CHAPTER XV.
PUNS AND REBUSES.
Punning on names, or a figurative rendering of names, was probably at first adopted not so much with any intent at joking, as means to assist the memory, giving the name a visible token, which would take the place of writing at a time when but few persons could either read or write. At the revival of learning, and the spread of what we may term the refinement of society, punning was one of the few accomplishments at which the fine ladies and gentlemen aimed. From the twelfth to the sixteenth century, it was at its greatest height. The conversation of the witty gallants and ladies, and even of the clowns and other inferior characters, in the comedies of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, which we may be sure was painted from the life, is full of puns and plays upon words. The unavoidable result of such an excess was a surfeit, and the consequent dégout, which lasted for more than a century.[666] Like other diseases, it broke out again subsequently with redoubled virulence, and made great havoc in the reign of Queen Anne. “Several worthy gentlemen and critics,” says the Tatler for June 23, 1709, “have applied to me to give my censure of an enormity, which has been revived after being long suppressed, and is called Punning. I have several arguments ready to prove that he cannot be a man of honour who is guilty of this abuse of human society.”
Bagford makes the following remark on this subject:—
“As for rebuses or name devices, thei ware brought into use heare in England after King Edward ye 3 had conquered France, and this was taken up by most people heare in this nation, espesially by them which had none armes; and if their names ended in ton, as Haton; Boulton; Luton; Grafton; Middellton; Seton; Norton; they must presently have for their signes or devises a hat and a tun; a boult and a tun; a lute and a tun, and so on, which signifies nothing to ye name, for all names ending in Ton signifieth a toune from whence they tooke their name. It would make one very merry to loke ouer ye learned Camden in his ‘Remaines,’ and to consider ye titles of our ould books printed by Haryson, Kingston, Islip, Woodcooke, Payer, Bushell,” &c.—Harl. MSS., 5910, p. ii.
Camden, in his “Remains,” mentions these punning signs, and gives a like statement with Bagford, that they were introduced from France, where they are still much in fashion. “These,” says Camden, “were so well liked by our English there and, sent hither ouer the streight of Calice with full sayle, were so entertained here although they were most ridiculous, by all degrees of the learned and unlearned, that he was nobody that could not hammer out of his name an invention by this witcraft, and picture it accordingly: whereupon who did not busy his brain to hammer his device out of this forge.” After many examples too long to quote, he concludes with the following:—
“Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of great wisedome, and borne to the universall good of this realme, was content to use mor upon a ton, and sometimes a mulberry-tree, called Morus in Latine, out of a ton. So Luton, Thornton, Ashton, did note their names with a Lute, a Thorn, and an Ash upon a Ton. So an hare on a bottle for Harebottle, a Maggot-pie upon a Goat for Pigot. Med written on a Calf for Medcalfe; Chester, a chest with a starre over it; Allet, a Lot; Lionel Ducket, a Lion with L on his head, where it should have beene in his tayle; if the lion had been eating a ducke it had been a rare device,—worth a Duckat or a duck-egge. And if you require more, I refer you to the wittie inventions of some Londoners; but that for Garret Dewes is most memorable: two in a garret casting dews at dice.[667] This for rebus may suffice, and yet if there were more, I think some lips would like such kind of Lettice.”[668]
How punning signboards were concocted we may gather from a scene in Ben Jonson’s “Alchymist,” act ii., scene 1, where a rebus sign is to be found for Abel Drugger, who for that purpose goes to a kind of fortune-teller, styling himself an alchymist, and who provides our shopkeeper in the following manner:—
“He shall have a bell, that’s Abel,
And by it standing one whose name is Dee
In a rug gown, there’s D and rug, that’s drug,
And right anenst him a dog snarling er,
There’s Drugger, Abel Drugger. That’s his sign,
And here’s no mystery and hieroglyphic.”
This wonderful sign the Alchymist terms a “mystic character,” the “radii” of which are to produce no end of good results to Abel’s trade.
The Cockneys (“gentle dulness dearly loves a joke”) have at all times been celebrated for this kind of pleasantry. The mention of a few of their signs will be sufficient to show the extent of their wit and originality in this direction. The well-known bird-bolt through a tun, or [Bolt in Tun], for Bolton, the device of one of the priors of St Bartholomew, is still in existence in Fleet Street.