I started doing these Shakespearean Character Spotlights to cut down my workload. "It'll be easy," I thought. "I'll just randomly pick a character and give people a quick overview of him or her! I won't have to think up jokes or spend a lot of time on it!" I mean, how much time does it really take to profile Third Servant or Soldier?
And then what happens? My random number generator gives me this guy. He's in four plays. Four plays. It's not fair.
The historical Humphrey was a much more troubling person, prone to idiotic warmongering, alienating people and generally being a self-serving prick. But the image that got handed down was of Good Duke Humphrey, and so here we have him.
In other news, I named a papier-mâché spider after Humphrey. He sits on my computer monitor at work and has a tiny top-hat made from a Post-It note. I was going to call him Richard, after the famous bottled spider, but thought that was too obvious, so I cast around for another Duke of Gloucester and settled on Humphrey. It's a very nice name, Humphrey.
Finally... have you signed up for The Weekly Tickle Brain e-mail newsletter yet? It's a super-awesome newsletter that I send out every Monday, and is stuffed with Shakespearean comic goodness, including a digest of weekly comics, a round-up of any extra material I have posted on social media, and an exclusive recommendation section where I rationally inform you about a Shakespearean-related book, film or TV show that I think is worth checking out. Or possibly I just gush about something for a couple paragraphs. In any case, it's SUPER FUN. Well, no one has complained about it yet...