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Comments
Critics
have noted that Sonnets 15-17 (which start Set II in Will’s
buried organization plan) take up a new theme, immortality through poetry,
while shifting away from the recurring focus of Set I, the need for the
muse to marry and procreate. Ostensibly a serious, touching lyric, Rune
16 combines both themes—and also links the motifs of time and duty:
Quickly passing time presses both Will and his muse toward their duties.
The “most high deserts” (3) and “merit” (12) of “the
master-mistress of my passion” (6) have “strongly knit”
Will’s own sense of duty (12) to generate the “sweet brood”
(5) of the interlinked Q texts, memorials to his friend’s beauty
(1, 10). By “hasting” a “sweet brood” (5-6), the listening
friend might also keep his (or her?) own life going (8).
Here
in Rune 16, familiar elements reveal new subtleties—especially line
4 (from Sonnet 18) and the term “master-mistress” (6), which,
in the visible Sonnets, seems provocatively homoerotic. The term, I believe,
denotes (but not exclusively) John and Susanna Hall, Will’s son-in-law
and daughter. In one important sense, I believe, Q is an epithalamion
cycle honoring the Halls’ marriage in 1607 and wishing them offspring
and immortality. Will’s “master mistress”—i.e., his
“primary muse”—may be, concurrently, Susanna and the Halls
as a couple.
Details
that focus on writing itself include “[my passion’s]
verse” (7) and “this…tyrant time” (2), suggesting
restrictive meter. Epithets for Will’s verses include “art more
lovely” (4), hiding the pun “art moor [black], low-lined”;
“sweet brood” (5), punning on “pleasant thought”;
and “proud [th’ rude..., with p = archaic th]
titles” (11). Linked with these elements are other puns about runic
mixes and alignments that include “hoary runes witty be rude”
(5), “Stirred- … twice verses” (7-8), “put besides”
(9), “strongly knit” (12), and “witted revel tiered”
(13). Both the Runes and Will’s “entabled” lefthand acrostics
are, in effect, “put besides.” “Merit” (12) puns “my
writ.” And “Bene feet of[t] rest” (14) puns, “Fine
iambs often stop at line breaks.”
Theatrical
puns include “Ill-[at]tired, / The Tham’ed [...damned] Bard”
(13-14) and the idea of “losing one’s lines” (9). Vaguely
“medical” diction (of potential interest to Dr. Hall) includes
“toes” (pun 7), “part,” “heart,” “knit,”
“sore limbs,” “repose,” “rest,” and “My
cure (a pun), ‘tis bloody to hear” (pun 2). Other elements suggest
cooking: “filled,” “desserts,” “devour,”
“sweet,” “stirred,” “date,” and “table.”
One culinary pun is “Admit you taste rune-jelly. Can I?” (12).
First-to-last
the poem hides playful sacrilege. (The so-called School of Night,
a known coterie including Sir Walter Raleigh, was in the 1590s accused
of the sacrilege of spelling “God” backwards, yielding “dog.”)
Will’s punning imperative “Hold sin perfection but a little
moment” (1) helps explain his botched endword (Q14), where (I think)
Will and Thomas Thorpe, his printer-agent, have collaborated to accomplish
a mutilated “rest” that looks like “rel” (plus a letter-remnant)
and thus suggests “religion.” Puns in 13-14 include “The
Damned Bard, he benefits religion” and “Teary, debted, empty
Bard Theban, I sit over hell.” (Connotatively, Thebes suggests riddles
and pagan deities.) References to the poet’s “Passion”
(6) and to “…a Pontius, bloody tyrant t’ see” (2)
amplify such wit, as do the plays “Most High” (3) and “sweet
be Rood [the Cross]” (5). “Painted Body” (7) suggests the
nude Christ in Renaissance Crucifixion scenes, and “one date”
(8) suggests “A.D. 1.” Other “biblical” puns include
“arose one day” (8); “For- [Four-]Men table” (10),
suggesting The Last Supper; “proud title’s boast” (11),
suggesting the epithet “King of the Jews”; “less be Host”
(11); “strongly knit” (12), hinting at Christ’s seamless
garment; and “repose for limbs with Travail tired” (13), suggesting
Christ’s tomb.
Amid
various other jokes, “Holds in” (1) may refer to a
sucked-in waist that age “explodes.” “Moist...deserts”
is an oxymoron. “Deserts” triggers the words “temperate”
and “earth” (3-5), and high deserts contrasts with
“moor lowly and ... temperate.” Line 8 puns, “So
long, ass, you thin, dead whores wounded.” (“Solon gas...”
might be a Greek pun, suggesting a sage’s rarified output, and thus
the Q texts.) Scatology lurks in such puns as “Ass-turd buy, a painted
beauty” (7). Line 5 suggests manuring a field. Plays on Southy (i.e.,
Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton, occur in the initial elements
“So…/Who…/Thy…” (8-10) and So…/Who
with hi …” (8-9).
