 Who’s the true apothecary? The impoverished pharmacist who sold Romeo the poison, or death itself? Both, surely. From time to time we are induced to construe one and the same utterance both literally and metaphorically. In such cases an utterance is already apt, already in complete accord with pertinent conversational norms, when regarded as an effort to mean what one says, no more and no less. Yet a metaphoric reconstrual of the utterance comes to mind anyway, without the spur of any threatened impropriety in the initial literal construal on which it is based, and listeners view the speaker as vouching for the truth of both construals at once.