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Comments
In Rune 114—the
buried text in Set IX that comprises in sequence the second lines of visible
Sonnets 113-126—Will acknowledges allegiance to his sovereign friend
(13) and “flatters” him (2) with a “full-charactered
pyramid” (10-11) while admitting that the auditor can never be honored
enough (5) and that the monument may go “fatherless” for being
unacknowledged by its author and by its intended “occupant”
(12). (The arcane, triangulated mystery of the “charactered”
pyramid persists, as in the Masonic symbology of the Great Seal of the
United States on the back of the dollar bill.) Such activity on the poet’s
part wards off any thoughts of suicide (9) and controls mutability while
mirroring the caprices of an Age (14).
Will’s
monument, he says, is compensation for his earlier sorrow in
the relationship with the friend (8), whose perceived rejection seems
only to have strengthened the poet’s resolve to honor and immortalize
him, despite problems inherent in flattery (1-2) and the fact that unpleasant
alchemical sorcery plays a part in the project (6-7).
As in Rune 85,
“Lymbecks” are part of Will’s figurative gadgetry here.
Sonnets editor Stephen Booth notes that an engraving printed by Henrie
Denham in The Newe Jewell of Health (1576) depicts Alchymya (i.e.,
Alchemy) holding an alembic—a “still” for transmuting
things. The association here of alembics, Alchemy, and a “fickle
whore” (as the final eyepun here in 14 reads)—this combination
gives us a nascent view of Will’s Dark Lady or “perverse mistress,”
who is (I propose) at least partly a poetic construct for the poet’s
own “mistress/mysteries,” the Q project, medially positioned
between the poet himself and his handsome, unnamed muse. Magically, like
Alchemy, Will’s project—whose “I’s are nothing
like the sun” because printed I’s are straight and black while
the O-like sun is round and bright—“transmutes” lower-order
things into higher, Runes into Sonnets, and vice versa.
Alchemy and medicine
overlapped in Will’s day, as Booth also notes. I deduce, then, that
the coy alchemical allusion may be aimed partly at Dr. John Hall, the
poet’s literate son-in-law, a physician.
We now can see
that the full-charactered pyramid is concurrently an apt conceit
for the Q project, an elaborately “compounded” (6) memorial
that is richly decorated both “outside” (in the Sonnets) and
inside (in the Runes). We know now that it is “foul as hell within”
(7) and that its “full” character, as “fortune’s
bastard,” has until now remained unacknowledged (12). Will’s
preoccupying project (see 1, 14) ca. 1609—the Q writing project—still
“admits impediments” in the form of obstructions, stutterings,
and various kinds of excess baggage.
Images in the
poem cluster around topics of building, monarchs, travel, and
consumption of food or drink (see the codeline FWAD). Puns about building,
e.g., include “pediments” (4), “ark” (2), and
“palette” (cf. L. pala, shovel), a building tool
(6), while “loo” (e.g., 4) as “outhouse” jokes
about an enclosure “foul as hell within” (7). “Pyramid”
links “deserts” (5) with terms about rulers and travel. A
motif about money includes “plack” (2), a coin. While “Adam
et impediments” is allusive, “Admit impediments…”
may pun about bowel blockage. Line 6 suggests purgation, and 12 puns on
“base turd.” In fact, Will’s “pyramid” may
be a dunghill, or an outhouse “full-charactered” with graffiti.
The pictographic “furrow” in Q8—a studied typographical
effect executed at the printing stage—divides a play on breaking
wind (“Anne farted furrow [...Pharaoh]…,” Q for
that) from the pun “…wicked hen did feel windy, too”
(8-9).
In the last line,
sickle hour is an eyepun on “fickle whore,” anticipating
the Dark Lady conceit, prominent in the last two sets of Q.
