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One
fruitful approach to deciphering this ostensible lament is to
focus on the frustrations that the on-going Q project is bringing its
author, reading “what I most enjoy” (1) as “these playful
hidden poems I’m engaged in creating.” Like Rune 32, this text
houses a series of apposite poetic figures that name the cycle or its
components, including these buried runic poems—e.g., “what
I…enjoy,” “vanished sight,” “things removed,”
“this disgrace,” “this store,” “invention,”
and “what thyself refusest.”
The
poet can compare his verse storage project with a harvest because both
generate “leaves.” This pun triggers a tenuous organic link
that starts with the opening pun “Wit—what I most enjoy, contented
[i.e., full of ‘content’], leaf’d [i.e., ‘paged’].”
The parallel persists in such puns as “th’ ear-ly X
[i.e., acrostic?], seeded [see, dead]” (3-4); “engrafted to
this store” (9); “willful taste” (12); “sourly”;
and, again, “leaf” (13). “Taste” and “sourly”
suggest unripe fruit—both “sinful” disgraces (6-7) and
garbage-like “refuse” (12). Even the scenario at the close here
(12-14) hints at an Edenic bellyache from eating Eve’s green apple.
“Light” is an expedient (8, 10) for the “growth” of
“leaves” in the ms. (a play on “miss’), while darkness
links with their loss (2, 3, 5)—through lack of inspiration and
also through the storage of “leaved” texts.
Since
Will is always bent on obfuscation, he doesn’t work his
crop in open fields.
The troublesome
Eve-like female—the “she” of 13—sneaks in at the
phrase “this disgrace” (5-6). Pejorative sexual epithets in
line 1 for a female—i.e., “with t**t” and “c**t-ended”—indirectly
prefigure this woman, a Dark Lady that (I suggest) is partly or wholly
a figurative conceit for the poet’s perverse cycle: “She”
is “Dis-grace,” with the prefix “dis-” or “dys-”
connoting a range of perversities. Divine grace would “excuse…sins,”
but “Disgrace” (6) brings no cure. “Dis,” Hell’s
capital in Dante’s Divine Comedy, turns her name into an
oxymoron. Because she is female, the poet can “make…love engrafted”
to her (9); however, she exists not just for the poet’s sake but
also for the auditor/friend’s pleasure (11, 14). Thus (like more
overt forms of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets) she occupies a medial role,
as perverse “lover” of both poet and muse.
The
pun on “he-half” in “Will, sourly ‘leave’
her till ‘he-half’ prevailed” (13) suggests a struggle
between Disgrace (as an emblem for the runic subtext) and the poet (embodied
in the visible, “lighted” sonnets). This dichotomy is central
to the poem’s strained wit. “He-half”/”she-half”
also suggests a divided sexual nature. In fact, one comic suggestion is
that “vanished sight” (2) may not mean a lost Eve or Eden but
rather a “[phallic] thing removed” (3). (Plays on “thing”
as penis were overt Renaissance cliches.) Though this deplorable wound
isn’t healed (6), some kind of “engrafting” (9) or “willful
tasting” (12) might replace the “loss”—which may
just mean an instance of temporary hiding that creates the illusion of
“removal.” The playful set of “medical” puns about
suffering (14) includes “moan” (2), “things removed”
(3), and “sorely livered” (13).
The lament
opens with the pun “Wit...” and closes with authorized nameplays
on the poet himself: “By wil-,” “willful,” and “Will”
(12-13).
While
any vague “she” in Q (see 13-14) may point toward Anne
(Hathaway), the pun on “Sue’s ring…,” just after “…veiled”
(13-14) also suggests that Susanna Shakespeare’s husband, Will’s
son-in-law Dr. John Hall, may be the “friend” who could “for
my sake, tup [this verb for intercourse occurs in Othello], ‘prow’
her”—while also enjoying his father-in-law’s “medical”
wit as a primary reader/player. (It makes sense to imagine Will preparing
the Q cycle for publication ca. 1605-1609 with his own retirement to Stratford
in mind and envisioning his university-educated son-in-law as an intimate
participant in Q’s literate, in-group games.)
“And
mone...” (2) puns “Anne, demon” and “Endymion.”
The end of line 2 encodes scatological wit that merges with jokes in 3-4
about relative male endowments. One pun (of many potentialities here)
suggests a family scenario: “...oft my naive Annie shits, I get [jet]
/ bawdy [body] inches that hidden in there lie, / exceeded by the [bitty]
height of happier men.” Linked puns on “leased” and “money”
(1-2) are “economic.”
Q’s
form thy selfe (e.g., 10, 12) always puns, e.g., “this
elf,” “this else,” “thistle see,” “this
leaf [laugh], and “thy cell see.” Due (11) puns on
dieu, god.
Exact
rhymes in lines 5-6 (...disgrace: / ...disgrace:) here
match another pair (...face, /...face,) in Rune 34.
