17. Renaissance Italy’s Most Lethal Joke?
Pietro Aretino’s exile turned into a life on the run when a bishop, who had been victimized by Aretino’s vicious pen, hired assassins to take out the satirist. So Aretino hit the road and wandered northern Italy. He served various aristocrats and distinguished himself with his wit and audacity. While at it, he also made ends meet every now and then with blackmail. Aretino eventually ended up in Venice, and hit it off with the locals. He spent the rest of his days living a grand and dissolute life amidst the Ventians.
It finally came to an end at a party on October 21st, 1556 when Aretino’s sister told a particularly risque joke. Her brother laughed so hard that he fell over backward from his chair, and keeled over then and there. Another version has it that he was done in by falling into a fit of apoplectic laughter after hearing the joke. Yet another variant has it that his tragicomic demise was caused by suffocation from laughing so hard. However it happened, all accounts agree that laughter was what brought Pietro Aretino to his tragicomic end.