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From: cbf@allegra.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Re: signs of life
Message-ID: <1656@allegra.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Jul-83 08:46:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: allegra.1656
Posted: Mon Jul 18 08:46:39 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Jul-83 08:48:59 EDT
References: <5527@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 15

I hate to have to break it to you, but many of Shakespeare's 
most intelligent characters are specialists in the art of 
punning.  Only, the comic characters' puns are usually more
obvious and heavy-handed.  To use the play you mentionned,
Hamlet's opening line (an aside in reaction to a speech by
Claudius) is a pun with about three different layers of 
meaning:
	A little more than kin, and less than kind!
                                        (I.ii.65)
And Hamlet (as Richard III and Iago and most other central
Shakesperean heroes and anti-heroes) indulges in many others.
Punning may be the lowest form of wit, but Shakespeare's
best puns are a form of wit on their own terms.

--allegra!cbf