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In
Rune 41, ostensibly a love lyric where “love/d” recurs
five times in lines 1-8, recollection (1-3) links with feeling (5-7, 9,
14) and with “sense”—a word that means perception, feeling,
and/or “thought.” A series of terms about “sense”
(i.e., “love,” “images,” “view,” “tears,”
“Look,” “Lascivious,” “shows,” and “tempting”)
links contrastively with others that suggest more rational activities
(i.e., “remembered,” “think,” “prove,” and
“teachest”).
The commonplace
paradox that the poet and his unnamed listener, though separated, are
still one (14) gains interest from implicit references to (and
parallels with) Will’s on-going business of joining sonnets and runes,
and also from the idea that some “female” is trying to “make
one twain” (11-13). Various pejorative “country”
plays house the pudendal pun that was routine in Will’s day. Line
13 stresses vaguely “sinful” interaction between the male listener
and this female. Masculine “sense,” now dead but still
commanding the poet’s respect (4-5), contrasts with feminine
“grace,” which is active (see 12) but not respectable.
If
Will’s “friend” is Dr. John Hall, his son-in law
in Stratford, then the paradoxes of 11 and 14 may make witty sense with
Sue (Susanna) Hall as one version of Q’s “perverse mistress.”
Though meager
in its imagery and dramatic situation, the poem hints that the friend’s
“tear(s)”—emblems of his affection—are like baroque
pearls (6) whose lustrous surfaces reflect other images that stand for
what the poet’s imagination can create. Baroque decoration thus seems
implicit in the terms “wealth” (1), “accessary” (7),
“curious” (10), and “lascivious grace” (12). Words
about eyes and sight occur as a matter of course.
In
any case the lurking Dark Lady—a whorish, cleaved figure
and a conceit that (I suggest) represents Q’s perverse composition
project itself—is a “lascivious grace” bent on divisive
bifurcation. The usual pudendal puns on “well” link with the
topic of verses—the poet’s Will/well showing “all [awl]
ill” and “a li[tt]le” (12).
Line 1 puns
on “re-constituting” (i.e., “re-membering”), with
an opening play on “Forty” that alludes to the rune Will has
just assembled (and simultaneously disassembled): “Forty—sweet,
low—‘re-membered,’ such wealth brings” is one variant
of the pun. Others include “Forty is witty, low, verum [truly],
hymn bared Susie H. well...,” and “Forty’s witty lore [lure,
allure]....” Line 6 puns on “tears” as rips or bifurcations,
with a joke in “Abut those tears [i.e., rips], aye [eye], repair…”
(6). “Hearse” (pun 13) carries the sense “bury,” while
“sleight” (10) implies tricks.
Alluding
to Will’s work as playwright is the pun “while I [Will,
Willy] think on theatre, shrined / there images I loved…" (2-3).
The concurrent play “theatre’s wry end—debtor I”
shows Will’s preoccupations as economic man. And the pun “Anne,
that thou teachest, how to make one twain [twin],” (11) embeds
bitter family wit about Will’s leaving Stratford and about Hamnet’s
death. (Anne had twins, Hamnet and Judith, and Hamnet died young,
in 1596.)
The word
sheeds (6) is a variant of “sheds” that in Sonnet 34
rhymes with “deeds.” Here, the form yields the eyepun “feeds”
while rhyming with needs (7) and echoing the ee in thee,
terminal in lines 3, 9, 13. The wrenched accent in “accessary”
(7) sharpens some of its meanings: partner in crime; underling; complementary
decoration (like the “pearls” in line 6); conduit or mode of
access (maybe for flowing “tears”); and—with that impugned
article “an,” a play on “Anne”—overlaid puns
on “asses,” “axis airy,” “X’s airy,”
“nexus airy,” “awry,” and “eerie.”
Other
puns that amplify the game include these: 1) buried f**k-wealth
be-rings ass; 2) count (with sexual wit), encoded as ...ke on t...;
3) Th’ eerie Magus I loved; 5) Ye eyed Ham. S. [cf. Hamnet Shakespeare]
o’er; 6) ...aye, R.I.P., Earl, W. H. [suggesting Henry Wriothesley,
the Earl of Southampton, Will’s known patron]; 11-12) my countwy
Anne / laughs... [a tongue-tied pun]; Chianti [Count, etc., with bawdy
overtones] we eye in a lascivious gray scene [...garrison home...]; 14)
But Harry, Southy [cf. Henry, Southampton] I owe, my friend and I are
one; ...ms. runed, end, aye a rune [cf. “...dearest, runed air (poem)
eye, Magus...” (2-3)]. And see just below.
