Hi there,

One of the tools that comedies use is the "funny misunderstanding", or
in French "Quiproquo". That is when two people speak or live something
they think is the same but is not, making it a funny situation. For
example, if one person speaks about adoption meaning dog adoption and
the other of adoption meaning child adoption, they will be many funny
embarassing situations: talking about the race, the hairs, etc.

I wanted to know the websites, the books dedicated to this topic as I
want to write several scenario around this tool. Moliere was known to
use it a lot in its scenes. The overall goal is to have material that
help me a lot in building very funny scenarios based on this tool.

Many thanks
Ben

Well, there's seemingly every episode of THREE'S COMPANY...

I think you might be looking for examples of "double entendre."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre

One of my favourite instances of this is the Inspector Clouseau "does
your dog bite" bit. You can watch it here if you're luckier / less
lazy than I and your firewall doesn't block the video ->
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=692762708.

Yes, Molière was a master at this, and so was Shakespeare. It's
obvious in the Bard's comedies, but one could argue that a darker side
of the same coin (to mix metaphors a bit) is presented in, for
example, Hamlet (stabbing of Polonius) and Romeo & Juliet (oops! she's
not really dead).

This may be of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre

Hi all,

Thanks. Yes, these are nearby fields, exactly. However, the difference
between "Quiproquo" and "double entendre" is that quiproquo is more
staged, not necessarily all-spoken scene. It's more a situation than a
sentence. I haven't found the equivalent word in English though. (I'm
a Frenchman having lived in US). It's quite possible there isn't one.
Is there any place where, beyond definitions, there is a compilation
of the best quiproquo/double entendre scenes? For information, I'm
ready to pay a bit more if there's real good stuff ;)

Ben --

As a tool, you may want to look at AmIRight?, a website dedicated to
misheard lyrics (and music parodies too):
http://www.amiright.com/

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Yes, I think you are looking for examples of /innocent/ double entendre

Possibly mistaken identity.

How about 'farce'? 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farce

Hi there,

Thanks. Yes "mistaken identity", "double entendre" all belong to the
area of quiproquo.. What I like about mistaken identity is that it is
not only verbal but can be staged, through several scenes... where
there's a complicity with the spectator built... The drawback of
"double entendre" is that it has limited complicity with spectator as
it does not involve a previous scene where one of the actor wasn't
present... When mistaken identity more easily implies that...

Looking forward to you next comments/answer

Thanks
Ben

Would Oscar Wilde's "The importance of being Earnest" be an example?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Importance_of_Being_Earnest