Some day I should like to run a competition to find out the unfunniest clown in Shakespeare. There's a lot of choice, from that dreadful Launcelot Gobbo to the superlatively unfunny Feste. Nobody can make me believe that even the groundlings laughed at them, unless, as I suspect, the dire lines were enlivened by rude gestures.
Unfortunately amateur producers are never honest about this. Professional producers are rarely under any such illusion. They cover up the lines with business.* But instead of admitting that the clowns are a dreary lot, amateurs insist that they are hilarious, against all the evidence of the script. As a last resort the producer will say that Shakespeare did not intend this clown to be funny, he meant him to be pathetic.
During a production of Twelfth Night, in which I had the misfortune to play Fabian, the producer carefully explained that Feste was the elderly clown on his way out, which was why his jokes weren't funny, and Fabian was the young up-and-coming clown. I pointed out that this theory broke down because Fabian was even more unfunny than Feste, so if he represented the tops in court wit they must have had a lean time of it. But I could not convince him. I remember one line in particular:
"Sowter will cry out on't, though it be rank as a fox."
Every time we came to that in rehearsal I said, "Look, surely you don't really believe that's funny, do you?" and the producer would assume an air of pitying superiority and say: "It's actually extremely amusing to someone who understands it. It's simply the way you're saying it."
I tried every way of saying that wretched line. I said, "Sowter will cry out on it," and I said, "Sowter will cry out on it," and I said, "Sowter will cry out on it," and it still fell on the audience like a lump of suet pudding, until one evening I delivered it as usual and there was a great shout of laughter from the back of the hall.
For just a moment I thought I had triumphed over the Bard, when I realized that there was something familiar about the laughter. I glanced off stage and saw that the stage manager was not in his seat. He had collected every spare person, crept in at the back of the auditorium and organized a claque for the line. After that the real audience became convinced they were missing something and howled all through the show. The only person who didn't think it funny was the producer.
Personally I should have thought he would have been gratified, but producers are strange people.
One is tempted to the theory that Shakespeare himself was a Coarse Actor. At any rate he was certainly experienced in Coarse Acting, as Hamlet's advice to the players shows: "And let not those that play the clowns say more than is set down for them." It seems to me quite obvious that Will Kemp and one or two others had got tired of those corny old jokes about sowter and horns and French tailors and started putting in some real gags. And after playing some of the clowns' parts I must say I don't blame them.
* I refuse to believe, however, that any intelligent Elizabethan really played with that stupid cup and ball.
From experience, I can say that reading/watching Shakespeare because you WANT to, rather than because you are required to for the sake of your report card, is rather fun. The first time I ever saw Shakespeare performed live was at the local theatre by a traveling troupe from BC. They did "Twelfth Night" in the most traditional way, and it was absolutely marvelous! The major complaint most people have is that they can't wrap their minds around the language, but when you see the actions and expressions that go along with the language, everything becomes so much more understandable and meaningful. I'd never even read that play and so had almost no idea of what the story was about, but I learned as the play went along... and have rarely laughed so much in my life! 
Well, I found it hilarious.
