The spectator., 1920-08-10
TWO GREAT JOKES
Veteran Quips That Undoubtedly
 Are Centuries Old.
Jests Having to Do With the Mother in-law and the intoxicated Man Always Have Power to
 Cause . Laugh.

Some one once said that there are only two jokes in the world, the drunken man joke and the mother-in- law joke. There are many variations of the two themes many ways of pre- senting the two supremely comic fig ures, but when we want to make each other laugh we always go back either to the drunken man or to the moth- er-in-law.
 The statement is an eXaggeration. There are other jokes. The curate's egg joke. for instance, which has or mOthers-in-law, and the more recent better ole" joke. But it remains to be seen whether either of these jokes will survive. will amuse generation after generation as the two great jokes do. For the drunken man and the mother-in-law are very old jokes. They have proved their worth by pro vOking laughter for thousands of years and they are still the most pop ular jokes there are. A comedian inn personating a drunkard is sure of his laugh, and public speaker finding his audience Is getting bored, has only to say the words 'mother-in-law" to provoke full-throated merrment.
 Of tke two the drunken man joke seems to be the older. The Spartans knew it, and used to make slaves drunk so that their sons. laughing heartily, might avoid the vice through fear of ridicule The Jews knew it. Their ancient literature is singularly poor in comedy. There are not half a dozen jokes fin the whole Old Testa- ment, but the drunken man joke Is there. Isaiah, grim old puritan of a statesman, made it. and made it in an excellent form. The mother-fn- law joke is not so old, but 1t goes back to classical times.
 We find it in Plutarch. "A man once threw stone at n dog and hit his mother-in-law. Not such bad shot after all,' he said" That is Put arch's version of tie joke. It Is so neat and epigrammatic that the joke itself must have been old In his time. He could scarcely have achieved such perfect form unless he had been working on long familiar idea.
 But ancient as these jokes are they have lost none of their freshness for us. Time, 1t appears, cannot stale their infinite variety. We may fairly suppose that tEey will last as long as our race does America may go dry. but the great comic tradition of the drunken man will survive.
 The bolshevists may abolish mar riage, but men will always remember what marriage was because they win always laugh when anyone says "mother-in-law" We may picture to ourselves the last survivors of our race shivering in icy caves while the sun shoulders to extinction. They will no doubt cheer tie desperate hari- ship of their winter by inventing fresh Quips about drunken men and moth ers-ln-law.
 No other joke seems to possess this quality of endurance. Indeed. the path of mans progress through the ages Is strewed with the corpses of dead Jokes Wn1ch once were vital enough, but somehow missed immor- tality. There is the doctor" joke. for instance. The ancients knew it. Physician, heal myself" is prover- bial form of it. The story of the med icai man who went out hunting is an other version of it. To-day at least" said friend who met him. you will kill nothing" It survived down to the middle of the last century, and even in our own time C.. E. Siaw has at- tempted to galvaniza 1t into fresh hfa. But the joke is really dead. We no longer laugh spontaneously a. the thought of doctor. though in its day the doctor joke was certainly good one.-Edinburgh Scotsman.