The scenario is of a person knocking on the front door to a house.

The other person then responds by asking the caller's surname ("Noah who?"

"), to which the joke-teller delivers a pun involving the name ("Noah place I can spend the night?"

A possible source of the joke is William Shakespeare's Macbeth; first performed in 1606.

In Act 2, Scene 3, the porter is very hungover from the previous night.

Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you'll sweat for't.

Writing in the Oakland Tribune, Merely McEvoy recalled a style of joke from around 1900 where a person would ask a question such as "Do you know Arthur?

[3] In 1936, the standard knock-knock joke format was used in a newspaper advertisement.

"[6] Fred Allen's 30 December 1936 radio broadcast included a humorous wrapup of the year's least important events, including a supposed interview with the man who "invented a negative craze" on 1 April: "Ramrod Dank... the first man to coin a Knock Knock.

"[7] "Knock knock" was the catchphrase of music hall performer Wee Georgie Wood, who was recorded in 1936 saying it in a radio play, but he simply used the words as a reference to his surname and did not use it as part of the well-known joke formula.

It then enjoyed a renaissance after the jokes became a regular part of the badinage on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.

Death wh-gkh (gagging sound of sudden fatal choking).