The History of Literature 800 Shakespeare in Jest (with Indira Ghose) | My Last Book with Nicholson Baker
May 11, 2026
Nicholson Baker, award-winning novelist known for intimate, detail-rich work, talks about the one private book he’d choose to read last. Indira Ghose, Shakespeare scholar and author focused on humor and theatre, explores Shakespeare’s comic mechanisms, witty battles of words, wise fools, dark laughs, and how jokes navigate power and gender. Short, lively, and full of literary wit.
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Wit Serves As Social Defense For Women
- Humor functions as a defensive strategy for marginalized characters, especially witty women.
- Ghose shows Shakespeare's clever female characters use wit to subvert norms that demanded women be chaste, silent, and obedient.
1526 Jest About Souls Dancing Feels Modern
- Jacke reads a 1526 joke from A Hundred Merry Tales where a parishioner asks where the piper will stand if a thousand souls dance on a man's nail.
- The punchline and moral satirize abstruse theological questions and feel surprisingly modern in tone.
Christopher Guest's Birthday Note To Michael McKean
- Jacke recounts a Christopher Guest gift: Michael McKean received Shakespeare's collected works with a note 'This is that writer I was telling you about, Shakespeare.'
- The anecdote playfully captures reverence and the comic idolization of Shakespeare among actors.
