(a) The Element of Incongruity. "The essence of all humor," it has been said, "is incongruity," and in the monologue there is no one thing that brings better laugh-results than the incongruous. Note in the Appendix the closing point of "The German Senator." Could there be any more incongruous thing than wives forming a Union?
(b) Surprise. By surprise is meant leading the audience to believe the usual thing is going to happen, and "springing" the unusual—which in itself is often an incongruity, but not necessarily so.
(c) Situation. Both incongruity and surprise are part and parcel of the laughter of a situation. For instance; a meeting of two people, one of whom is anxious to avoid the other—a husband, for instance, creeping upstairs at three A. M. meeting his wife—or both anxious to avoid each other—wife was out, too, and husband overtakes wife creeping slowly up, doing her best not to awaken him, each supposing the other in bed and asleep. The laughter comes because of what is said at that particular moment in that particular situation—"and is due," Freud says, "to the release from seemingly unpleasant and inevitable consequences."
(d) Pure Wit. Wit exists for its own sake, it is detachable from its context, as for example:
And what a fine place they picked out for Liberty to stand. With Coney Island on one side and Blackwell's Island on the other. [1]
[1] The German Senator. See Appendix.
(e) Character. The laughable sayings that are the intense expression at the instant of the individuality of the person voicing them, is what is meant by the humor of character. For instance: the German Senator gets all "balled up" in his terribly long effort to make a "regular speech," and he ends:
We got to feel a feeling of patriotic symptoms—we got to feel patriotic symp—symps—you got to feel the patri—you can't help it, you got to feel it.
These five suggestions—all, in the last analysis, depending on the first, incongruity—may be of assistance to the novice in analyzing the elements of humor and framing his own efforts with intelligence and precision.
In considering the other elemental characteristics of the monologue, we must bear in mind that the emphasizing of humor is the monologue's chief reason for being.