Oh, Pun Says Me

     In case you haven't noticed yet,  I use a lot of puns in my post titles.  Pretty much too many.  I can't help it.  I like writing, and I like games.  Put the two together, and you get quite a few groaners.  Or a rhyming word that begins with 'b.'  Hey, wordplay is my thing.  Before writing today's post, I looked back over all 300+ posts, including a few I hid, to make sure I hadn't used today's title in a previous post.  I hadn't, but I was surprised that I hadn't used such an easy and obvious pun before.  It's funny, for multiple meanings, that I chose to use this pun today.  Frankly, I'm running out of things to write about, so I'm forced to write about what I write about.  Boy, was that a self-referential sentence or what?  I noticed that a rather high percentage of my post have puns in their titles.  On the one hand, puns are an easy way out of coming up with a pertinent title, one with just the tiniest bit of humor to help set the mode of the entire post, even when the post isn't always so funny.  On the other hand, I've been forced to stretch the meaning of a pun so far, that the original source becomes lost.  Take today's title.  It's from 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.'  I'm afraid that some of puns get lost on some people because I take them too far.  Now, some may think that puns should go out very far to help make their point.  Others feel that using too many puns cheapen a work.  This is all accounting to a person's taste level.  Let's take a famous pun, that some literary critics still disagree about, from William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.  Some researchers claim that the pun in question doesn't really exist and that even if it does, it may not be as directly a pun as some say it is.  The line in question is from Act 2.   Scene 5.  Malvolio has just found a letter he believes comes from a woman he is smitten with.  However, it is actually a forgery committed by Malvolio's rivals Sir Andrew and Sir Toby (heh, heh) to get him into trouble.  In lines 89-90, Malvolio comments on certain letters that he feels confirms that the handwriting is that of his female love interest.  When taken together, along with a repeated reference later on, the lines suggest something rather lewd.  Some critics say that the wordplay involved is too convoluted to contribute to something so suggestive, even when other contemporary authors use similar puns.  As Twelfth Night is a comedy, I prefer to think that the wordplay was intentional, at least to some degree.  Now, it might not be as bad as some of the suggestions in The Decameron by Boccaccio, an influence on Shakespeare.  (Just look up the third day, tenth story.  Very funny, but quite lewd, even in most English translations.  Many of the stories are like that, so be warned.) Anyway, I just hope that my little excursions into puns can one day stand up with such great works.  Probably not, but I can dream.