When it came to vaudeville, it was all about the setup. That was as true for the comedians as it was for the jugglers and magicians. The members of the audience entered the theater with their own preferences, their own prejudices, their own sets of expectations. So, without the audience members realizing it, the performer needed to remove those and replace them with a new set of expectations—a set of expectations that he was in a better position to anticipate, manipulate, and ultimately satisfy.
