NAVIGATION: Index of Dr. Weller's Class Materials Index of English 450 Materials

Laugh Lines in Six of Shakespeare's Comedies
NOTES:
1) This list is realistic. I have either laughed at, or heard others laugh at, these lines.
2) I don't think there are any one-liners in this list. You have to know the context (including the lead-up to what is quoted, and the reactions of the other characters) in order to see the humor.

The Taming of the Shrew
  1. Sly: "Al'ce madam, or Joan madam?"
  2. Katharina:
    I'faith, sir, you shall never need to fear:
    I wis it is not half way to her heart;
    But if it were, doubt not her care should be
    To comb your noddle with a three-legg'd stool
    And paint your face and use you like a fool.
  3. Grumio: "Knock at the gate! O heavens!"
  4. Petruchio: "What, with my tongue in your tail?"
  5. Petruchio: "She hung about my neck; and kiss on kiss / She vied so fast, protesting oath on oath, / That in a twink she won me to her love."
  6. Biondello: "his horse hipp'd with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possess'd with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, ray'd with yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, sway'd in the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legg'd before and with a half-cheek'd bit and a head-stall of sheep's leather which, being restrain'd to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst and now repaired with knots; one girth six time piec'd and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with packthread."
  7. Katharina: "Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, / Whither away, or where is thy abode?"
  8. Petruchio: "To her, Kate!"
A Midsummer Night's Dream
  1. Demetrius: "You have her father's love, Demetrius; / Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him."
  2. Bottom: "Let me play the lion too."
  3. Bottom: "a lion among ladies, is amost dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living."
  4. Puck: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
  5. Helena: "O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd!"
  6. Prologue [to the play of Pyramus and Thisbe]: "If we offend, it is with our good will . . . ."
  7. Pyramus (as played by Bottom): "Thus die I, thus, thus, thus . . . ."
The Merchant of Venice
  1. Portia: "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man."
  2. Launcelot: "Do I look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a staff or a prop? Do you know me, father?"
  3. Portia: "This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood . . . .."
  4. Bassanio: " Why, I were best to cut my left hand off / And swear I lost the ring defending it ."
Much Ado About Nothing
  1. Beatrice: "Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such a face as yours were."
  2. Benedick: "Yea, and a case to put it into."
  3. Benedick: "indeed, all disquiet, horror and perturbation follows her."
  4. Claudio: "Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; 'O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!'"
  5. Benedick: "No, the world must be peopled."
  6. Beatrice: "Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point and choke a daw withal."
  7. Benedick: "there's a double meaning in that! "
  8. Margaret: "Moral! no, by my troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant, plain holy-thistle. You may think perchance that I think you are in love: nay, by'r lady, I am not such a fool to think what I list, nor I list not to think what I can, nor indeed I cannot think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love or that you will be in love or that you can be in love. "
  9. Beatrice: "Kill Claudio!"
  10. Dogberry: "do not forget to specify, when time and place shall serve, that I am an ass."
  11. Benedick: "
         Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low;
         And some such strange bull leap'd your father's cow,
         And got a calf in that same noble feat
         Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.
    "
  12. Beatrice: " I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion; and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption. "
  13. Benedick: " get thee a wife, get thee a wife "
As You Like It
  1. Touchstone: "Thus men may grow wiser every day: it is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies."
  2. Rosalind: "Sir, you have wrestled well and overthrown / More than your enemies."
  3. Silvius: "O Phebe, Phebe, Phebe!"
  4. Duke Frederick: "More villain thou."
  5. Touchstone: "That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle . . . ."
  6. Touchstone:
    109   Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
    110   Such a nut is Rosalind.
    111   He that sweetest rose will find
    112   Must find love's prick and Rosalind.
  7. Rosalind: "Answer me in one word."
  8. Touchstone: "Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness! / sluttishness may come hereafter."
  9. Rosalind: "For I must tell you friendly in your ear, / Sell when you can: you are not for all markets"
  10. Rosalind: "men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
  11. Rosalind: "I'll go find a shadow and sigh till he come."
  12. Rosalind: "Pray you, no more of this; 'tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon."
  13. Touchstone: "bear your body more seeming, Audrey"
  14. Touchstone: "much virtue in If."
Twelfth Night, or What You Will
  1. Sir Andrew: "What is 'Pourquoi'? do or not do?"
  2. Viola (as Cesario): "Excellently done, if God did all."
  3. Malvolio: " And then to have the humour of state; and after a demure travel of regard, telling them I know my place as I would they should do theirs . . . ."
  4. Malvolio: " To bed! ay, sweet-heart, and I'll come to thee."
  5. Stage Direction: "They draw"
  6. Sir Andrew: "If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me. I think you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb."