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Shakespeare makes use of simple puns for a variety of effects. "King. Fair and noble hostess, we are your guest tonight," (54) for example, establishes primarily dramatic irony, or, to be more specific, tragic irony. Because the words are directed at a woman, Lady Macbeth, our chauvinistic tendencies render the initial sense of the word "fair" as pertaining to beauty. Also, this is a particularly Petrarchan word-if any word can be said to be particularly any body's-which supplements our initial definition. But it is in reference to the second clause and particularly the word "guest" that the pun comes to light, for guesthoodaccommodates certain expectations, and it is in these expectations that the subordinate meanings of "fair" are born. We realise-where the King does not, hence the tragic irony-that Lady Macbeth is far from "fair," which is to say just, honest, ethical. Of course, "fair" serves not only in its punish aspect, but also as an associative device connecting, once again, Lady Macbeth to the "Fair is foul" weird sisters. Lady Macbeth. [Reads] "They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfect'st report they have more in them than mortal knowledge . . ." (50) In this letter from Macbeth, the effect is not so much dramatic irony as a delicate probing of character. The pun is on the word "mortal." The primary sense is "human": the weird sisters are possessors of knowledge outside the human realm. The secondary sense, though: "causing death," suggests at least an unconscious acknowledgement, on Macbeth's part, that the prophesy not only means death, but will, since the knowledge is causing death, itself lead to both murder and Macbeth's own spiritual and eventually physical death. There is a further pun in this same epistle: "Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it . . ." (50) This pun, in "Rapt," makes use of the homonym. Because of the context established by the "mortal" pun, it presents Macbeth wrapped in the potential of the weird sisters' prophecy as in a shroud.

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16y ago

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