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The speaker
in Shakespeare’s known Sonnets sometimes addresses a beautiful
male friend in uncomfortably erotic terms—e.g., as the “master
mistress of my passions” whom Nature “pricked…out for women’s
pleasure” (Sonnet 20, also here in Set II). Students of the Sonnets
have long wondered about this puzzling friendship and have often remarked
on such suggestive images in Q as those that accumulate here in Rune 24,
where playful, bawdy wit cultivates imagery about “antic” pencils,
pens, “foils,” and “points.”
This
variation on how the poet “increases” the auditor seems likely,
in fact, to be a phallic tour de force in which magining the listener/muse
as a naked, well-endowed young man whose envisioned “shape”
(10) “points” toward the poet (12) may make the most sense of
the text. Suggestive puns include “See, ’tis you, moister,
itching (edging) youth” (1); the contrast between “thy stem’s
pencil” and “my pupil pen” (2); “beast corned”
(3); “witty nine” (5); “fellatio’d inch”
(6); “my loaves, ass fair” (7); “homme pre-saggers”
(9); “mine ‘eyes,’ halved, round” (10), adumbrating
testicles; “wand’s foiled, points on me graciously”
(11-12); and “fairest pecked” (12), a latinate pun on “pecker”
suggestive of “stained.”
Readers who
prefer to do so can try to read the text in more innocent terms as a serious
reverie and tribute.
A main topic
in the rune, as in many other Q texts overt or hidden, is how the poet
imaginatively recreates, honors, and perpetuates the friend’s beauty.
Will does this in concurrent and contradictory ways.
Loosely
linking figures about vision, writing, artful representation,
and fighting—notably fencing with a foil—are the words “draw”
(5) and “drawn” (10) and the eyepun sight/fight (Q1,
13). “Drawn, thy shape” (10) may denote a fencer’s heart-badge
and the more obvious sense of “drawing” blood. But finally
the pointing “foil” is a flippant conceit, and the fate of
the muse, as a “shade” whose “grace” comes not
from heaven but from the poet, seems uncertain. Line 11 jokes that maybe
he was “once foiled”—wounded and subdued (sexually or
otherwise)—after many “victories” and is now only a
shade, a “drawn” shape (10-14).
Line
5 suggests childish moustaches (or other appendages) that the poet decides
“not to draw” on his imagined figure (5). Carefully echoic or
contrastive pairs occur in “Pupil pen” (2) and “antique/antic
pen” (5); in “old men of…tongue” (3) and “dumb”
(9); and in lines 1 and 13, where “my sight” and “my sightless
view” occur as parts of parallel comments.
The
idea of penciling on features with an “antic pen” may
allude to the controversy in the circle of the Earl of Southampton—Shakespeare’s
only known patron—during the 1590s about whether the handsome young
earl looked better with a moustache or without. At the time of Q’s
approaching publication when Will was completing the cycle, this petty
argument would have been a dim memory. “When clouds do blot the
heaven” and the pun “dust him grays” suggest a white
moustache—“time’s pencil” (2). Perhaps, then,
an aging Southy is the poet’s envisioned muse here, or at least
one of the men he had in mind as auditors for the entertainment and putative
flattery latent in the long-evolving cycle.
Its easy association
with “sharp tongue” (see 3) makes one imagine “foil”
as a tongue stuck out—a counterpart to the childish moustache or
penis the poet decides “not to draw” on his imagined figure
(5). “Dumb” (9) plays against “old men of…tongue”
(3). “Beef corned” (3) is a funny kenning for “old meat.”
“Ass” puns (see 6, 7, 8, 12) are routine, with “dumb
ass” latent.
Riddle-like
features that challenge readers trying to make sense of the Runes
include problematic sentence structure, vague pronouns, and puns whose
various meanings are at odds. For example, the inverted syntax of line
1 can mean “My vision establishes an image of you…” but
also jokes, beratingly, “you used to be handsome, but now you aren’t.”
“This time’s pencil” (2) may mean “modern styles in
drawing” or “my present effort at depicting you.” The perversely
inverted syntactic structures in 1 and 13 are echoic, but the two subjects—“my
sight” and “my sightless view”—are contrastive.
“Nor…/Nor…”
(4-5) means “Neither…/Nor….” “Antique” and
“antic” (5, Q antique) shared various spellings and
were pronounced alike in Shakespeare’s day. “As I…will”
(8) is a routine namepun on “Will.” “Presagers” (9)
are predictors. “Thine” in 10 means “your shape.”
“Foiled” (11) means defeated while suggesting a pointed weapon.
“Him” (14) refers to the victorious “shadow” of the
man addressed while also punning on “hymn”—and thus a lyric,
such as this text.
