Last To Get The Joke Poem by gershon hepner

In the ear of him who hears it lies the jest,
not in the tongue of him by whom the jest was made,
said William Shakespeare, who declared this first and best––
I’m merely putting it to rhyme, I am afraid.

Whoever tells jests first deserves more praise than one
who says it later, merely blowing smoke,
but he who’s first to understand has lots more fun
than those who are the last to get the joke.

Charles McNulty (LA Times, November 23,2009) , reviews a performance of Shakespeare’s “Love Labor’s Lost” at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica performed by the cast of London’s Globe Theater, directed by Dominic Dromgoole. He describes the work as a verbal opera, composed in a lyrical dialect that is not easy for modern theatergoers to decipher. He quotes Rosaline, whose wish is that Berowne, whom Harold Bloom describes as “a highly conscious mal narcissist who seeks his own reflection in the eye of women” to realize that “a jest’s prosperity lies in the ear / of him that hears it; never in the tongue / Of him that makes it.”

11/23/09