Laughter as Collateral Damage in the Trials of William Hone

Abstract

The radical London satirist William Hone was tried in 1817 on three separate charges of blasphemous libel. His three acquittals are generally attributed to the courtroom laughter he provoked, as well as to the careful distinction he drew between the secular “object” of his attacks (the government ministers) and the sacred “subject” in which he couched them (the Anglican liturgy). By its nature, however, laughter never hits its target without inflicting collateral damage. Late in life, Hone not only confessed his impiety but confronted its ontological implications: that laughter destabilizes the “subject” in a way not susceptible to adjudication.