Jem Bloomfield posted a description of the kinds of Shakespeare puns. I hope this is as informative and entertaining for you as it was for me. (:
Gag puns
These are just jokes – they have no other justification than raising a quick laugh, and tend to attract groans when performed today. A good example would be Launce and Speed’s exchange in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, just after Launce has been criticising his dog, and Speed is advising him to hurry in case he misses the boat:
Speed: Away, ass! You’ll lose the tide if you tarry any longer.
Launce: It is no matter if the tied were lost; for it is the unkindest tied that ever any man tied.
An actor needs a strong constitution and a lot of nerve to put a gag like that across these days.Launce: Why, he that’s tied here, Crab, my dog.
Bawdy puns
Despite most school editions refusing to acknowledge the fact in their notes, Shakespeare’s works are full of dirty innuendos, which depend upon two meanings being implied by one word. For instance, the title of Much Ado About Nothing may well be a reference to the private parts of the female characters.
A more elaborate example is the “ring plot” at the end of The Merchant of Venice, in which Portia and Nerissa confront their intended husbands about the rings with they gave the men earlier in the play. Unknown to Bassanio and Gratiano, the women were in fact the two “youths” to whom they gave away the rings. Pretending to be indignant, Portia declares that “I will ne’er come in your bed/ Until I see the ring.” (V.1) When all is explained, Gratiano remarks that “I’ll fear no other thing/ So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring.” Under all these exchanges, of course, runs the pun in which “ring” represents both the physical object and the sexual organs. The jealousy and anxiety over who has got the “ring” resounds with issues of sexual fidelity and control over spouses.
Poetic puns
Some of Shakespeare’s puns raise more serious questions about how language, and poetry, operates. When Touchstone remarks in As You Like It, that “the truest poetry is the most feigning”, he quibbles between the verbs “to feign”, meaning to fake or pretend, and “to fain”, to desire or wish for something. His comment, on the face of it a paradox, since something cannot be true and feigning at the same time, opens up a whole series of questions about poetry.
Does he mean that feigning is the only way to a higher truth? That all poetry is made of lies? That true poetry comes from a lover’s deepest desires? That love poetry is deceitful, and provides a way to satisfy one’s desires under a pretence of love? From a simple pun on two words that sound the same when recited by a clown, Shakespeare asks us searching questions about art.
