A pun is a play on words
using two words that have different meanings but sound alike (Dr. Wheeler,
College, web.cn.edu" href="http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_P.html">"Literary
Terms and Definitions"). One pun Duke Orsino speaks in Twelfth
Night can actually be found in the very first
scene. Orsino's servant Curio suggests Orsino go hunting to try and
distract him from pining over Olivia. Specifically, Curio suggests that Orsino go hunt
"[t]he hart," which is another word for deer (I.i.18). However, in his next lines,
Orsino makes a pun out of the word
hart by interpreting it to mean
heart, as we see in his line, "Why, so
I do, the noblest that I have," which is to say that he already does engage in hunting
the "hart," the "noblest" heart that he has (19). He continues his pun further to
explain that the moment he laid eyes on Olivia was the moment that his heart became
hunted like a deer, hunted his own desires that he likens to cruel hunting
dogs.
This very same speech in which Orsino puns
hart and heart is actually also an
example of an allusion. An allusion is when one author
refers to another work of literature by referring to either a "person, place, event, or
another passage" (Dr. Wheeler). Any references to Greek or Roman
mythology serve as allusions because both the Greeks and Romans recorded
their mythologies in writing. Orsino's speech in which he likens himself to a deer being
hunted is actually an allusion to a Greek myth. The myth is
the story of the hunter Actaeon who once while on a hunt caught sight of the goddess
Artemis bathing in the woods. As punishment, she turned him into a deer to be hunted and
torn asunder by fifty hounds ( href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/twn_1_1.html">Shakespeare
Online). In Orsino's speech, Olivia is being represented by
Artemis, and Orsino is representing himself as the hunted
hunter Actaeon, making it a perfect allusion to Greek
mythology.
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