In many of the comic scenes of Shakespeare we have precisely this elephantine ingenuity, this hunting of a pun to death through three pages.

In the Elizabethan dramatists and in Browning it is no doubt to a certain extent the mark of a real hilarity.

People must be very happy to be so easily amused.
In the case of what is called Browning's obscurity, the question is somewhat more difficult to handle.

Many people have supposed Browning to be profound because he was obscure, and many other people, hardly less mistaken, have supposed him to be obscure because he was profound.

He was frequently profound, he was occasionally obscure, but as a matter of fact the two have little or nothing to do with each other.