Puns are a type of wordplay based mainly on words that have multiple meanings (homographic), words that sound similar but have a different meaning (homophonic) and words with similar meanings (metonymy), puns are mainly used for humor and as a poetic device in literature. This includes William Shakespeare wide use of puns in his plays as it is considered he used around 3000 puns in them. Thus, puns used by Shakespeare basically play on words as part of poetry devices.
