Oh Boy

There's a whole scene that gets cut from every production of Tempest because it is clearly supposed to be funny, but the punchline is "widow Dido," and the best guess is that it was essentially a meme that we just don't get anymore. So the scene doesn't work, it isn't funny, it's barely comprehensible. Widow Dido wasn't canceled, society just moved on to different stupid jokes. One of the bits in Merry Wives of Windsor, a genuinely funny play, that is clearly supposed to bring the house down, and probably did in 1598, is that this one guy is French. That's it, that's the joke. Hon Hon Hon baguette du fromage. Get a load of this Frenchman. At best these days it comes off as silly and juvenile. But to an Elizabethan English person, some French guy fumbling a good English girl was hilarious.

And yeah there's also an element of xenophobia and nationalism there and that's not great, but mostly it's just not really funny anymore that French people exist, it's just like... ok? And??

And i think a lot of like. Bits where the punchline is that people are gay, Steven, or like. A woman is doing something, a Trans person exists, this guy wore a dress, isn't it sooooooooo funny that these two dudes are saying romantic words at each other ironically or acting like a couple like...

Yeah the idea that this would be funny is rooted in bigotry. But also,

It's just not funny? Like ok? This guy is wearing a dress? So what? Like ok this character hit on someone thinking they were one gender and was wrong, that's just a random Thursday in a South End bar, we've all been there? Nu?? Sometimes people are from Wales, yeah, that's how geography works?