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Comments
Surely it’s
a mark of the cornucopic potential of Will’s diction and
of the playfulness inherent in the English code system itself—and
is not an indicator of the poet’s supernatural foreknowledge—that
the first words in Rune 120, Nor his, pun on the name of the
Tennessee town in which, some 400 years later, that text was first published
in a readable form. Playful “Norris wit” in the opening line(s)
includes such puns as these: “Norris’ own vision holds what
it doth catch”; “Norris’ own vice I own [i.e., acknowledge]...”;
“Norris’ own evasion old is weighed...,” and “Norris
own [i.e., acknowledge] anew: Eye Zion, halls whited. O, these ages fast!
I sob....”
One must chalk all
such anachronistic wit up to me, as a reader/player of the Runes, and
not to Will as author. Most other sorts of puns, however, I take as potentially
calculated—given that Will was a genius, and his Great Mind (as
he calls it in Sonnet 114.10) could register witty overlays of meanings
concurrently and perhaps instantaneously.
Likely, I think, “Norris”
is also a topical nameplay, so that the “Norris wit”
is indeed authorized. (See, e.g., Akrigg’s index to his biography
of Southampton.)
Taken as a somewhat
more straightforward poem, Rune 120 describes the “vision”
of men of Will’s age and our own. The poem hints at orgiastic behavior
(12), expects voyeurism (13), and—in anticipation of our judgmental
attitude (9)—curses those of us who now idly engage in it (14).
The poet’s muse seems to be one of “strong minds” of
his circle (3), but “his own vision” (1) may also
mean Will’s—and ours.
No one can fully “catch”
the Runes, says the text, because they are as mutable as time or readers’
moods. (A “catch” [1601] is a musical “round.”)
Such instability indeed “spends” us (13), threatening ridicule
from posterity—and maybe even madness. The very effect of the poem
we’re wrestling with illustrates the poet’s thesis.
The rune cultivates
interlinked imagery and puns about sight, measurement or documentation,
money, legal transactions, and sickness. One buried hint is that one can
be “transported” (5) for being either crazy (6-7) or implicated
in a crime (see 8). Line 4 suggests measuring a criminal for torturous
hardware and thus links with “holds: (1), “alt-ring”
(3, i.e., a high noose), and “pent” (13).
Other crafty clusters
of linked terms add coherence: e.g., 1) divert, diseased, distraction,
and disgrace; and 2) minds, distraction, madding, and
think (twice).
Nautical puns,
elaborately cultivated, include “An oar,” “holds what
it doth catch,” “course,” “mends, taut,”
“shoal’d,” “transport me farthest,” “weigh,”
“sea-rhyme,” “mist,” “full th’ rivers,”
and the endpuns “nautical,” “Hatteras,” and “keel.”
The first line embeds the puns “an oar,” “hold is sweaty,”
and “O, th’ catch.” “Tub, eddy ceased” is
a pun in 6. The complex pun “My tie, medias grace,
end wretched...” (14) houses phonic plays on medias res—i.e.,
“in the middle of things,” where epics traditionally start—and
also on “Matey, mate, aye,” “My eddy,” “Mate
eye,” “My weighty [code Y-TI] mate,” “gray sea,”
and “eye sand, rat see.”
“Wretched my nautical
eye” and “...wretch, dim ye ‘nautical’ eye”
are Will’s parting puns (14).
Notable epithets include
“Will S., Count Bad” (9), “altering things” (3)
and “this madding fever” (7). “Your crime” (8)
might be homosexuality, since the muse’s “record never can
be ‘Missed’” (10)—but the reference might also
be to Southampton’s refusal to marry in the 1590s or to his later
imprisonment in The Tower for treason.
Phallic humor colors such word
groupings as , e.g., “his height be taken” (4); “true
[i.e., right-angled] kneading” (6); and “Pitiful thrivers…spent”
(13). “Thy ‘record’ in ‘ewer’ can be missed”
(10) may be a “small penis” joke. Line 1 may pun, “An
‘oar’ I saw, a new ass I own, hole sweet (... sweaty)....”
Puns on “in you (...ewe),” “new” and “old,”
and “Swede” (possibly a conventional epithet for Thomas Thorpe,
Will’s printing agent—these further blur the wit.
Two
overlaid puns in crime (8)—serum and “sea-rhyme”—may
show Will aiming wit concurrently at his son-in-law Dr. Hall, a physician,
and at Southampton, his only known patron, an ex-seaman. How, indeed,
the eye is diverted by “altering things” (see 1-3).
Sample Puns
1)
In orison [i.e., prayer] wise aye John Hall suited dowdy catches
[i.e., rounds, runes]; Norris [see Akrigg index] owns John Hall’s
wit (…Sue); old Swede eyed; Know reason, wife join, hold Sue; cat
see; whiff John Hall, Sue H.
1-2) In
orison, wife John Hall dissuaded etiquette, chases ass; chase fast ass;
W.H. aided oath, catachresis [: = r] aye
2) A
sophist ass objects; obese; a fit, a sob I see; behemoths
2-3)
“Miss,” “a femme” be lady words to wrong
men; thespian asses ambled; bloody words t’ wrong my Andes (Indies);
A sophist, Aesop, jacks, Thisbe, a ms.-ass, ambled; Jack t’ [John?]
