“_K. Rich._ Can sick men play so nicely with their names?”
Yes! on a death-bed there is a feeling which may make all things appear
but as puns and equivocations. And a passion there is that carries off its
own excess by plays on words as naturally, and, therefore, as
appropriately to drama, as by gesticulations, looks, or tones. This
belongs to human nature as such, independently of associations and habits
from any particular rank of life or mode of employment; and in this
consists Shakespeare’s vulgarisms, as in Macbeth’s—
“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!” &c.
This is (to equivocate on Dante’s words) in truth the _nobile volgare
eloquenza_. Indeed it is profoundly true that there is a natural, an
almost irresistible, tendency in the mind, when immersed in one strong
feeling, to connect that feeling with every sight and object around it;
especially if there be opposition, and the words addressed to it are in
any way repugnant to the feeling itself, as here in the instance of
Richard’s unkind language:—
“Misery makes sport to mock itself.”
No doubt, something of Shakespeare’s punning must be attributed to his
age, in which direct and formal combats of wit were a favourite pastime of
the courtly and accomplished. It was an age more favourable, upon the
whole, to vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of being
thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of original minds.
But independently of this, I have no hesitation in saying that a pun, if
it be congruous with the feeling of the scene, is not only allowable in
the dramatic dialogue, but oftentimes one of the most effectual intensives
of passion.
_Ib._—
“_K. Rich._ Right; you say true, as Hereford’s love, so his;
As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.”