When you think of a night of rip-roaring fits of laughter, maybe a comedy club performance comes to mind. Or a good (back when there was such a thing) Will Ferrell movie. Or maybe even a local school board meeting.

You probably don’t think ‘William Shakespeare.’

Although The Bard is certainly well-known in scholarly circles for his comedies as well as his tragedies, modern audiences wouldn’t expect to split their knickers in riotous laughter at a performance of his many works.

(Why modern audiences would be wearing knickers is another matter entirely, but let’s leave undergarment choice to individual discretion.)

That’s exactly what happened to me (the laughter, not the knickers thing) at a preview performance of the Sherburne Music Theatre Society’s “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” at Hamilton’s Palace Theater Wednesday evening. The venerable community theater group is celebrating its 40th birthday this summer, and the first of its performances take place tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12 at the door.

Shakespeare’s that funny? Surely you jest, I hear you say. Jest I do, often, but the key word in the title of this weekend’s show is “Abridged.” The show’s cast is made up of three insanely talented young men – two of whom just graduated from Sherburne-Earlville – Adrian Enscoe, Joe Mettler and Tyler Rundell. The trio basically play themselves on stage, having formed the “Slightly Shorter Shakespeare Company” to squeeze all of prolific author’s plays into a two-hour cram session.