Detecting
the pun “Set Sue, most rich in youth, before my sight”
in line1 changes the implications of this poem totally: “Sue”
is likely Susanna Hall, the poet’s daughter.
Economic imagery
and legalese includes “rich” (1), “lose possession,”
“ow’st” (4); “will” (8), and “have
drawn” (10). A minimal joke about the apostrophe in “ow’st”
occurs in “loose possession” (4); the embedded pun “oust”
means to dispossess.
Sample Puns
1)
Set t’ Sue; Set [pur]sue, Set assume; Set is “You
Most Rich in Youth”; Set 5 you must reach anew (“A New Thebes”);
before frontally, suggesting “well endowed”; See, ’tis
you, moist (muffed) or itching (edging) youth be sore
1-2) Eye
anew Thebes’ hoary message, t’ which this City ms. (seedy
ms.) appends alarm (…appends Hell); message t’ W.H.
2)
pup ill pen
3) Bess
see horned, like old men; Beef corned like (lick) old men; lie keeled;
tongue (bawdy); I (“I,” Eye) killed may know Felicity,
Truth
3-4) Nate,
ingenu
3-4) Ruthie,
Nathan, Jew, gnarls a pussy of Zion, O fated (fetid) affair
4)
pussy’s fine “O,” fatted, fair, th’ “O”
used
4-5)
In ’er, Inner; Nor rune (reversed)
5) In
(End) our D-row, no lines t’ Harry W. eye, that hie an antique pen;
witty thy inanity; antique pen cf. old meat
5-6)
pee until nature’s shower, O, you jet; until Nate (knight) your
ass furrowed; at your ass, Herod high fell a-doting (A.D. O [i.e., zero]);
fellow, dot “i”
7) Anne
thin be; leave me, my love, I say, “Suffer”; Anne died in
belly of mammal, oft I sigh, suffer
6-8) a
doty engine died (did Hen believe—my male [mammal] office, as is
Harry’s)
8)
Ass eye, not fore, myself, butt-farty Will; A sign (sin) ought (As I knot,)
form y’self; A synod form, why? Cell of abbot is hard, you ill
8-9) for
thee, Will, Anne doom be
9) Anne,
dumb peer of a jeer, soft muff (…of a chair soft), pee-aching breast;
a king bereft
9-10)
a king (aching) , barest Tommy nighs, half drawn [i.e., erect]
10) M’
Aeneas, half-drawn thy shape and thin form; …thy ass happened; M’
Annie ye should rown—this happened
10-11) thy
shape, Annie, thin fore me, after a thousand “victories” once
“foiled” [phallic]
11) Thou,
fon [i.e., silly], devise Tories; ass-tirrit (tirade), house Anne (As
tirrit, how’s Anne?); a fit erred (heard), housing deviced “O”;
wand’s foiled [phallic]
11-12) onus
of oiled point is on meager 8 [inches]—I owe you sly wit; one’s
foe I led (once-foiled), Poins
12) son meager;
Poins on meager eye shows sly wit of hairy aspect (ass pecked, pieced,
pissed)
13) present
is th’ heir-shadow to my sightless view; fade-out; fey doubt
13-14) Sue,
Eve, Anne do fit hymn gray
14) Anne dost
hymn grace, whence ludus doubled; W., Hen., see Ludus
Doubled; End o’ Shakespeare [st], hymn gray see; T.T. heaving;
titty heaven; ludus doubled (do blot) the even; Gray see; clouds
silly Judas
Acrostic Wit
The
downward emphatic acrostic codeline—SW BNNT A A A MAPPA—may
encode, e.g., “Sue benight I aye, a maybe-Pa,” “Swabbing
(Sobbing) knight I eye aye, maybe,” “Sweeping Anne, Tame Ape
eye,” “Is web innate? Aye, maybe,” and “Swap Anne,
Knight (Nate) I, I aye may pay.”
The
upward acrostic codeline—APPA MAAATN NBWS—suggests
such decodings as “Ape eye mating, N.B. [signed] W.S.,” “Up,
A.M., I eye 8, Anne abuse,” “A payment in nibs (...nips),”
“A beamèd Anne…,” “Ape, I mate Anne abuse,”
“A payment, Anne, abuse,” “Up aye m’ 8-nib was,”
“Up high m’ Eden be. W.S.,” “Ape eye, mating boys,”
“Ape eye, maiden and boys,” “Up high, Maiden Anne be
wise,” “Abbey, Matin N.B. W.S.,” “Abbey—mating
and boys,” “Abbie mating, and boys,” “A Pa mating,
in Nate (B=8), W.S.,” “Obey maiden and boys,” and “A
Pa mating in boys.”
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