The story
Tell a joke a beat too early and it falls flat. Tell it a beat later and the room roars. That is the heart of timing is everything: the same words, the same deed, can succeed or fail on the moment you choose.
No one knows who first said it. You may read that Shakespeare coined it in Julius Caesar, but the words are not in the play. What he did write is the same idea in a sailor’s picture. Brutus tells his friend Cassius: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Catch the tide when it is high, and it carries you. Wait, and it is gone.
On stage, timing is a craft. Comedians call a short pause a beat. The Greek playwright Aristophanes marked brief pauses in his comedies to get laughs. Centuries later, the radio and TV comedian Jack Benny became famous for the long, silent stare, as when someone asked his age and he simply said nothing.
Dictionaries still explain the saying with a comedian’s joke, and that may be the best way to understand it. The right words matter. The right moment matters just as much.