Sample Puns
1)
Fore; Earlier; [Rune] Forty is witty; Farty; feud low; Fore, thy sweet
lover, ma’am, be red (bred), f--k well; Verum hymn be read
(buried f--k wealth)
1-2)
if you jewel t’ Hebron guess (jeweled Hebron kiss), beauties t’
you I’ll jet, inky, Auntie; Butt, I fit you; butt eye, fit hew;
H.W., hail! I think on thee, dear friend; eye th’ ink; eye thin
cunt (county); “I’d” in cunt [with I a phallic
pictograph]
2) cedar;
satyr, frying died; in Chianti, satyrs (satires) runed
2-3) dearest
ruined heir (runed air); in Cannes theatre
3)
Th’ eerie Magus ill, Ovid eye; view Indie
4) Butt-sin
see; Anne, poetess bitty, reprove; Betty; bitter prow; John, see idiot
Anne, deep ode is
4-5) Ovid;
poet’s bitter prow ye et; bitter, proud Hymn 40 some’ll own
5) Ye
eyed Ham. S. o’er; my low knot; m’ love, know wit diced; Semele
(simile) in “O” hid; Dis day nigheth
5-6)
Annie, the butt whose tears [i.e., rips] aye reappear
6) Abbot
thou see tears a rip; itch thy low ass heeds; Aye, R.I.P., Earl, W. H.,
edged high, low shit-ass
6-7) Witch,
thy low, fetused Hat. eye, Annie’s suffering aids muffed bee
7)
th’ tie, an accessary, needs mufti; fairy; ovary needs muff t’
be
8) Bawdy
dough-knot swill; Beauty, dawn, aught foil Ovid; join f--k for art (fart);
Beauty do not sow ill, Ovid hence you choose, art
8-9) huge
is O-riddle, acute ass be Shakespeare [st]; not-so-ill audience
you see hiss o’er delicate “I’s”
9 Luke
weighty is best; Loo quiet is best; Look, John [w = IN], Hat.
is beast, Hat.-beast, I, wife, end thee
10) If missal
I jet, muse double eye; lady muffed, apple of it, Eve see, your Jew-sad
eyes (“I” is) indebted t’ haughty ass hefty
10-11) fetus,
see Uriah’s dais, indebted thou teachest; I see the sacristy is
ended (scented)
11) may cunt
wane; count (overlaid on “one, twain”); automachon
[cf. automaton]; T.T., who Judas half-taught o’ m’ cunt
11-12) Chianti way
eye in a lascivious gray scene; anal
12) Laugh,
Sue, John’s grace eye, gnome, Hall ill, well shows; W.H., homme;
ill Will shows; see Eve joins grass; anomaly; all eye Lowell (jewel) show,
a shire’s bitty beauty saw is
13) Hearse;
bitty; Betty; bawdy; inch hurt
13-14) in
jeered oath, a butt hairy is the joy; beau tidy, I’m petting her
dowdy butt
14) But here’s
the joy: Misery end, Anne die, a rune; But here’s t’ Amos,
wry in Dan; hymn of wry Indian, dear, wan; Darien; end: eye a rune
Acrostic Wit
The
downward acrostic codeline—F BT BYAT BL I A LHB—encodes
such potentialities as these: “If Betty bit Bill (bed bull), eye
a lap (lip),” “Fate [B=8] bad, Italy isle be [B=8],”
“If bitty Betty be, I’ll eye a Libbie,” “If ‘Bitty
Betty’ belie, eye Libbie,” and “Sated, ye Tibalt-jewel
ate” [F=S, B=8].
The
upward codeline—BHLAI L BTAY B TBF—encodes
such potential messages as these: “Belly ill, Betty ate [B=8] beef,”
“Baal I’ll be tidy aid of,” “‘Bull’
aye’ll be tied t’ beef,” “‘Baal I eye, ill
Bede,’ aye yapped Titus [F=S],” and “Belly pound [LB+T]
I, beat beef.” The codeline also suggests Holy, Holly.
The
downward code seems to house plays on “Betty” and “Libby,”
likely variants of “Elizabeth [Hall],” Will’s granddaughter,
born February 1608]: e.g., “If ‘Bitty Betty’ belie [addle
(= code 8-L)], eye Libbie.” (With L=I in the code, LIAIHB
= Libbie.) The encoded name recurs in the upward reverse as, e.g., B.Hall
eye, Libbie; Betty [BTAY]; Betty [BT]; and Bess (with F=S because
these letters in lower-case forms look alike in print).
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