SpecGram—Ye Olde Punnery—The Jigglepike Fragment

Ye Olde Punnery—The Jigglepike Fragment

SpecGram Wire Services

A small fragment of a manuscript believed to be part of the lost play “Ye Olde Punnery” by Willhebe Jigglepike has been unearthed at the bottom of a centuries-old Oxyrhynchus® Brand Garbage Dump outside the sleepy burg of Stratford-upon-Revlon.

Linguocarbon dating of the parchment—paid for by SpecGram Wire Services—revealed a precise date of “the 1.6th of Hexedecember, 1616”. Payment was refunded.

Textual analysis using Swadesh-Pagellian Glottochronologism revealed a date of 1601, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 12 BCE to 3207 CE. No one would pay for that (but at least it’s getting published in Nature).

Despite the uncertain dating, several scholars have noted the uncharacteristic, almost anachronistic use of language seen in the brief dialogue. Dan T. Redonne, of Ἠχώ Λαλαλαλιά Πανεπιστήμιο, Greece, provided SpecGram Wire Services with the following expert opinion: “Note the uncharacteristic, almost anachronistic use of language seen in the brief dialogue”—free of charge.

Unsurprisingly, experts remain divided on both the authenticity and the importance of the find. In keeping with SpecGram Wire Service’s mottos of “We Report, You Decide Whether to Believe Us” and “Fairly Unbalanced” we are providing a transcript of the fragment:

...ain itself because it is pain.

Taper:

What do you call runic erotica? Þornography.

Beak:

You wynn the daily pun prize!

Natom:

Always an admirable goal, but not to them that hold puns as the lowest form of humor. Indeed, it’s little known that among some of the more religious-minded, puns are considered a proximate occasion of sin—by a perversion of proper connection of disparate things yielding humor, puns allow perversion of proper behavior to follow. There was even a minor treatise to this effect by the lesser-known Saint Alvin, a Capuchin friar who lived in the mid-1600s. He was also one of the lesser-known churchmen who experimented with growing and processing New World crops; his particular specialty was the potato, for which he found many culinary uses. As a result, he is best known to later generations as Alvin the Chip Monk.

Eau d’T:

And of course, there was rivalry between Saint Alvin and those monks who preferred to make sweet dishes to be served after the main repast who called themselves the Dessert Fathers.

Pip-pip-pip:

Get thee to a punne...

That’s all, folks!

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Ye Olde Punnery—The Jigglepike Fragment

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