Aging & Wisdom Quote by John Osborne

A laugh line with a hairline crack running through it, John Osborne's "Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building" turns applause into a threat. On the surface it's stagey banter, the kind of quip that disarms an audience by acknowledging the room they're in. Underneath, it's classic Osborne: gratitude laced with contempt, comedy used as a blade.

Osborne came up attacking British complacency from inside its institutions, and the "very old building" reads like more than brickwork. It is the theatre itself: venerable, self-congratulatory, and in his view structurally unsound. The audience's clapping becomes complicity, a ritual that props up tradition while pretending it's merely appreciation. By warning them off enthusiasm, he also mocks the idea that art is safely contained within polite civic architecture. The building can't take the pressure; neither can the culture that built it.

There's a sly inversion of power here. Applause is supposed to be the audience's verdict, but Osborne reframes it as force, something that can damage property. It's a reminder that audiences aren't passive consumers; they are part of the mechanism, capable of shaking the rafters, literally and figuratively. The joke lands because it captures a very British tension: reverence for heritage paired with the suspicion that heritage is a delicate façade. Clap too hard and the whole arrangement - institution, class, taste - might start to crumble.