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Comments
As
elsewhere in Set II, Will here is self-conscious about his work
as a writer who is trying to immortalize his subject. Notably, he chooses
Rune 21 to write of an age when a man reaches his peak. Such numerologic
preoccupations guide the structure of the Q project and often color its
content.
Taking the
poem soberly, we may envision some quaint shop where undying flowers hang,
and we can see how carefully Will has worked out his main conceit (12)—his
unusual, attention-grabbing metaphor: As “Color Man,” the friend
in effect controls “all hues” (6) including those of flowers
(2, 7) and keeps them ideally in his heart, which Will keeps in his own
breast (8-9), a “shop” (10). As a foil--that is, a dramatic
contrast—the incredulous “world” (5, see 3, 11) is accustomed
to seeing natural things die and depends on the poet for salvation, since
“their pride” (11), which they will lose without some kind of
help, is not only the friend-hero but their very connection to beauty.
“Virtuous wish” (2) and “But that I hope some good…”
(12) echo the mild boast that Will intends to do the world a favor by
finding just the right conceit to keep beauty alive. Thus the poem is
like an extended “vaunt”—that is, a “boast” or
bragging statement (see 1, 12)—and is not really the “complaint”
(see 14) that the poet’s last word implies.
Though
the pun “Vaunting their youthful sap...” (1) makes
the opening read more easily for us moderns, “Vaunt” is an archaic
noun meaning “boastful bragging,” and the noun works as the
direct object of would bear in line 2.
Will’s
main “butcher shop” conceit (see 6-9) is so strained as to parody
itself in an overlaid tangle of puns and add-ons about exactly what is
“kept” where. The poem is finally comic, even grotesque, especially
because “hanging” (10) not only makes the poet’s shop seem
like a meat market but also has phallic overtones—and because we
know how much “hewing” is going on in this paste-up project
with all its cut-up bits and pieces. The “hue” (or “hew”)
in these two breasts (8, 10) is likely to be blood-red. Details such as
“rare” (7), “decay” (9), “buried” (11),
and “bare” (see 2) even suggest a hanging corpse that stays
vivid. Finally we picture a tired and grumbling butcher rather than a
weary poet.
Underscoring
the poet’s wit are his “cross-eyed” ending and
all the suggestive terms about liquids, height and decline, hues and bareness,
virtue and “lying,” “pride,” “drooping,”
and “c**t-rolling” (6)—the last a typically indecent example
of Renaissance wordplay on a topic that Hamlet jokingly calls “country
matters”(Hamlet 3.2.123).
Part of the wit
depends on reading “flow-ers” (2, 7) as “things that flow”—and
thus, metaphorically, as Will’s own verses. The eyepun “slurs”
hides in flowers because f = “long s.”
The brightly
hued, hanging “flow-ers” have various other suggestive
senses. Other elements that promote bawdy innuendo include “youthful
sap”; “at height decrease” (1); “bare your living
‘flow-er’ [i]s” (2); “to come” (3); “fiery
foam-time declines” (4); “fading” (5); puns on “awl”
(5, 6, 7); “A man I knew” (6); “inch” (2,
6, 10, 13); “ ‘I’ is hanging still” (10); and “drooping
eye” (13) as testicle. Line 11 hints at undescended testicles.
The poem is partly
a comic catalog of body parts, often encrypted as puns: “hair,”
“dick, arise” (1); “...bare rear, lung-flow, arse”
(2); “puddle eyes” (3); “meaty, my dick lean is taut”
(4-5); “tooth white [wide],” with pictographic “w’s”
as “fangs” (5); “tanned, eye Lear’s odd inches wet
[weighty]” (5); “anew, aloose, eye nice c**t”; “see
entrail-inch” (6); “high chin,” “bosom” (10),
“butt haughty” (12), and “drooping eyelids” (13-14).
Line 6
here (Sonnet 20.7) has enjoyed a history of serious critical
discussion about its punning meaning in Sonnet 20. Scholars trying to
identify Will’s unnamed male muse have noted that Hews (Q6),
emphatically italicized, looks like a pun on “Hughes.”
More likely,
I think, Hews is a red herring with many “meanings.”
For example, to a coterie reader bent on finding wit in it, the word may
suggest “He, W.S.”; “H [an acrostic ‘ladder’]
use”; “Swe H. [reversed],” a short for Susanna Hall, Will’s
daughter; “He[nry] W[riothesley], S[outhampton],” Will’s
only known patron; and/or “He IN [= In. = Jn. = John] is John H.”
In any case, the italicized conundrum is a tiny part of Will’s irreducible
“Who’s my muse?” game in Q.
Though
line 6 is no more pun-ridden than any other in Q, it does illustrate
what heavily diverse freight any given line can carry in Q’s
letterstring game. Decodings below focus on “family” possibilities--on
the poet’s wife, Anne, and his son-in-law, Dr. John Hall:
1) “Amen, Annie: John Hall you sense....”
The “Amen” is one aspect of recurring wit about Anne’s
“piety.” A “bestial” pun on “ewe-sin” lurks
here, too.
2) “A man I knew, John Hall, using his c**t-roweling wit...”
(6-7). A “rowel” was a spur-like object inserted under the skin
of animals (OED).
3) “A man, John H., you’ll use, John H is controlling
/ wit....”
4) “A man I knew, Hall, losing his control....”
5) “A man, John H., he John Hall, you sense....”
6) “‘Amen’ anew, aloose Jn. H.’s cantor,
howling.”
Other
“John Hall” puns seem to take up the topic of a family
heir: Lines 1-3 pun, e.g., “You [V = U] want John, th’ heir
you’d have...” and “You want, John, th’ heir youthful,
soon as possible [= s.a.p.?]....” Lines 2-3 pun, “With you arduous,
[Witty, virtuous...] Wife Hall’d bear your living fellow, our stage-to-come....”
