but comedy is a serious business.”
David Garrick
18th c. Actor-Director-Producer
Oh, and of course, the set-up. Tone and delivery,
too, must have their due.
And the middle with the magic-feint,
the misdirection; never let ‘em see it comin’.
And forget not the fall. Without the fall, the joke
fails.
Toss in a banana peel if thou must.
In short, all the tools of rhetoric.”
The emoter hams on, his porkly glaze
sheens ‘neath the oven lights,
His fatted thighs chafe in the clotted tights.
“Damn, this is harder than it looks. . .”
High-flown oration can be its own reward.
After all, if the audience simply sits
in dumb drowse,
Declamorous may smug himself in the wings,
thinking,
“Ah, I have them now. Behold their rapt.”
But the comedian can not so fool himself.
If titter, chuckle, hearty guffaw,
Ah, perhaps most precious of all,
The beat. . . and groan is not forthcoming
Then there he dies his thousand deaths —
Every last act of every tragedy ever penned.
Comedy is a gladiatorial sport,
Bloody as any revenge drama.
Only the fool seeks to slay his audience.
Whoever, upon the boards first durst
A jingled verse rehearsed,
How passed he on the last laugh’s curse.
poetastrophy 