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This rune
about isolation compiles geographic imagery to make a convincing
poem with a sun-drenched final conceit. Amid figures about distance and
travel (or staying put), three locales can be pinpointed: where the listening
friend is; where the poet/speaker is (“mine own desart”);
and where the two might be joined (14). By means of paradoxes, all three
“places” can be the poems themselves. While “tenants”
and “room” are congruent terms, “desert” (7) and
“shore” (14) are contrastive.
Tangential clusters
of “legal” and “wardrobe” figures—linked
by the word “robe” (10)—add figurative texture. The
implied term “inquest” galvanizes legal meanings, e.g., in
“messengers” (3), “knowledge” (7), “prefects”
(pun 9), and “contracted” (14). “Clothes” and
“nakedness” are analogies for the poet and friend, and also
for the Runes that “unrespected, fade” (12) under cover of
the Sonnets. The word “hide” (as “skin”) triggers
a preoccupation with nakedness (8-14) in such diction as “love being
made,” “the wardrobe which the robe doth ‘hide’,”
and “pace forth” (apparently disrobed). This language cluster
in turn makes “in the living day” (1) imply sun-drenched nakedness,
vaguely Edenic.
Typically
in Set IV, the start and close of the poem are about seeing.
The two “swift messengers” (2-3)—which are also sonnets/runes—seem
comically like zoom lenses that can jump out of Will’s head. In
the sestet (i.e., 9-14), the motif of vision remains central in such terms
as “hide,” “show,” and “unrespected, fade.”
As usual, puns
work against lyricism and seriousness. “Eyes” and “I’s”
are always bawdy in Q, and the “rheum” that finally “parts
the shore” in this “cunt-wracked” terrain implies some
kind of groinal seepage (see 13-14). (Overt “country” wit
was, of course, commonplace in Will’s day.) The “two contracted
new” (14) may be paired bodies or body parts, eyes or testicles.
“Contracted” puns on “squeezed” and “squinted.”
The pun
“S. Hall, you pace forth” (13) suggests that Will
envisions a family audience, with Stratford, the home of the Halls (Will’s
daughter and son-in-law, Susanna and John), being in literal terms “where
thou art”—and with London the locale “where thou art
not” (6). “Pacing forth” suggests the public reappearance
of the mother, an important staged event in Will’s day after the
sequestration of childbirth. One extended pun perhaps depicts the massive
Anne leading the way down the aisle of the church where the couple once
married: “S. Hall, you pace forth. Europe rises. Hall still is in
the room. / ‘Witch’ [i.e., Anne?] parts the shore where two
contracted new”
“Family”
wit in the acrostic bolsters suspicions that the Halls in Stratford
are on the poet’s mind here. (See below.) The downward codeline
suggests some kind of play on “bitty Betty” (i.e., Elizabeth
Hall, Will’s granddaughter, christened 21 February 1608) and her
mother, “Sue,” Susanna Hall. “Bitty Betty, sweet tot
t’ Sue” is one decoding. The upward reverse may be read, “Wise
tot, to step, to eat [code = B = 8],” “W.S. taught John’s
type [i.e., John Hall’s offspring; code WS = INS = Jn.’s,
with I/J interchangeable] to be,” and “Wise tot, to stab ‘To
be’.” (The last reading jokes about the youngster Betty taking
a stab at Hamlet’s soliloquy, a familiar saw.) The full down/up
acrostic encodes, e.g., “Bitty Betty’s witty tot t’
Sue; wise tot to Shakespeare aye Betty be.”(The codestring WST
encodes “W. Shakespeare” because ST—especially as the
pictographic digraph st—shows an S, in effect, “shaking”
a spear-like T.)
Line 2 encodes
more Sue/John puns, e.g., “Sue’s m’ lass, Jn. [= w =
IN] H., and thou art John.” Line 6 encodes the pun, e.g.,
“Sue, Jn. H. err: thou art naughty household, thou art.” John
and Sue Hall, I suggest, are in fact primary candidates for the much debated
real-life “master/mistress of my passions” (see Sonnet 20.2)
whom Will addresses in his Q cycle. During his final rewriting (ca. 1605-09),
Will may have cultivated such puns as those rampant here (and everywhere
in the Q lines) thinking that in time his son-in-law, as a primary reader/player
of the Q texts during the years of Will’s own retirement in Stratford,
might find and enjoy them, perhaps collaborating with Will in the deciphering
process.
The poem opens
with a pun that also seems to be at Hall’s expense: “By
loo kin John, th’ end he’ll eye....” (Though
OED does not show “loo” as “outhouse” in Will’s
day, the word suggests the euphemism lieu, French for “place,”
and might have been current.) And a bawdy, derogatory pun about Hall closes
the poem: “Jn. H., I see; he parts this whore: Jn. H. hard woke,
interacted anew” (14).
Line 1 plays twice
on “Auntie” (code ...on thee in the...), which, I
deduce, may be a joking term for Anne Shakespeare. The common letterstring
...ghts (here, e.g., 4, see 2) always embodies a potential nameplay
on “Judy S.”—on Will’s daughter Judith. The more
overt string ...g day (ending 1) yields the pun, e.g., “By
looking, Auntie Anne, t’ hell, eye vain Judy” or “By
looking, Anne, the Auntie, [wi]ll eye vain Judy.”
