The History of English Podcast · Kevin Stroud

Episode 173: Fooling Around

·1 hr 25 min·5 clips

Italy’s Commedia dell’Arte mixed script, improvisation, dancing, and juggling into one performance.

1. The History of English Podcast episode 173, “Fooling Around,” examines English comedy through Shakespeare’s early plays and Elizabethan theater history. 2. Host Kevin Stroud presents the topic as a history of English comedy, Shakespearean language, and the influence of Italy on London drama. 3. The episode asks how comedy moved from physical entertainment and jest books to scripted stage dialogue in late 1500s England. 4. Stroud begins with the four humors, tracing the word “humor” from Greek medicine to the idea of a cheerful state of mind. 5. He notes that “laughter is the best medicine” appears first in the early 1900s, not in Shakespeare’s day. 6. The discussion contrasts spoken jokes, puns, and malapropisms with nonverbal comedy like pratfalls, slapstick, clowns, and mime. 7. Early English jest books such as A Hundred Merry Tales, published in 1526, show the print culture that fed comic taste. 8. Shakespeare’s comedies are placed alongside Christopher Marlowe’s work and the rise of literacy in the late 1500s. 9. The episode lists Shakespeare’s early comedies, including The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Merchant of Venice. 10. The plague shutdown from 1592 to 1594 interrupted performances in London and reshaped the theater companies that survived. 11. Philip Henslow’s Rose Theatre records and the Lord Admiral’s Men provide evidence for performances after the theaters reopened in May 1594. 12. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, patronized by Henry Carey, emerge as Shakespeare’s main company and later become the King’s Men under James I. 13. The Taming of the Shrew is summarized as a Padua story about Katerina, Bianca, Petruchio, and a marriage contest built around obedience. 14. Shakespeare’s phrase “of a sudden” is used to show an Elizabethan pattern where “sudden” could function like a noun. 15. Christopher Sly’s alehouse scene introduces the first recorded use of “not budge an inch” and frames the main play as a prank. 16. Sly’s mispronunciation of “comedy” as “commonty” becomes a malapropism that separates low physical entertainment from scripted theatrical comedy. 17. The episode distinguishes Elizabethan dramatic comedy from older holiday merriment, tumbling, juggling, and festival performances. 18. Greek chorus, mime, Roman pantomime, farce, jigs, dumb shows, and postludes are used to map the older entertainment forms that sat beside stage drama. 19. Listeners interested in Shakespeare, theater history, and English word origins will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners seeking a fast plot recap or modern stand-up comedy references may skip it.

As heard by us

A clear look at how Shakespeare's comedy and English stage vocabulary developed together.

The discussion follows Shakespeare's early comedies as a way to track how English comedy took shape in the early modern period. It works best when theater and language stay linked, especially in the way interlude, prelude, postlude, and jig keep older ideas of play alive inside…

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Why you'd press play

For Shakespeare's early comedies, Italian influence, and the English language they helped shape.

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