… Image William Hogarth, ‘The Laughing Audience (or A Pleased Audience)’, © National Portrait Gallery, NPG D21374, 1733. Abstract Laughter … the union of social intercourse. 1 1 . Olla Podrida, 26 May 1787. Monro was far from alone in investing laughter with particular importance to social interaction in the eighteenth century; indeed, the social significance of human risibility … or Degrees of Laughter’, which he treated as a scale, moving from laughter’s most subtle varieties through to its heartiest: 2 . Ross Carroll, Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, …