Joe Miller (actor)

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For other persons named Joe Miller, see Joe Miller.
Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wits Vade-Mecum (1739)
Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wits Vade-Mecum (1739)

Joe Miller (Joseph or Josias) (1684 - August 16, 1738), English actor, first appears in the cast of Sir Robert Howard's Committee at Drury Lane in 1709 as Teague.

Trinculo in The Tempest, the First Grave-digger in Hamlet and Marplot in The Busybody, were among his many favourite parts. He is said to have been a friend of Hogarth.

[edit] Joe Miller's Jests

After Miller's death, John Mottley (1692-1750) brought out a book called Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wits Vade-Mecum (1739), a collection of contemporary and ancient coarse witticisms, only three of which are told of Miller. This first edition was a thin pamphlet of 247 numbered jokes. Later editions were known as "Joe Miller's Joke Book".

Owing to the quality of the jokes in Mottley's book, their number increasing with each of the many subsequent editions, any time-worn jest, somewhat unjustly, came to be called "a Joe Miller."

Joke 99 states:

A Lady's Age happening to be questioned, she affirmed she was but Forty, and called upon a Gentleman that was in Company for his Opinion; Cousin, said she, do you believe I am in the Right, when I say I am but Forty? I ought not to dispute it, Madam, reply'd he, for I have heard you say so these [last] ten Years.

Joke 234 speaks of:

A famous teacher of Arithmetick [sic], who had long been married without being able to get his Wife with Child. One said to her ‘Madam, your Husband is an excellent Arithmetician’. ‘Yes, replies she, only he can't multiply.'

Joe Miller was referred to in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843), by the character Scrooge, who remarks "Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending [the turkey] to Bob's will be!"

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.