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As
Will enjoys a fresh start, this initial hidden text in Set II
shows a simpler style and several rhymes. Forsaking the procreation theme
of Set I, Rune 15 considers the verse project at hand. Will’s complaint,
though conventional and rhetorical, also seems “sincere” in
light of what we can now see: The unfolding Q project must have seemed
arduous and uncertain to him.
Critics have
noted that Sonnets 15-17 introduce the new topic of immortalizing the
(ironically unnamed) Friend through verse. Familiar lines from Sonnet
18—“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”—run
through Runes 15-28 like a scarlet weft, helping the buried texts raise
a nexus of questions: “How do I capture your nature in verse? What
have I gotten myself into? Is this a profitable undertaking? Who will
believe my verse?”
The
last is a query I myself feel acutely, since fate has picked
me in this modern “time to come” (3) to be Q’s advocate
as I try to “be-leaf” Will’s verse. As Will anticipates,
skeptics abound.
Whom Will
addresses as “lord of my love” (see 12) in Q is a crucial conundrum.
Sue and Dr. John Hall of Stratford, daughter and son-in-law, top my list
of likely auditors. I’m confident that as one primary reader Will
imagined Hall, a potential companion during the poet’s upcoming retirement
and an appropriate recipient of much of Q’s buried wit. Here, e.g.,
line12 embeds a pun on “laudanum” (Q. loue,towhome,
w = n), “a costly medicament” (OED 1602). The “Lord”
section (1ine 1ff.) also suggests a preoccupation with Southampton, an
alternate figure often connected to the Friend of the Q texts; the last
line here embeds the play “How can I t’ Henry turn in happy
plight?” overlaid on the pun “eye, Henry, Tower” and
thus possibly alluding to Southampton’s incarcaration late in Elizabeth’s
reign.
Heavy
problems weigh on the poet’s mind: Ironically isolated from
the muse he serves, tired and disfavored in a menial role (11-13), he
struggles to find adequate comparisons (1-7) and deals with personal and
professional failings (8ff.). Plays about his estranged wife—e.g,
“My Annie Hath.” (10)—couple with his closing question,
where “plight” can mean a “pledged, married state,”
to focus on his dilemma: “How can I go back [to Stratford] in ‘happy
plight’?” Bemused puns about his family situation infest line
14: e.g., “How’s Annie? Thinner?” and “...red urn
John H[all], a puppy, licked.”
Other “family”
puns point to a composition (or revision) date close to June 5, 1607,
Susanna’s wedding day. These puns include, e.g., “S[ue] Hall,
I come, pair thee two a summer’s day” and “...pair thee
two as humorous Daddy” (4-5). The “lines’ pause” required
by the wedding would “devour time,” and Sue’s “woman’s
face” would be the cause—of the hiatus, and of the Q project
itself (see 5-7). Will’s decision to be a London playwright has yielded
a wrenching dissociation from “reality” (see 9-10). If the poet
is rushing to finish his project, the “pause” required by
his daughter’s wedding would deter his project, and Sue’s
“woman’s face” would be the cause—both of his
project and of his not working on it (cf. 5-7). In this context, the closing
question ”How can I then return in happy plight?” may mean,
“How can I go back to Stratford on a happy wedding day and be happy
there?” or “How I can I come back here to London afterward?”
In
light of the text’s preoccupation with that event, Rune
15 can be read as the poet’s contemplation of “everything
that grows,” including his own daughter, whom he remembers and addresses
as a “mite teary” (Q mightier waie, 2). By Rune 16
the term “Master/Mistress” will have entered the Q texts to
help us understand how Rune 15 might address both Sue and the “Lord
of my love” (12), John.
Though
Sonnets editors have found steeld (Q10) troublesome
and emended it, here in Rune 15 the word reinforces other imagery about
creating art. “My glass” (8) suggests that looking into (or
providing a “backing” for) a steel mirror may be one meaning.
“Painted” and “painter” (6, 10) hint that steel’d
also means “engraved.” Too, the word carries the ideas
of “steeling oneself” to deal with reality and of being imprisoned.
(Q’s linear rows are like a self-made cage.) The claw marks of the
“lion’s paws” (5) suggest spaced lines, scars, and wrinkles;
to “blunt” them might be to take away the rune-poet’s sharp
steel pen.
Given the
punning equation “Summer” = “Adder” = “numbers
man” = metricist, lines 4 and 7 may ask the same question: “Are(n’t)
our two lives alike?”
Meanwhile,
“unperfect actor” (9), “played” (10), and
a hint about men in women’s roles (6) sketch out a theatrical metaphor
linked to “mirror” (see 8) by the common motif of makeup and
by the fact that both actors and mirror-gazers create their own realities
and put the best face on things. The actor’s “glass” is
not only the invisible wall of the thrust stage but also the judgment
of the audience in whose minds his actions are reflected: The “glass”
conceit implies that art “holds a mirror up to nature.” Other
elements paint a scenario in which an “unperfect actor” forgets
his lines, looks overhead, and “freezes” (9-10).
Closing
figures combine feudal terms with the topic of marriage or its
obverse; since plight puns on “plait,” a variant of
“knot,” the term “happy plait” or “pleasant
knot” (14) is an epithet for the playful rune—a part of “everything
that grows” (see 1) in the poet’s knot-garden. The wordplay
“earning happy plight” (14) may also suggest an economic preoccupation,
perhaps a consideration of the printing deal the poet has agreed to and
is trying to complete—the one that finally culminated in 1609 when
T. T. brought out the Sonnets.
Sample Puns
1)
W., Hen., I consider your wry “thing” that grows; G-row
1-2) that
gross butt W., Harry S.; the inch, that G-row (i.e., line 7), is bodying
[w = in] Hereford
2)
to a midget I err
2-3) our
Eden owed you (adieu) a mightier way, W.H.