Sample Puns
1)
Hold sin perfection, but a little m’ “O” meant;
Hall, descend, pierce X [acrostic], John; peer-sex join, bawdy little
moment
1-2)
Tommy, cure rape, Auntie’s (Auntie S.) bloody; mint may cure—a
pun —this bloody tear
2) time
meter
2-3) lewd
eyed, eye rune, T.T., eye messy Tower
3 )
Aye fit [stanza] we refilled with your most high deserts; deserts barren
places; your moist, high, jetty farts
4) Moor;
More [cf. the unpublished play]; Thou are more lowly and more
red; O, you lion dim (you limned hymn), horrid; T’ Howard, m’
whore, lowly Anne
4-5)
Tanned Make [Mate]; m’ “O” red (read) empowered Anne
5) Anne,
ma[t]e; Sue; he rowns, witty (wet, rune sweet) be Rood; Row N is witty,
broad [Row N, 14, is in fact the narrowest one]
6) Halved
thou the Master/Mistress; Passion (biblical)
7) a
pain t’ Ed. be oddity; O, eye severe, see
6-8)
pay, ass, t’ own ass-turd, buy a painted beauty
8) Endow
a runed [line] 8; Sue—long a—Sue t’ Anne did whore;
Anne, thou a rough wand ate
8-9) often
Ed. ate W.H., O, with his ears put beside Scheisse-part; his
ass hairy is puta beside…
9-10) I
spot Bess, Odyssey’s party, bawdy ass fore, meant t’ bless
my art; shy Sparta beauties form
10) Thy butt
is sore, man (sermon), type less merd
10-11) …my
end t’ a bull oft, my “ear” tough, public hone, O, your
end prowed
11) peer-ode
tittles
11-12) Randy,
“prowed,” teatless, bossed [having protuberances], Tom
12) Tom “errata’d”
hymn, yet you taste rune
12-13) wrongly can
Ed. that ear repose, sorely ms. witty, Row A [i.e., line 1] ill t’
eye read
13) tirade [cf.
tirret]; ill-attired
13-14) Earl, eye
ms., witty travail [at]tired, that am de Bard
14) T’
Hat., I’m De Bard; That I’m deep, hard; Theban, eye fits [stanzas]
real; eye fit of rel[igion?]; That Ham[net? …let?], debarred the
benefit of rest; Th., Tom, debarred Theban eyesight of rel[igion?]; dip,
a ready Bene, sit. The last “t” here is apparently
“filed” by the “Ed.” to make a play on “religion”
and underscore the “Theban” wit, and line 3 alludes to that
change: “If it [‘time,’ i.e., meter] were filed
with your Most High deserts [your misty ‘differ t’s’].”
The missing “t” and “differed ‘s’”
are parts of an authorized, minuscule joke that Editor Thorpe executed;
the play on “T’s” echoes “TT,” while “st”
is the poet’s name-cipher.
Acrostic Wit
The
downward emphatic acrostic code—HMIT AHSS WT[I?]OT TT—suggests,
e.g., such readings as “Hymned asses widowed T.T.,” “‘Emit
S’s’ [i.e., hiss, fart]—widow t’ T.T.,”
“Amid asses, W. taught T.T.,” “Him I tease—you
saw it,” “Hem it as you sew it, T.T. [a bookbinding joke?],”
“Emit a hiss, Wyatt [the early sonneteer]”, “Hymn I (to
Jesu) taught T.T.,” “Hymn eye t’ Jesu witty,”and
“Hymn eye, T., S’s, W[ill] taught T.T.” (The acrostic
continues the wit about the altered “st” in 16.14.)
The string SW (reversing
Will’s initials), a compass-point direction, suggests both “Sue”
(a short for Susanna, Will’s daughter’s name) and Anne Shakespeare
(with W = IN = phonic Anne). Anywhere in Q, the letterstring
TT suggests Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing agent and the “T.T.”
of Q’s perverse frontmatter. AHSSW is a strained form of
“Jesu” (and of “Ah, so...,” “I saw,”
and Esau), with “ass” a concurrent suggestion.
The
upward reverse acrostic letterstring—TT TOT WS
SHAT I MH—may be read, e.g., as “T.T. taught W.S. ‘Shit
I may’,” “Titty taut was Ass Hat-I-may,” “T.T.
taught W.S.’s Hattie-May [cf. Hath-a-way, with ‘M’ and
upside-down ‘W’],” “T.T. (Two T’s) is (ha!)
Tommy,” “T.T., tot wise, shat; I may itch,” “…eye
m’ ladder [=H],” “Tot wise what; I may,” “T.T.
taught W.S. shitty May,” “T.T. taught W.S. shit-homage [phonic
H],” “...shitty image,”and “Titty taut, W.S. is
hot, 1 May.”
Much buried
wit in Q exploits the poet’s playful interchanges with Thorpe.
“Time” in Q (e.g., textual line 2) is always a potential pun
on “Tommy.”
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