Love's Labour's Lost, Acts 2 and 3

      I love Costard.
      He's that guy whose quirkiness and stupidity are so endearing that everyone (well, at least all readers) love him. He takes everything that the lords say so literally that it adds a lot of humor to the play. The language itself is what makes the play a comedy, not necessarily the subject material or the plot.
      The Lords are really pretentious and arrogant, and so they tend to speak with flowery language that uses a lot of metaphors and figurative language. They seem to see themselves as men of the mind, and so they try to talk the way they think educated people should speak. They are so snobbish and high-and-mighty that it only makes it that much funnier when Costard takes their flowery language at face value. It is really hard to take these men seriously when you know that every word they say probably has a double meaning, and if you choose to interpret what they say literally, it will have a completely ridiculous, unintended meaning. Thus Costard, though the fool, brings these men down to his foolish level by bringing to light the ridiculousness of their flowery, metaphorical language.
      Here is an example of Costard's confusion of two words--l'envoy and salve--that Adriano and Moth believe to be synonymous, but in fact have two very different meanings to Costard:
     
      ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy; begin.

      COSTARD

No enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the
mail, sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no
l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain!
DON

      ADRIANO DE ARMADO

By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly
thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes
me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars!
Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and
the word l'envoy for a salve?

      MOTH

Do the wise think them other? is not l'envoy a salve?
DON

      ADRIANO DE ARMADO

No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain
Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

Moth has no clue that a l'envoy is not a salve, but Costard actually has a very good, diverse vocabulary in the sense that he knows what words mean and in which contexts these words can be properly used. However, this also backfires when he confuses a word to mean the same as another word, such as half-farthing and remuneration.
      The language in this play is very funny, and translated into a modern form of speech, I'm sure it would have a great appeal to modern readers.