Sample Puns
1)
Anne, dead Hat.-witch, governs me; Jew, earnest meat; Indebted (Undated)
W.H., eye chigoe [chigger (OED 1691)], earnest meat o’
Job out
2)
keep theme, O, an ark supply, Jew-Too-High slaughter. Why? Keep the money,
harks plack [coin]; monarch, splay a Jew; Dry in cup, the money arcs;
on ark is plague; monarchs play Jehoshaphat awry; Daring, kept hymn; aye,
Judy’s flatter. Why? I Judas flatter
2-3)
a dizzy lady runed, hosted fights old in ode louder
3)
eye deckled note low; eye dick old
3-4)
I could not laud a rear Adam eyed; Ovid eerie redeemed hymn
4)
aye dim, eye tempi dementis, loose in ode low; slough
eye, snot low; I snot love; a dim item peed I
4-5)
Slav, eye synod louring; Lorraine is older, gray desert
5)
W.H., Erin eye; W.H., rain eisell, your gray deserts reap I;
reign evil, dour; We rune, S. Hall dirge reads; I S. Hall dear greeted;
We rune, I fooled you; greet desert Sherpa
5-6)
read deferred, syrupy wit; W., Harry, eye knife old, your great
deserts repay Whitaker [W.H.’s tutor? cf. Akrigg 28]; [pur]sue our
pale dirge
6)
I jerk, come, pound, swear, pale; our Pilate urge; pale at verge; witty,
azure compounds warp a ladder
6-7)
O, you ripple eye turgid; turgid, I’ve tilled fair homme
7)
If Rome’ll ye hymn, bass key is foul; Dis tilled form limy,
base quays, foul as hell; Sue Hall is hell with John
7-8)
see kiss, solace, hell witty, Nantes
8)
Pharaoh wicked ended seal (silly); Anne farted furrow [with a
space “furrow”] which I thin did seal; I shit in didie feel
8-9)
W.H. I chide, ended silly W.H.; I then did see loo in naughty
O, bare sieve’s hairy porch
9)
bare, see Eve’s rib rouge
9-10)
W., Hen, ought to bare Caiaphas or approach us, being fool
10) witty
lass, tinge m’ hemorrhoid, happier amid ass-built-up wit; Fool see,
harass; see her actor; see Harry, see turd with lasting memory; Fool,
seer, actor; see here actor duet, laugh, tinge hymn
10-11) …if
you ill chorister do eye, till ass, tinge hymn moor, yet help your ami
Dis build, tup with newer might; hymn orate high, peer, a ms. built up
with newer [rune, reversed] might
11) thy
pi-remedy is bull-tup witty in your maid; eye th’ né
worm I jet; witty norm I jet
11-12) in
your mite-y Tommy jet sore fart; Newer, mighty Tommy, jet-forcer too nice,
bastard be unfathered; be ass-turd, be in Southy red; aged midget is whore
12)
force our Tunis base t’ err; a turd-bean’s Ethelred
12-13) tunes
be, after debuting Saturday, “hymn-y” [i.e., on Sunday]
13) Witty
mix turned he outward
13-14) war
t’ honor eye in jet; honoring deux Shakespeare times [meters];
hued were donor in jet
14) Dust,
Hall did eye ms., fickle glass’s fickle whore; dust halted eye;
tie miss, f--k legally, f---his fickle whore; his fig lower; high, sick;
low, we err; legal asses seek lore; Does Hall Didymus seek—legless,
physical whore?
Acrostic Wit
The
downward emphatic codeline—ADEAW WDAW F TIWD—conveys
meanings represented by these samples: “Adieu, widow of toad[y],”
“A dew, we dove to wed,” “A dewy dove, too
wet,”“A.D. Eve doffed, I wed,” “Eye doo-doo fetid,”
“A doody whiffed I wad,” “Idea, (A dewy...) day wasted
[F=S],” “A deaf widow fit Jude,” “Odd ewe widow
stewed [F = S],” “Odd Eve daft I wed,” “Idea would
awe: Fit [i.e., stanza] eye witty,” “A dear widow-wife died,”
and “Odd ode I wived, aye wood [crazy],” with eye/aye
variants.
The
upward (reverse) codeline—DW I TF WAD WWAEDA—suggests,
e.g., “Deux eye, tough wad weighty,” “Dieu
eyed few, adieu, we die,” “Dieu eyed few,
Odd, Weighty,” “Duet, feud weighty eye,” “Dewitt,
…,” “…duty of weight weighty,” “…widow
of wight witty,” “due to food, weighty,” “…A.D.,
we die,” “Duet of W., odd, weighty,” “Th’
wit of wight witty,” and “Deux, one, t’ few
[…10] add 10, 10, 80.”
The
down/up hairpin codeline suggests “Idea wasted due t’
feud weighty,” “A dear widow-wife died due t’ feud weighty,”
and/or “Odd ewe widow fed you, deux eat food witty.”
The codestring AD triggers the quest for a date-rune, and TIW
(2) and AEDA (80) encourage Roman numeral searches.
The notion of duality (suggesting by Sonnets and Runes, etc.) lurks in
the strings DEAW, DAW, TIW, DW, DWW.
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