One variant reading of lines 1-3 is, “You want, John, th’ heir
youthful, s.a.p., a tidy seraph, / With virtuous wife Hall t’ bear
your living fellow, our s/tage-to-come....” The pun on “stage”
is, of course, apt.
Disparaging
“Anne puns” color other lines: e.g., lines 4-5 pun, “And
every fair from fair sometime declines: Toothy, wide harlot Anne, dull
her fading sweets.” Line 11 puns, “Anne-anthem is else [i.e.,
otherwise] th’ air [‘Th’ Heir!’]. Period....”
One of hundreds of puns in Q suggesting that Anne was a large woman occurs
at the close: e.g., “The wan, bitty earl [= oyle], the ‘oather’
[i.e., the sworn coterie member], took ample Anne” (14).
Part of
the wit depends on reading “flow-ers” (2, 7) as “things
that flow”—and thus, metaphorically, as Will’s own verses.
The eyepun “slurs” hides in flowers because f = “long ‘s’.”
The brightly hued, hanging “flow-ers” have various other suggestive
senses. Other elements that promote bawdy innuendo include “youthful
sap”; “at height decrease” (1); “bare your living
‘flow-er’ [i]s” (2); “to come” (3); “fiery
foam-time declines” (4); “fading” (5); puns on “awl”
(5, 6, 7); “A man I knew” (6); “inch” (2, 6, 10, 13);
“ ‘I’ is hanging still” (10); and “drooping eye”
(13) as testicle. Line 11 hints at undescended testicles.
The poem is, in
fact, partly a comic catalog of body parts, often encrypted as puns: “hair,”
“dick, arise” (1); “...bare rear, lung-flow, arse”
(2); “puddle eyes” (3); “meaty, my dick lean is taut”
(4-5); “tooth white [wide],” with pictographic “w’s”
as “fangs” (5); “tanned, eye Lear’s odd inches wet
[weighty]” (5); “anew, aloose, eye nice c**t”; “see
entrail-inch” (6); “high chin,” “bosom” (10),
“butt haughty” (12), and “drooping eyelids” (13-14).
Sample Puns
1)
(phallic); Vaunting t’ Harry oaths, you love a pated dick or ass;
vapid, haughty dick; abated (a tight, tied) dick erase; jetted, see Eros-wit
1-2) jetted
series witty, virtuous
2) Witty
we are t’ you, housewife wood [crazy], bare; be airy your loo; flow-ers
(cf. flowing lines), slurs; your live inches lure arse
3) The
itch (edge) to come would sate puta; …would sate his bodily
ass; woody is “I”; this poet sly is; sight his puddle (puddly
ass)
3-4)
poet’ll ascend (ascent); Sandy (bodily ascent), you arise, Harry
S., roam, sir, vomit; sour vomit I made easy; m’ deckle eye nice
(Annie S.); foam-time (ejaculatory); fair… declines (phallic)
4-5)
Ass taught you “I do,” Earl
5)
dandy Hall hears a “ding” sweet; hearsed inches we eat; feud
5-6) few
eat salmon; Solomon I knew
5-7) witty
ass (is) a man I knew, Hall, using his cunt, rolling with ape or ill asses
6) A
critically punning line (see above): Amen, John Hall, you sin; all Hews
(emphatic Q) reverses to suggest swe Hll (Sue Hall); cunt-rolling,
cunt-roll inch; Amen, Annie wails; Aye m’ Onan, Hall, you sin; Hall
using his cantor, howling
7) Witty
peer ill is; Sir Shakespeare [= st] born (boring, i.e., drilling)
is; scenty Hall “thing” is rare; Witty appear, ill ass, sir,
sit, be horny, ass lower, sin; if it be horny “flower” is
handy, Hall thing’s rare (our air [heir]); Shakespeare be o’er,
Niece-lure Sandell thinks
7-8)
things ire our Witch Auntie, bereft, doty
8)
W.H. I see, Hen., thy bare ass doth live, aye, Southy, neigh in me; loo
8-9)
thin enemy, Anne
9) Anne
dying, m’ Annie, O kneel, office fit rune jets, emitted easy; see
m’ toady’s “I”
10) Witch-enemy;
Witch John may be of hommes, show pissing “I”; fop’s
hanging ass till
10-11) inch-fiddle
ended
11) Indent
“Ham. S.,” else th’ heir-pride lies buried; Anne-dying
theme see; leaves t’ Harry appeared; there be riddle, Aesop you
read
12) Beauty
type; Bawdy Hat. I ope, foamy, good cunt see, aped often
12-13) hine-end,
dick-pee, my drooping “I” laid ass open wide; ill eye Dis,
open wide; Aesop new eyed
14) Th’
Annie Betty let heat hurt “O’s” homme plain
(peel, Annie); oather, too, see humble Annie; the wan (one) Betty; let
heat hurt Occam, pealing [cf. death by fire—or in hell]
Acrostic Wit
The
downward acrostic codeline—VWTAT AW WAW ABAT—suggests,
e.g., “Vaunted awe, woe abate,” “Voted [i.e., Devoted
religiously] awe, woe abate,” “Vote I t’ eye Wa-Wa [suggesting
crying, peeing, muttering ‘water’] Betty,” and “V
[a pictographic crotch] wedded, a woe abate [obeyed, abed].”
The
upward acrostic—TA BA WA WWATAT WV—can be read, e.g.,
“To bay, we waded wave,” “Tabby we wedded, wife,”
“T’ bawdy, ‘I do’,” “T’ body
adieu,” “To Betty adieu (‘I do’),” “To
be wedded, wave,” and “To be woe, wed I (aye) t’ wife.
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