Humor does not have to be obvious. Sometimes it is most effective when it comes from milking a straight line for laughs.

When I was living in Nashville, during the mid-1970s, noted English actor Anthony Quayle spent a few months at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville as a visiting artist. He starred in UT’s production of Macbeth. I didn’t catch his performance there, but I did see him when he came to Nashville for a one-night only, one-man show at Vanderbilt University.

Since he called his production “Readings from the Elizabethans”, I wasn’t expecting much of a turn out. But I was wrong. The auditorium was packed, and for about 90 minutes, Mr. Quayle absolutely charmed the crowd with his warmth, his modesty, his humor and his obvious love of his material.

As I recall, the “readings” included speeches from Shakespeare and Marlowe, a letter of Sir Walter Ralegh’s, the moving elegy that young Chidiock Tichbourne wrote while awaiting execution for his role in the Babington plot against Queen Elizabeth (“My prime of youth is but a frost of cares…”) and some assorted comments on the theatre from actors and critics of the day.

One of these was a letter that the actor Ned Alleyn wrote to his wife while on tour. In particular, he wants news of how his garden is doing. Quayle said that he loved Alleyn’s letters, “Because they are so much like the letters I write to my own wife when I am away.”

Quayle also quoted a 1583 diatribe against the theatre penned by a Puritan killjoy named Philip Stubbes. According to Stubbes, the real reason why people frequented theatres was to find partners with whom to indulge in debaucheries afterwards. He wrote: “these goodly pageants being ended, every mate sorts to his mate, everyone brings another homeward of their way very friendly, and in their secret conclaves covertly they play the sodomites or worse.”

Quayle used the same line, except that he milked it for an enormous laugh. Assuming a suitably dour Puritan expression he intoned: “and in their secret conclaves covertly they play the sodomites [long pause] or worse.”

“Well!” Quayle exclaimed as he reverted to being himself. “The imagination fairly boggles at that one, doesn’t it?” And the audience roared.

One of the best ways to hold people’s attention is to make them laugh. Speechwriters should always be alert to the possibilities for using humor – even when a line is not obviously funny.