This line is so often cut, I feel it’s possible I’ve never heard it spoken. The metaphor of a suit of jokes is a little confusing – but the notion of it being his calling card, his means of recognition makes some sense. It’s remarkable to realize that catch phrases were a thing LONG before Saturday Night Live. As a child of the 70s – I thought SNL had invented the catch phrase.
I imagine that a catch phrase could start to become something you wear, like a coat. When people saw Dana Carvey on the street, they said, ”Isn’t that special” – not what he wore. Steven Martin’s probably resembled “Well, excuse me” for quite some time.
And what’s remarkable about most catch phrases is that they are to do with tone, more than text.
Reading ahead, these catch phrases Hamlet mentions are just as banal.
The Hamlet Project 