ABSTRACT
Shakespeare demonstrated how much meaning is likely to differ according to who is making the joke and to whom. Accordingly, he showed some of the ways that humour about impairment and disability has a key role to play in creating shared identities and solidarity within some disabled people's communities, such as that epitomised in Albrecht's concept of 'crip humour.' Mallett has argued that 'David Brent reveals by a mechanism of excess, the provisionality of the tolerant subject position, with the comedy coming from the failure of that positioning', suggesting that the audience are also implicated in the failure of this 'tolerant' subject position. The difference between the two shows is perhaps indicative of fears about the limits of tolerance for the 'model viewer' and the greater risks attributed to stories which centre those deemed 'other' to the 'everyman' figure.
