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Comments
Another
in Set II about the poet’s work as a loving writer hoping
for the muse’s immortality, Rune 27 asserts that Will’s stratagem
is at work, assuring the auditor fame through painful and as yet unperceived
art—runic tributes that “silent love hath writ.” Lines
3-5 echo the main theme in Set I, procreation as a means to immortality,
but the possibility here seems hypothetical, and women—needed vehicles
for procreation—come off as silly (6-8) and as expediencies at best.
The sestet offers
the poet’s alternative to talky women: a silent man who writes. The
focus of Set II on the role of the poet persists in this closing section.
The poem
is thematically tighter than it may seem. At first the poet struggles
with time (1) over the friend. Partly because “old time” is
a “she” (5-6), the fight becomes more general as “men”
have their breaths threatened (4), if not their eyes. Imagined females,
loud talkers full of platitudes, become the poet’s antagonists: They
“say more” and mouth “hearsay,” while he, the poet,
Will, writes silently and artfully (7-10).
The
military conceit (1) continues in “do thy worst” and
“thy wrong” (5) and resolves the octave at “slain”
(8); the couplet restates the notion of a love-motivated struggle with
time—with “limbs” (13) hinting at battle carnage. Line
14 fits the idea of military siege (or torture by “drawing”)
with the final phrase, “draw my sorrows longer,” echoing “So
long as men can breathe” (4), and with “draw” suggesting
“taking in breath.” Other soldierly details are “furloughs”
(1, pun), “do thy worst” (5), “cunning” (10), and
“dare to boast” (12).
Craftily
paired terms—parallels, contrasts, or echoes—include
“thy heart” and “their art” (8, 10); loue
(Q1, 9, 11, 12) and Loe (13); doe and Loe (12,
13); “alive” and “slain” (3, 8); “hear”
and “silent” (7, 9); and “child”/ “men”/
“women” (3, 4, 6).
As usual,
delvers into the Runes who prefer a high-minded Bard will be bothered
here. Expert critics such as Eric Partridge and Stephen Booth note phallic
bawdry in the term “pricked thee out.” Though line 6 at its
most innocent means “Time selected you to please women,” the
“pricked out” (6) muse is a notably endowed male. The bawdy
context invites us to hear “low…my limb [i]s” (13) as a
punning insinuation that the speaker himself is not just tired or subtle
but also well endowed—or flaccid, or all of the above! As usual,
“eyes” (and “I’s,” always potentially phallic
pictographs) add suggestive texture. Sexual bawdry also includes pudendal
or anal puns such as “well” (7) and “awl-urn torrid (...too
red)” (9). More off-color puns are these: “So long as men can
‘bare it,’ whores can see it (...feed)” (4-5); “Still,
butt were foam-chilled of your saliva’d, haughty mass” (2-4);
“butt sins vapory” (6); and “rheumy furrows” (14).
“Heresy well” (7), an anal or pudendal metaphor, is also a conceit
for the irreligious runes. (“Well” was a standard pudendal pun
in the Renaissance.)
Though
“O” in the Runes, I think, can be a pictographic pudendum
or anus, it also routinely means the Rune itself, as in the directive
“‘O’ learn to read, what silent love hath writ” (9).
(An “O” is a “round” is a rune in the poet’s
equation.) The poet advises auditors, including us, to “learn to
read” the Runes—collections of “low limbs” (13) that
are like mangled children (see lines 3ff.), surrogates for those the self-enamored
friend needs to bring to life.
Sample Puns
1) Anne
(opposing Sue’s marriage [1-2]); awl (phallic); all in Hall, John;
India; End, Hall, John, war witty, Tommy furloughs you; foe; realize
1-2) feud
2) To
Jew aware of elf, keep your ass-elf still; Jew aye wears leaf [cf. Adam];
keep, Sue [Q syo], yourself still; fiddle; Talk half-way
2-3)
feel sick, a piss, you refill self till butt were foamy, chilled affair
3-4) Beauty
were foe, Magi led hosiers, a livid hat I miss; Bawdy we reform, child
o’ sewer salivated t’ “I” me, solon gay semen
(seamen) can breathe; aye livid Hat., eye m’ ass
4)
gas men (..m’ Anne) can breathe; Thor (adder) eyes can see; seaman,
see a neighbor; Houris
4-5)
So long. Aye, seaman, see Anne, breathe her ass, see Anne S. eat dough
(…seed “O”)
5) Yet
doughty were Shakespeare [st] old; Yet doughty wars told Tommy
deaf, pity thy wrong; pity W.-rune; raw inch; yet doughty, wharf’d,
old Tommy
5-6)
T.T., arrange butt fancy, vapor I seek; Rune G. (wrong,) bawdy sense
6) Beauty
fine see of a Paris kitty out of, O, Rheims, the leisure; “O”
rhymes; fancy fiber I seek; sick; prick T.T. out
6-7) th’
[= archaic thorn, p] leaf [page, “life”] you relay
t’ Ham, fey, mort
7) Helen
[et = “and”]; Hat.’ll I kiss, her assy well;
amour’d, Hat. likes heresy
8) Peer,
if you my knot untie—our twin—m’ Annie is slain; Perfume;
knot; art; on thy hard way, enema nice, fill Anne
8-9) Eisell
[i.e., Vinegar] Annie, O, learn to read
9) W.H.