Stow hies, by a ms.’s hymn bloody, I’ve heard
3) wrong,
mendacity, oath see, our sea of altering (see o’ faltering) things;
see our fief
3-4)
the cursive (curses) altering thy inches, W.H.; in Dis too-thick whore
see, awful, trying th’ hinges, hoof warty
4)
W.H., O, fjord sunken own; earth’s sun know, kneel; sunken
O’Neill the huge “I’s” height bit, aching; know,
in altos, high jet
4-5)
new hitches halt runes; bitty, aching W.H., I see his hole did rain of
port, messier (monsieur)
5) holed
runes bored me, sir, this tease Romy, whore-f--ked
5-6)
fair homme, you recite “To be”—disaster t’
Hathaway strewing (stirring)
6)
“To be” diseased ear, thought Harry W.; T.T., hear Waster
neigh; the ruse truant eye
6-7) kneading
gin [i.e., device, engine], Thetis racked John, oft his maiden-giver;
To be deaf as dirt, Hathaway’s t’ rune, heeding John; t’
rune, Ed, inch in t’ heady fit
7) John
the deaf raised aye; fewer
7-8) this
“mating of Eve” read away; oaf, thy “summit” in
Jesu erred; this maiden Jesu erred; right away, John sees you; farty Hugh-John
seas you’ve fared
8) Owen
sees you ferret in York-rhyme; Two eye John cease, afeared
8-9) die,
nurse, wry muse, enter Will’s cunt; see rhyme witch inter; in York,
see wry, amusing Terrell
9) Will’s
Count Bad, W.H. eyed in cake (keg) odd; Will’s cunt be a twat, I
think; Inter Will as Count Bad; W.H. ate “I” thin; hairy,
Will’s cunt be oddity (aye dowdy)—thin keg odd
9-10)
I, th’ Ink God of Theatre; the Ink Goddess, theatre guardian (Gordian);
I think good of theatre: A sword newer canopy missed
9-11) ode,
oft heady, recording your sane B.M.’s aye, fitting th’ ink
10) a sword
in her, see Anne be missed
10-11) in
hurricane be misty hint, inked; new Ark eye in beams, T.T.; is Titan thin?
11) in Kate
eye two before (I, too, be sore)
11-12) half-hard
the metal dour, too thin, white in jet; be foe (Sue) revered, Ham told
W.H.
12) in jet
emirs I shun
12-13) emir
says I owe Anne gallows (callous) pity; I owe Nicholas pity; Ashen, see
Hall’s pitiful ladder [i.e., acrostic], Jew, or scent Harry, gay
Zed [Z], inch spent, my time [i.e., meter] disgrace and wretched minute
[i.e., records] kill; eye uncle’s pate, eisell there eye
13) Psalter
eye, voicing t’ Harry a zing; Rivers in there gay see, John; there
Ivor sinned; th’ Iraqis eye, in jest penned; our center’s
gay; eye you our centaurs gay; hazy inches penned; integer “A-Z’ing”
is penned
13-14) gazing
ass, pen “Tommy” t’ eye medias (g)res
14) Madam
dies—gray scene; Mighty my deaf, gray sea, Anne, dour; Mighty, I
Maid’s grace endured; sea hid my night-keel; my item dies, gray;
gray Seine, dour t’ see; if Grey see Anne dour touch demon (Damon),
you I’d kill; rat, see head, my “Y” [pictographic groin]
nautical; Anne dour at Academy, knight, kill
Acrostic Wit
The
downward codeline—N AD WW T I TW O TW PM—suggests,
e.g., these readings: “In a duet, eye two (In odd-witted woe), 2:00
p.m.,” “In A.D., wit, eye (Night-wit eye,) 2:02 p.m.,”
“Knight wood, I taught W. th’ [P = th] hymn,”
“Nat [Field?], witty twat, wipe ’im,” “An odd
wit eye, two t’ whip ’im,” “In odd wit I taught
‘Whip ‘em!,” “In odd-witted woe...,” “Night,
wedded woe...,” “In A.D. wed, 122, p.m.,” “Night
wet, eye tot (...toad), wipe [h]im,” “An odd, wet eye--two,
t’ wipe ’em,” “An odd, wet eye—two, t’
wipe ’em,” “An adieu tidy would wipe ’em,”
and/or “...would weep homme.”
The
upward (reverse) codeline—MPWT O WTI TWW DAN—suggests
(as samples) these encryptions: “Impute ‘O’ witty t’
Dan(e),” “Impute ‘O’ wit aye t’ Widow Anne,”
“My puta, wedded, wooden,” “My ‘phew!’
twat…” “M’ putto [cf. ‘poot,’
fart] witty tooting,” “My putto—wet [as in
a spouting fountain] it wouldn’t,” and “Impute ode aye
t’ Witan (Wit [Widow] Anne, wedding).” An “O”
is a pictographic round, and thus a rune; a putto may be a urinating
fountain statue.
Suggestive
wit lurks in the linked codestrings WT, TWOT, TOWT,
and TWWD. “Wet/Wed” and “twat” inhere in
these codeforms, along with other potentialities.
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