The curmudgeon (and playwright) George Bernard Shaw of the long white beard complained about the mustard joke that Touchstone the clown tells in an early scene of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
He complained that the joke doesn’t relate to anything else in the play and should therefore be cut. His proposal would be in line with the advice of many writing guides—but I can’t agree with it.
It’s true that all the other lines in As You Like It participate in a complex web of linguistic relationships. The mustard joke stands outside this web—and this is why the mustard joke must be retained. It’s the escape valve of an otherwise closed system. It’s the symbol of why a model, no matter how detailed, can never capture everything in the world.
It’s a double joke from Touchstone the clown. It’s a joke about mustard, and it’s a joke about the aesthetic requirement that everything in a work of art must interrelate.
The mustard joke is a way for Shakespeare to say through the mouth of his clown: “A pox on your writing guides!”
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available at Amazon for $4.91.