Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy.[King, Rob (2017). Hokum!: The Early Sound Slapstick Short and Depression-Era Mass Culture. Oakland, California: University of California Press. p. 197.]
The term arises from a device developed for use in the broad, physical comedy style known as commedia dell'arte in 16th-century Italy. The "slap stick" consists of two thin slats of wood, which makes a "slap" when striking another actor, with little force needed to make a loud—and comical—sound. The physical slap stick remains a key component of the plot in the traditional and popular Punch and Judy puppet show. More contemporary examples of slapstick humor include The Three Stooges, The Naked Gun and Mr. Bean.
Origins
The name "slapstick" originates from the Italian
batacchio or
bataccio—called the "slap stick" in English—a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in
commedia dell'arte. When struck, the Batacchio produces a loud smacking noise, though it is only a little force that is transferred from the object to the person being struck. Actors may thus hit one another repeatedly with great audible effect while causing no damage and only very minor, if any, pain. Along with the inflatable bladder (of which the
whoopee cushion is a modern variant), it was among the earliest
special effects.
Early uses
Slapstick comedy's history is measured in centuries. Shakespeare incorporated many chase scenes and beatings into his comedies, such as in his play
The Comedy of Errors.
In early 19th-century England,
pantomime acquired its present form which includes slapstick comedy: its most famous performer,
Joseph Grimaldi—the father of modern
—"was a master of physical comedy".
Comedy routines also featured heavily in British
music hall theatre which became popular in the 1850s.
[David Christopher (2002). British Culture: An Introduction. p. 74. Routledge,][Jeffrey Richards (2014). The Golden Age of Pantomime: Slapstick, Spectacle and Subversion in Victorian England. I.B.Tauris,]
In Punch and Judy shows, which first appeared in England on 9 May 1662, a large slapstick is wielded by Punch against the other characters.
Fred Karno and music hall
British comedians who honed their skills at pantomime and
music hall sketches include
Charlie Chaplin,
Stan Laurel,
George Formby and
Dan Leno.
[ "Enjoy Cumbria – Stan Laurel". BBC. Retrieved 2 January 2015] The English music hall comedian and theatre impresario
Fred Karno developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue in the 1890s, and Chaplin and Laurel were among the young comedians who worked for him as part of "Fred Karno's London Comedians".
[McCabe, John. "Comedy World of Stan Laurel". p. 143. London: Robson Books, 2005, First edition 1975] Chaplin's fifteen-year music hall career inspired the comedy in all his later film work, especially as pantomimicry.
In 1904, Karno's Komics produced a new sketch for the
Hackney Empire in London called
Mumming Birds, which included the
Pieing gag, in which one person hits another with a pie, among other new innovations.
Immensely popular, it became the longest-running sketch the music halls produced.
Chaplin and Laurel were among the music hall comedians who partook in the sketch, while Charlie's older brother
Sydney Chaplin was the first of the brothers to perform it for Karno.
In a biography of Karno, Laurel stated: "Fred Karno didn't teach Charlie Chaplin and me all we know about comedy. He just taught us most of it".[J. P. Gallagher (1971). "Fred Karno: master of mirth and tears". p. 165. Hale.]
In film and television
Building on its later popularity in the 19th and early 20th-century routines of music hall in Britain and the American
vaudeville house, the style was explored extensively during the "golden era" of black and white movies directed by Hal Roach and
Mack Sennett that featured such notables as Charlie Chaplin,
Mabel Normand, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, the
Three Stooges, and
Larry Semon. The pie in the face gag was used extensively in this era.
Chaplin's 1915 film
A Night in the Show, which includes the pie in the face gag, brings one of the classic music hall comedy sketches,
Mumming Birds, known as
A Night in an English Music Hall when Chaplin performed it on tour, into his film work.
Silent slapstick comedy was also popular in early French films and included films by
Max Linder, Charles Prince, and
Sarah Duhamel.
[Maggie Hennefeld "Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes", Columbia UP, 2018.]
Slapstick also became a common element in animated cartoons starting in the 1930s and 1940s; examples include Disney's Mickey Mouse and
Donald Duck shorts,
Walter Lantz's
Woody Woodpecker, the Beary Family, MGM's
Tom and Jerry, the unrelated Tom and Jerry cartoons of Van Beuren Studios, Warner Bros.
Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies, MGM's
Barney Bear, and Tex Avery's
Screwy Squirrel. Slapstick was later used in Japanese
Tokusatsu TV
Kamen Rider Den O, Kamen Rider Gaim, Kamen Rider Drive, by
Benny Hill in
The Benny Hill Show in the UK, and in the US used in the three 1960s TV series,
Gilligan's Island,
Batman,
The Flying Nun and
I Love Lucy. Hill, whose comedy sketches first appeared on British television in the early 1950s, was described by writer
Anthony Burgess as "a comic genius steeped in the British music hall tradition".
In the 1970s, the sitcom
Three's Company featured slapstick infused scenes in most episodes. In 1990,
Mr. Bean, starring
Rowan Atkinson, debuted on British television, and, like Benny Hill, cartoons and other comedians whose "visual humour transcended language barriers" (description of Hill by the
BFI), the show would be exported around the world.
20th century fad
Examples of the use of the slapstick in public places as a
fad in the early 20th century include:
During the 1911 Veiled Prophet Parade in St. Louis, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
An editorial in the Asbury Park Press, New Jersey, said in 1914:
See also
External links
