Puns and Wordplay

Para1Early modern writers like Shakespeare are well known for their puns and wordplay. Samuel Johnson noted in his Preface to Shakespeare in 1765 that Shakespeare’s love of punning was the fatal Cleopatra for which Shakespeare lost the world, and was content to lose it, indicating that even in the past puns were considered painful on occasion.
Para2Using English as a literary language was new in the early modern period—fire-new was the popular expression, a metaphor taken from blacksmithing—and so offered writers a wonderful opportunity to play with words and invent new uses for words.
Para3Linguists have demonstrated that English did not become the language in which the well-educated talked and wrote until about 1400 CE, Latin having been the language previously used by both Church and State, with French as the language of the court after the Norman Conquest. The influx of words from these languages into the Anglo-Saxon tongues created a multitude of variations for nearly every word in English, allowing writers to change the part of speech a word was used for. This huge amount of English vocabulary is one reason that allowed Shakespeare to get credit today for inventing many words. Shakespeare used this expanded vocabulary to make his language both more precise and more evocative.

Puns

Para4Puns depend on words with different meanings having similar pronunciation. Shakespeare used puns for amusement, of course, but also to provoke thought, explain things, and clarify things. But pronunciation has changed since the 1600s, and it also varies in different English-speaking countries. Because of this, many puns have changed a little, but the ideas remain. In one clean pun about types of fruit, which is lost with modern pronunciation, reason is pronounced like raisin, in The First Party of Henry the Fourth:
Poins: Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.
Falstaff: What, upon compulsion? Zounds, and I were at the strappado or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you upon compulsion. Give you a reason on compulsion? If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.
(Henry IV, Part One, 2.4.246–42)

Naughty Language

Para5Modern readers would find much more humor in early modern plays if they used the same pronunciation and slang that Elizabethan theatre goers did. Current audiences would understand how many naughty jokes (usually about sex or bodily functions) are actually in these plays. Early modern audiences clearly enjoyed bawdy jokes.
Para6For example, in Twelfth Night, the lady’s maid Maria tells the rogue Sir Toby that My lady takes great exceptions to your ill hours (1.3.4). In early modern England, the words hours and whores would have sounded almost exactly alike, so Maria is chiding Toby both for staying up too late and also for the dubious female company he keeps.
Para7Sadly, a lot of puns go right over the modern reader’s head, unless illuminated by an actor in performance, explained by an editor in a note, or really thought about by the reader.
Para8As Megan Garber explains, even the titles of Shakespeare’s plays might contain multilayered puns. Much Ado About Nothing is a prime example of this phenomenon. Nothing was likely pronounced much like noting, so the play’s themes of spying and love notes becomes clear. But nothing was also a slang for female genitalia, so Shakespeare makes clear that the trouble in the play has much to do with sex.
Para9Of course, Shakespeare doesn’t stop with the play’s title. He also uses the very common pun regarding the word die. Near the play’s end, Benedick comments to his beloved Beatrice,
I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be
buried in thy eyes.
(5.2.75–76)
In his vows of love to Beatrice after their many confusions, Benedick relies on the use of the word die as a synonym for sexual climax. Actors can make this connection to sex much more obvious, although many a classroom teacher of Shakespeare’s plays lets this intensely sexual language go unnoticed.

Key Print Sources

Crystal, David, and Ben Crystal. Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion. Penguin Books, 2004.
Rubinstein, Frankie. A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and Their Significance. St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Fire-new Words. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/language/puns.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Garber, Megan. Such Ado: The Fight for Shakespeare’s Puns. The Atlantic. 2 Mar. 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/loves-labours-found-saving-shakespeares-puns/471786/.
Jamieson, Sophie. Shakespeare’s Lost Puns and Rude Jokes Revealed in New Guide to Elizabethan Pronunciation. The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 16 Feb. 2016. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12159454/Shakespeares-lost-puns-and-rude-jokes-revealed-in-new-guide-to-Elizabethan-pronunciation.html.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Katelyn Ekker

Katelyn Ekker was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Puns and Wordplay
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Katelyn Ekker, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship
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