Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Puns in Hamlet


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was delete. Proto  ►  11:38, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Puns in Hamlet

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Seems to run against WP:NOT - indiscriminate collection of information. - Tapir Terrific 00:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Transwiki to Wikibooks in some form perhaps? &mdash;siro&chi;o 02:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, original research. Nardman1 02:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Transwiki into Wikibooks or some literary analysis wiki.  bibliomaniac 1  5  06:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * from the submitter of the Puns in Hamlet article:

Re indiscrimate collection of data:

In most works of literature, puns are of little importance. But in Hamlet, puns are very important for understanding the play and for understanding the literary form of puns and for understanding the evolution of the English language. Although the main article on Puns links to the main article on Hamlet for examples of puns on names, the Hamlet article has no mention at all of puns. The new Puns in Hamlet includes (so far) three puns on names: "Claudius/cloud", "Polonius/Poland", and "villain dwelling/Hamlet." (Not yet included: my sinews grow instant old, the book and volume of my brain, a book of old men with weak hams.) In modern literature, puns are usually synonymous with triviality. However, as the Puns article notes: "In the past, the serious pun was an important and standard rhetorical or poetic device." It's possible that the puns on Polonius' name elucidate the meaning and structure of the play more than the character himself. The understanding and misunderstanding of the puns in Hamlet may have had a significant impact on the English language. More than once I've looked up a Hamlet pun word in a dictionary and found a reference to Hamlet in the definition of the word.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, "Wordplay in Hamlet," Adapted from Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (editors), the New Folger Library Shakespeare edition of Hamlet. © 1992 Folger Shakespeare Library, (http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=953): "In many of Shakespeare’s plays, one may not be aware that a character is punning, and the dialogue can seem simply silly or unintelligible; one must thus stay alert to the sounds of words and to the possibility of double meanings. In Hamlet, puns carry a heavier burden. Hamlet packs much of his feeling about Claudius into his single-line “aside”: “A little more than kin and less than kind,” where “kind” has the double meaning of “kindred” and “kindhearted.” Many of Polonius’s speeches also cannot be fully understood until one untangles the puns and related plays on words"

Some statistics from http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

(Note: The above website only gave statistics for January, which is probably one of the  slowest months for Shakespeare searches because very few students begin term papers that early  in the semester.)

Searches done in January 2007

60652 Shakespeare 31066 Hamlet 7811 pun 4070 wordplay 1419 Claudius

For comparison 39874 wikipedia encyclopedia 27618 Mark Twain 19662 encyclopedia britannica 16960 John Steinbeck 8649 William Faulkner 1789 Hemmingway 1309 Falstaff 385 Capulet 188 Thackeray 154 indiscriminate

Re no original research:

A good pun is difficult to spot, but, once found, it is obvious. The puns I've included so far are some that I discovered independently (though I wasn't the first - I was preceeded at least by Shakespeare, and probably by hundreds of unpublished high-school English students, among others). However, once pointed out, a true pun needs no authority to verify it. If it's not obvious once pointed out then Shakespeare probably did not intend it as a pun. If I point out lines in Hamlet that describe something that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I should be able to call it a duck without referring to higher authority. However, even if the particular puns I've included so far fail that test, there are other important puns which have been endorsed by authorities (e.g. Diet of Worms). Or perhaps the page would satisfy the "no original research" test if all commentary was deleted. Only the quotes from Hamlet would be listed, with the puns indicated only by emphasizing key words and grouping related quotes. Any doubtful puns would be deleted, unless documented by reference to "by some elder masters, of known honour." - from the submitter of the Puns in Hamlet article, Ray Eston Smith Jr 18:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:NOR Alex Bakharev 11:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added two new sections, "womb of earth - breeder of sinners" and "Diet of Worms," with references for each of them.  This comment, by Skalzey 16,was in the talk section of the main Hamlet article in April, 2006:  "I get no sense of the play's language, structure or themes / concerns..."  I think a Puns in Hamlet article would help to address that concern. - from the original submitter of the Puns in Hamlet article, Ray Eston Smith Jr 01:29, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

time and looking for help in understanding the play. A play summary is inadequate for this purpose. Knowing the plot of Hamlet tells you nothing about the essence of Shakespeare's play. Shakespeare is notable for his mastery of language, not for the originality of his plots. To help the prospective play-goer, we need to give him a summary of the language. A listing of related lines is a language summary, one which can be compiled with much less effort, "original research," and POV than a plot summary.
 * A typical user of Wikipedia might be someone about to see Hamlet for the first

Without a plot summary, a first-time play-goer could still understand the plot from the exposition within the play, but, without a language summary, he or she would almost certainly fail to notice most of the word-play relationships between lines scattered throughout the play. There is reason to suspect (Ophelia: "will he tell us what this show meant?"), that Shakespeare curried favor with special patrons by explaining word-play which was visible only to the initiated.

(This discussion reminds me of one I had with my boss about 20 years ago. I was working with a collection of about 50 computer programs which totalled about 50,000 lines.  All the programs used the same data fields.  I suggested to my boss that we needed a master cross-reference to list all the different lines of code which referenced each data field.  My boss disagreed.  I went ahead anyway and, on my own initiative, wrote a computer program which generated the master cross-reference listing.  I was subsequently fired for doing "unauthorized work.")

If "Related Lines Within Hamlet" is not acceptable for Wikipedia, would it be acceptable to put an external link in the main Hamlet article pointing to a Wikibook entry for "Related Lines Within Hamlet"?

Ray Eston Smith Jr 17:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * added ref for mole/mole, knave/nave, & additional ref for cannon/canon Ray Eston Smith Jr 21:21, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * delete - as this is, it should maybe be called, "list of puns in Hamlet," but still it would be unencyclopedic. A page called "Puns in Hamlet" could maybe work at Wikipedia if it were about the puns, not a listing of them.  Yes a Wikibook link could go in the main article. Smmurphy(Talk) 06:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks has a "no original research" policy: "Wikibooks is not a place to publish original works: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks#Wikibooks_is_not_a_place_to_publish_original_works


 * Academic Publishing Wiki (http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) allows original works. It is currently a sparsely populated frontier, but that situation could be remedied if wikipedia editors would link to it when rejecting articles for "orignal research."   It might also help to have a wikipedia article on Academic Publishing Wiki. It's currently small and obscure, but it's a unique and important category of wiki communication. Ray Eston Smith Jr 16:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * delete. This isn't an article, it's a list; and much of it is pure OR. Paul B 00:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.