Cicero has
sprinkled several of his works with puns, and, in his book where he
lays down the rules of oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as
pieces of wit, which also, upon examination, prove arrant puns. But
the age in which the pun chiefly flourished was in the reign of King
James the First. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable
punster, and made very few bishops or Privy Councillors that had not
some time or other signalised themselves by a clinch, or a
conundrum. It was, therefore, in this age that the pun appeared
with pomp and dignity. It had been before admitted into merry
speeches and ludicrous compositions, but was now delivered with
great gravity from the pulpit, or pronounced in the most solemn
manner at the council-table. The greatest authors, in their most
serious works, made frequent use of puns. The sermons of Bishop
Andrews, and the tragedies of Shakespeare, are full of them. The
sinner was punned into repentance by the former; as in the latter,
nothing is more usual than to see a hero weeping and quibbling for a
dozen lines together.
I must add to these great authorities, which seem to have given a
kind of sanction to this piece of false wit, that all the writers of
rhetoric have treated of punning with very great respect, and
divided the several kinds of it into hard names, that are reckoned
among the figures of speech, and recommended as ornaments in
discourse.
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