The poem
manages quite a bit of strategic rhyme—as does its rhymemate
in the set, Rune 54. Here, Q’s desart (7) rhymes with
heart (4) and art (6). Day, thee, and me (1,
3, 5) also rhyme, as do hide (twice) and fade (8, 10,
12). Assonance links some of these clusters.
Sample Puns
1) Bile;
By loo, King John (kin, John thin); gone (John), th’ entailing died
1-2) By,
looking on the jaunty Livy, Anne, Judy, too, leap…miles 2 label
(able) our jelly in Judy’s “O,” female ass windy; To
lea, pillage lengthy Swiss miles; Two leap large lengths of m’ lass
when thou art gone (John); windy Howard gone; Milos windy, ward gone;
oaf Milesian t’ Howard gone; the soft miles [i.e., soldier],
W.H.; Aswan; female swan
2-3)
Swan t’ you art gone by tosses
3) Bitty
“O’s” few esteem; Betty, who’s ass-wife, Tommy’s
avenger is, red urned form thick, used oft, huge; ass whiffed, Miss finger,
ass red, urned
3-4) ms.
fingers red you earned from the agues tough; fair homme, the
ague is tough, thou jet salt in Anne, ’tis doughty, hard
4) thou
jet salt, Onan, ’tis toothy art; Aye queue Shakespeare’s thoughts;
awl, ten [i.e., 10 inches], Anne teased, ’tis oathy art; you jet
salty in Anne’s ass
4-5) tenants
to th’ hearty fief
5)Thy
fey sewer-present; sieve; Thyself a warp resent; see ease, aware, peer,
of end; This Half-away, our present Shakespeare ill; this, half-aware,
present Shakespeare—ill, witty ms.
5-6) pair-events
t’ elude, my saw, W.H.
6) a
viewer thou art not (knot); Sue; huge “I,” feel th’
“O” (th’ overt wit); house; how’s Eli (Ely) t’
Howard; sword; Seward; Rat Howard naughty owes Ely
6-7) thou
art witty, knotty, knowledge of mine own desert
7) know
Willy-ditch of mine own, Ed, fart; Simon; Simeon; deaf art; differed,
deferred
7-8) Within
thick Anne-O will edge o’ Simon—neat sword t’ Hat.—foam;
M’ Annie, O, windy (Annie o’ Wind) farted sometimes, injured
her waist scent, O, I shit (washed)
8) Indias
hid
8-10)
in dose hit Anne [et], her forehead afire, cough perfect, low,
being maid harassed
9)
T’ Hereford Fergus; see O’s peer-sect sloppy; lobby; T’
Harry, farty Circe owes perfect ass-love
9-10) sloppy
inch made harassed ewe hurt her “O” bewitched
10) Harassed
Howard Row B; Row B doth hide; Ed[itor?] oath hid
10-11) there
Obadiah th’ hide thinned
11) Theo,
Ned (Nate), O this hid hose your beauty avowed alive, unwoo’d, undone
11-12) bawdy,
shoddy Hell eye you
12) T’
Hindu this Hades your beauty showed; Anne, you in respect defied S. Hall;
They’ll eye vein—wooden, dun her ass-piece
12-13) T’
Ed’s aid, S. Hall, you pace forth
13) your Percival
Shakespeare’ll send; Shy ellipses, earthier praise, S. Hall’s
“till” find (sinned; send)
13-14) Vessel
fit, ill find, Rome-witch; Tower brave assails till ass and dear homme
W.H.’s “barred”; S. Hall’s “till”
find, Roomy (rheumy) Witch part, Southy’s whore, W., Harry Two-Cunt,
wracked Ed in ewe
14) W. Hairy
to cunt reacted; cunt harassed anew; we, reticent, wracked Ed anew; W.H.,
“edge” Bard S., this whore weird, weakened our ass, t’
Eden you; hard Wiccan tract Ed knew [cf. Witch, initial in 14]
Acrostic Wit
The
acrostic codeline seems to house family wit about Will’s
granddaughter, “bitty Betty”, a “wise tot” whom
“W.S. taught.” Other potentialities inher in the down, up,
and hairpin versions of the code.
The downward
code—BT BAT SWT TOT T SW—suggests, e.g., “Bitty
Betty, sweet tot t’ Sue,” “Bitty bed sweaty odes W.
(o’ T.T., Sue),” “Betty-body, sweaty ‘O’,
T.T. saw,” “Bede bade Sue t’ Titus [chapter] 10,”
“88 Swede taught Sue,” and “Betty bade Swede, ‘O,
T.T., [pur]sue!” Typically, T.T. suggests Thomas Thorpe, Will’s
printing agent.
The
upward (reverse) code—WS TT OTTW ST ABT B—features
both the the poet’s initials and the family name ciphere, ST. Readings
include these: “Was t’ Titus taped a bee?” “Wise
T.T. ought W.S. tup, to be (tight),” “W. Shakespeare [ST]
taught to stop ‘To be’,” “Wise tot, to stab at
a bee (to stop ‘To be’),” and “Wasted, to sty
(...toast aye) Betty ate.”
The
full down/up codeline encodes, e.g., “Bitty Betty’s
witty tot t’ Sue, wise tot to Shakespeare aye Betty be,” “Bitty
Betsy taught Sue; ‘Wise tot’-to-‘Saint’ aye Betty
be,” and “Bit Betsy titty, O, t’ tease you, wasted W.S.
t’ Betty be.”
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