ate silly end low; silent, low Hath-awry; loo; O, Lear, knight, O read
O; “Redoubt,” silent, low, Hath. writ; urn torrid
8-10)
when m’ Annie is feeling “O,” leer into red twat, silent,
low, Hath. redded “I’s”
9-10) Lent,
low ova, threaded eyes
10) cunt-inch;
th’ heir (air); Ye tease this cunt, inch—wand, too; gray cedar
arid; t’ Grey said Harry, “Our T.T. (titty) unhappy eye t’
addle you.”
11) pity Addle-way,
Ann, Dam Bloody; eye windy, ample Ovid
11-12) Thin,
happy “I,” that loving damn bloody thin maid; enemy
12) Tee! Hen.
my idea read; Thin maid [Sue?], eye ready “O,” boast how I
do love thee; bossed; be “O” a fit huddled; foamy head
13) Ludus
[L. play, game, sport] bitty, my lie-ms. buy, knight, my mind; I’m
supine, I jet, mime end; Betty; hymn amend; Limeys
14) Bodied
oath; D-row; my four rows; furrows; Sue-rows; Sue arose; Sue-errors; ms.
or row is longer; dallied Rome is o’er, O whistle and jeer; daily
t’ Rome ye four row
Acrostic Wit
The 14-character
acrostic in each rune in Q forms a kind of independently ambiguous
mini-puzzle to be “decoded.” A reader/ player learns to read
the code flexibly: B, e.g., may mean “8,” both the number and
the phonic element. Thus AT B... can stand for “88” and
A TB S can encode “A tight ass....”
The downward acrostic
codeline here—AT B SYBL POYTT L B—can be read to mean,
e.g., “I., too busy, be El (Le) Poet t’
pound (t’ Libbie, Lib),” “88 sibyl-poet
lip [= kiss (OED 1604)],” “BB [= Baby...] simple puddle be”“…syllable
(simple) puzzle…,” “A tub’s y’ boil-pot
delight,” “A tight, simple boy T.T. laid [B = 8],” “…T.T.’ll
eat,” “A tea, busy be lip, idle be….” and “A
tight sibyl body delight” (i.e., A T-8 SYLB POY-T T-LB). Because
“88” recalls the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada (much the
way “9/11” has meaning today), “88 sibyl-puddle (...bottle;
simple battle) be,” is one witty reading.
Prominent here
is ...SYBL POYTT..., encoding, e.g.,“sibyl-poet” (i.e.,
“witch-poet”), “simple poet,” and “simple boy,
T.T. [i.e., Thomas Thorpe, Will’s known printing agent].”
The upward
reverse code—B LTTY OPLBYS BTA—suggests, e.g.,
“Billed job’ll buy S. 80,” “Bill, T.T., ye ope
(yes, 80), pound y’ ass, beat ‘I’,” “Be
Lady O. polite—yes Betty,” “Be laddie-O plied, Y [groin]
is bitty,” “Bloody ‘O’ plied ye, ass bitty,”
“8 let table, bias bitty eye,” “Built table by S. bitty,”
“Built table, ye supped aye,” “Be Lady o’ pee,
Libbie is, Betty,” and “Be Lady Opal, Bess Betty (bitty).”
Another
reading is “Bloody ‘O’ [round, rune] played [plied] wise
80 [Betty]”—that is, e.g., “Eighty ‘wise’ players
tackled this bloody rune.” “Betty” may be Will’s granddaughter,
Elizabeth Hall, born 2/21/1608. If so, the joke suggests she’s a
prodigy, “playing” her grandpa’s runes.
The
down/up hairpin suggests “8 be simple: the 8-pound bill,
T.T., ye owed, pounds 8 to eye,” “88 is y’ bill, poet’ll
be laddie (puta’ll be lady) up late, labia’s bitty.”
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