Mother of all running jokes... by Shakespeare

QUESTION Did William Shakespeare tell ‘yo momma’ jokes? ‘YO MOMMA’ jokes are a game played by young African-American men, dating from the 19th century, in which two contestants trade insults until one gives up.

Examples include: ‘Yo momma is so fat, I took a picture of her last Christmas and it’s still printing’; and: ‘Yo momma is so fat, when she sat on an iPod, she made the iPad!’

The first known example of a maternal insult is from 3500 BC. A Babylonian tablet translated in 2012 contained a joke fragment featuring the words: ‘...Of your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. What or who is it?’

Shakespeare used maternal insults in his plays. In Timon Of Athens, Painter says: ‘Y’are a dog.’ Apemantus replies: ‘Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s she, if I be a dog?’

Titus Andronicus features this exchange. Demetrius: ‘Villain, what hast thou done?’ Aaron: ‘That which thou canst not undo.’ Chiron: ‘Thou hast undone our mother.’ Aaron: ‘Villain, I have done thy mother.’ Stewart Hargreaves, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. QUESTION The Rolling Stone review of 1969’s eponymous Led Zeppelin album was negative: ‘[Jimmy Page is] a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs.’ Which other reviewers have got it spectacularly wrong? FURTHER to earlier answers, 1973’s Berlin by Lou Reed was a dark concept album telling the story of a doomed couple’s descent into drugs, domestic violence and suicide. Rolling Stone’s Stephen Davis wrote: ‘There are certain records that are so patently offensive that one wishes to take some kind of physical vengeance on the artists that perpetrate them.’

Ian Ball, Malvern, Worcs.