Humor & Life Quote by Richard Harris Barham

A cliffhanger in six words, then an abrupt pivot to practicality: thats the joke, and also the little sting. "He won't, won't he?" is pure suspense theater, the kind of breathless, half-formed question you hear in melodrama when a character waits for some grand act of rescue, romance, or revenge. Barham doubles the negation to mimic the anxious stutter of anticipation, as if the speaker is trying to will the story into motion.

Then the pin pops the balloon: "Then bring me my boots". Its the quickest possible deflation from high drama to low logistics. Boots are what you ask for when youre done waiting; theyre a prop of agency, movement, exit. The subtext is less about footwear than about impatience with theatrical dithering. If the promised heroics arent coming, the speaker will take matters into their own hands - or at least stop performing helplessness.

Context matters: Barham, best known for the Ingoldsby Legends, wrote in a culture saturated with gothic thrills and stagey sentiment, and he made a sport of puncturing them. The line reads like a parody of the era's overwrought suspense: the audience is trained to expect a swoon or a revelation; Barham delivers a servant's errand. Its comedy as anti-climax, but also a sly commentary on how quickly our "Will he?" narratives turn into "Fine, I'll go". In one snap, the romantic fantasy of being saved becomes the mundane decision to get up and leave.