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Dirk Delabastita

Cross-language comedy in Shakespeare

Keywords: Bilingual pun, employment of translation, false cognate, malapropism, polyglot humor, Shakespeare

This paper presents a typology and brief overview of the humorous scenes in Shakespeare’s plays which derive their comic energy from bilingual and / or translation-based situations. To begin with, four different subtypes of the polyglot pun are distinguished. Two of those turn out to be productive in Shakespeare’s works. The paper then considers the standard expectations associated with the ‘‘normal’’ script of interlingual translation and indicates how in a variety of Shakespearean scenes the breaking of these expectations contributes to producing effects of comic incongruity.

Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 0933-1719
Volume: 18, 06/2005
Pages: 161 - 184

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