Puns and Wordplay Puns and Wordplay Author Katelyn Ekker Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Intellectual copyright in this entry is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Katelyn Ekker, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Published file. Updated metadata proofed Created File. Review of article finished.

Early 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.

Using 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.

Linguists 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

Puns 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

Modern 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.

For 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.

Sadly, 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.

As 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.

Of 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.