The white elephant might symbolize the couple's unborn child in this story, If the phrase of white elephant means a property requiring much care and expense but yielding little profit. The couple’s unborn child is the one that the white elephant symbolize in this story.
Puns were used by Shakespeare to explain meaning, to make sense of the world around his characters. If a certain scene in his play was a bit confusing, he would often use a pun, which is a play on words, in order to explain what is happening in more detail. His puns were very clever, and many of them are still used today, without people even realizing how old they actually are.
