Terrible puns and filthy limericks: the Victorian sense of humour

Queen Victoria was, so the famous story goes, not amused. But, as Dr. Bob Nicholson reveals in this episode of the History Extra podcast, the long-lived Queen did have a sense of humour. So did her subjects. Speaking with David Musgrove, Bob explores what it was that made people laugh in the 19th century.

And just a word of warning from me, this episode does contain some very strong language and adult humour. The first question that David asked was what actually was the Victorian sense of humour? It's really hard to define the sense of humour of millions of people over a generation just as it would be now, but When I look at Victorian comedy, I guess that there are certain recurring patterns or themes that they really liked. And the first one that you'll see when you look at their jokes is that they love puns.

They absolutely love wordplay to a degree that I think, you know, for us now we would look at and think, well, I mean, this is these are some pretty labored, torturous puns. But they they do enjoy that kind of comedy. We can maybe talk more about their punning habits in a bit. Beyond that. I mean, Victorian humor comes in a in a wide variety of different forms, from incredibly kind of erudite and witty bits of satire through to the most kind of base form of slapstick, you know, somebody, you know, slipping on a banana skin.

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