We may here observe that the puns of Shakespeare are never of the “atrocious” class; there is always something to back them up, and give them a shadow of probability.  The tournaments of humour which he is fond of introducing, although good in effect upon the stage, are not favourable for any keen wit.  Such conflicts must be kept up by artifice, cannot flow from natural suggestion, and degenerate into a mere splintering of words.  One cause of the absence of “salt” in his writings is that he was not of a censorious or cynical spirit; another was that his turn of mind was rather sentimental than gay.  Shakespeare evidently knew there might be humour among men of attainments, for he writes,—­

  “None are so surely caught, when they are catched,
   As wit turned fool; folly is wisdom hatched,
   Hath wisdom’s warrant and the help of school
   And wits’ own grace to grace a learned fool.”

But with him, those who indulge in it are clowns, simpletons, and profligates.  Few of his grand characters are witty.  Perhaps he was conscious of the great difficulty there would be in finding suitable sayings for them.  Indelicacy and hostility would have to be alike avoided, and thus when the sage Gonzalo is to be amusing, he sketches a Utopian state of things, which he would introduce were he King of the island on which they are cast.  He would surpass the golden age.  Sebastian and Antonio laugh at him, and cry “God save the King,” Alonzo replies “Prythee, no more, thou dost talk nothing (i.e. nonsense) to me.”  Gonzalo replies that he did so purposely “to minister occasion to those gentlemen, who are of such sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh at nothing.”  They retort that they were not laughing at his humour, but at himself.  “Who,” he replies, “in this merry fooling am nothing to you” meaning, apparently, that he is acting the fool intentionally and out of his real character.

Hamlet, when his mind is distraught, “like sweet bells jangled,” is allowed to indulge in a little punning, and Biron is humorous, for which he is reproached by Rosalind, who tells him that he is one

  “Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
   Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools;”

that only silly thoughtless people admire wit, and that

  “A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
   Of him that hears it—­never in the tongue
   Of him that makes it.”

Here the variable character of humour is recognised, but it is not to be supposed that Rosalind’s arguments were intended to be strictly correct.  Very much must depend upon the form in which a jest is produced, and without the tongue of the utterer, it cannot exist though the sympathy of the listener is required for its appreciation.