3) Will;
Whale; oil; be-leaf my verse, in time [meter] two [poems, cycles] come;
John, Tommy T., see hommes, Hall, I come, party to a summer’s day
4) S.
Hall, I come, pair thee two [i.e., you and John Hall] a summer’s
day; Shall I compare Thetis, you, mere sty (…immersed aye); Summers
adder’s (metricist’s); Thetis immerses, Dido you ring Tommy
(you rune)
5) Deranged
(Dear “inch’d” “O”) “I” may
blunt; hotel yon suppose; line’s pause
5-6) hell,
John, (Helen) suppose—a woman’s face
6)
with nature is (with an 8 you rise) Onan deepened
6-7)
A woe, man’s sauce within a Tower is Onan-deepened sauce
7) witty
Adam you see; not wit, me ass; Sue, is it not, with me—a sweet,
hot Muse (muff)?
7-8)
Saucy “10” ode we, Tommy’s with th’ Hat.-muse
(Th., Tom, you see), mickle [much] ass, S. Hall
8) My
glass, S. Hall; lass S. Hall note, peers; you aid me, I am old
8-9)
few Adam eye, moldy ass, a nun; Mickle Ass S. Hall, not peer of witty
me, Hamlet’s (…Hamlet, as) an unperfect actor on the stage
9) As
an unperfect act o[r] rune, the stage; knot (riddle); a son unperfect
9-10)
peer, seize, taste Orion-theft, eye Gemini
10) M’
Annie Hath. polite, the pan[h]er Ann Hat.; Anne Hath Shakespeare [= st],
Eee! (…a lady); Anne Hath. steeled (cf. Anne Hath “[stolen]
away”); Anne hath ass-tilled
11) Helen
[L-et = Hell-and] thou see whoring, favor wittier fit [stanza],
arse; thou see whore, John, fair, witty…; few Orion favor
11-12) Helen
thou see, W.H., Orion favor, wittier star is Lord (lowered)
12) Lourdes,
my loo, Tommy knew; Lord of my love to W. H., homme, in vassalage;
Lower (Lo, our) dose, my laudanum in vessel; mild autumn, enough foliage
12-13)
in Wassail, a Jew eerie
13) We
are youth; toil aye halved me, Tommy be ed[itor]; Weary with toil, I half’d
my tome. You bet!
13-14)
…you be ed., Hawk Ann; may be Ed. who weakened Henry t’ earn
Anne…
14) See
Annie thin return in (weakened Henry turning…,) happy plight Hawk,
Anne eyed Henry tower 9-high, papal “I” jet; in a Babel, I
jet
Acrostic Wit
The
acrostic code in this first-line text is “doubled”
because of the typographic practices in Q whereby first-lines of visible
sonnets are set with oversized emphatic capitals followed by ones that
are smaller. The downward (or down/down) code here—WB VSD AS
MAMLL WHHVVHE [W]O YS IEOEO—suggests such readings as, e.g.,
“Web used as mammalia Jesu,” “Web used as Mademoiselle
W.H, who’s Io (you),” “Web used as Ma’m’selle
wise Io,” “Web used as my male (mill) W.H., who you see, Oy!”
“We be-versed a (We bust a) simile, was ea[sy?],” “…Rizzzzz
[a tongue-tied play on Wriothesley?],” “W. bussed [kissed]
a Semele. Was “IEO” [i.e., in the codeline] Io?” Cf.
also “milieu.”
One
of the reverses of the codeline (the up/up, starting with the
bottom right of the implicit codeline “ladder” is [W?]OEO
EISY O [W]EHVVHHWLL M AM S AD SV BW. Possible decodings here include
“Woe, ease, you will maim. Sad Sue be. W.” and “Easy
William amazed....” The upward string HWLL MAM SAD SV B W suggests
“You will m’ Ham, sad his hautbois,” and “Hall
ma’am, said (sad) Sue be you.” As usual, the VV and W characters
may represent pictographic fangs and/or Roman numerals. The string …V
V VV suggests, e.g., 5, 8, 5, 5, totaling 23—Susanna’s age
between 5/26/1606 and 5/26/1607. Thus, cf. “Hall Ma’am said
[sad] ‘s 23.” The upward string ...OWEHVVVHHWLLM, extending
over the two columns, suggests William, with WLLM a shorter but visually
more emphatic version.
Other
ways to read the code include these: WBVVSDASMAMLLWH (down)
= “Wyatt [the sonneteer], W.S., daze, Mammal W.H. [suggesting Henry
Wriothesley, John (=W = IN) Hall, Anne (=W = IN) Hathaway]”
and “Wyatt, W.S. daze ma’am low.” And HWLLMAMSADSVVBW
(up) = “Age [= H] will maim Sad Sue...,” “Will may ‘hymn,’
said Sweet [B= phonic 8] W.,” and “H.W. will maim sad, sweet
W.” Since “Swede” elsewhere seems to be an epithet for
Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing agent and the T.T. of Q’s frontmatter,
such further readings as “You’ll my ms. aid, Swede. [signed]W.
” are concurrent. LLWH may encode “loo,” likely
(I propose) a variant of lieux and a euphemism for outhouse.
OED does not support the existence of the term at this early date.)
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