Sample Puns
1)
Wet twat, aye muffed, innocent end; tattle eased; Tottel; Wight;
Wyatt; with white “I” moist, annoy cunt-end; juicy Annie ended
life; Witty W.H. eyed aye m’ O fitting, jocund, Ed left (laughed);
eye Thomas—tan, jocund—t’ addle Ovid; idle
1-2) idolized Endymion; many “Avons” hit sight; many
“Avon Ovid” sight; site
2) Anne, demon; Endymion’d hex pen; seize m’ Annie;
pensive m’ Annie; money, th’ expense of m’ Annie, a
vanished sight
2-3) m’ Annie, Avon I shed (shit), f--ked; see oaf, m’
Annie, Avon, a fit sight; In “demonetics,” pen seize; pensive,
m’ Annie—Avon Ovid—sieged Beauty
3) Butt, high inches are moot (mute, mowed); But high inches
rim odd had hidden, end hairy; Bawdy inches, rhyme odd; ode t’ Hat.
hidden; dead Hat. hidden in th’ air lies
3-4) end hairy leaks seed, a debit; into Harry’ll (Ariel)
“I” “exceed”; debated O-shape, eye ermine
4) Exceeding bitty height (Betty hied); ex-seeded height [phallic];
eye jet o’ fey pier (vapor), my end
4-5) peer minced
5) Steel in gun (Stealing engine), scene tough, taut (taught,
to wit)
5-6) Terminal colons suggest spots—cf. “X-seed”;
hissed f--ker I see (icy) that heals the wound
6) Th’ tail Southy wounding; T’ Hat., Hall’s
th’ wound and cure; answer reason, haughty disgrace
6-7) Dane-dick, you’re snotty, deaf, gray, sexes (sixes—in
line 6) you sing t’ harass (her ass)
7) m’ “O” red inters censored oath; F-ing serried
[shoulder-to-shoulder], oathed fiddles; seriate; X-cues [i.e., acrostic
hints] in jet [effusion, black ink] hear; Moor, fins [phallic]; there
Finns moored in th’ air
7-8) sense a riot (a ready oath)
8) Why Edith? Fiddle, sweet whore; arise from loo’s delight;
Rome
9)
Eye make [mate]mellow; history; Eye m’ ache, meal, oven gray, fitted
to this story
9-10) I make m’ love, John, grafted to this fit, a rune
10)
dusty Jew invent, eye on laddie; W.H., endowed high; hint, O, you the
eisell [i.e., vinegar] see; John wins, I own
10-11)
tunneled, the duet o’ the witch
11) T’
Hat, dowdy witch, thou deservest awl wan; O, you’d Sirius use, tall,
wan
12) Will,
fool, tastes W.H.; By (Buy) Will S.; Biles you’ll taste; O, few
a Titus leaf re-sew
12-13)
Bile, full tasty o’ sweat, th’ eisell sour sufficed
13) Will
S. hourly leaf hurt ill; he, happier, wailed; “he-half” prevailed;
prowled; liver; Well, Sue, you really Livy heard (hurt), ill he Hooper
veiled; he hopper vile adds
14) Sue
S. offering, my friend; for my sake, top, aye, prow her; Sue’s ring,
ms. wry end; tup our whore; prow, fore; ape, roar; m’ f--ked “O”
approve here; for Miss, a cat; up or over; foe remiss ached
Acrostic Wit
The
downward acrostic codeline—WA BEST EY IW TB WS—suggests
such decodings as these: “We best ye, witty be W.S.,” “We
be astute, be wise,” “Weigh (Why...) beasty ewe t’ abuse,”
“Wee beasty...,” “We best taught Bess [likely the Queen
or Will’s new granddaughter, Elizabeth],” “Way best taught
Bess,” “We be Shakespeare, I you tup. W.S.,” “Way
best t’ eye, you t’ be W.S. (wise),” “Wipest eye
you t’ be wise,” and “Why pissed I? I wet (pun: wit)
be, W.S.”
The
upward codeline—SW BT WIYETS E BAW—suggests,
e.g., “Swept wide as a bow,” “Sue bet Wyatt [wight = creature]
is a boy,” “Sweet [B=8] Wyatt’s a boy” (Wyatt was
an earlier English sonneteer), “Sue bed (bid), wide, seepy ‘O’,”
“Sue bet Waite is a boy,” “Swapped, why, Anne [= ET=
and] is a boy,” “Swept, why, it’s a bow,” and
“Sweet, white, assy boy.” SW, SE, and BAW (bow) look “nautical,”
suggesting, e.g., “SW beat white sea, bow” and “SW 8,
t’ white sea, bow.”
One
letter/number substitution in the code yields a phonic SATAN: ...SE-8-A-VV
= SE[EIGHT]A[TEN]. In fact, SW always encodes S-VV or S-10
and thus “Satan.” SWmay also equal S IN = S., Anne
= Ass Anne = Ass John [i.e., In. = Jn.].
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