Set I Texts/Comments

Comments

Like others, this further text hidden in Set I advises the beautiful friend to “marry and increase” but doesn’t specify the auditor’s gender. The opening “Mirror, mirror…” situation (1-2ff.) seems to paint a “she” (3), but “The world will be thy widow” (9) implies a male listener, and this impression overrides the other. Will’s tone, often harshly critical, softens toward the end but remains skeptical.

The poem clusters figures about engagement, marriage, procreation, and widowhood with others about nature as fruitful or barren, and the two groups connect in the terms “un-eared womb” (3) and “barren trees” (12). Eventually the ideal of “leafing” suggests writing pages, a part of the conceit that the poet is a “Summer”—a number’s man, “adder,” or metricist who adds to his store by creating “leaves.” Will’s complaint “Nor can I [produce leaves]” means that the tedious runic composition process leaves nothing behind to show for itself. In the context of the poem’s main theme, time (always a pun on “meter”) is both the enemy (14) and the sponsor of productivity: Like an active husband, Time leads Summer over obstacles to create lyric harmony (7-8). “If” (8), an eyepun on “Is,” allows other syntactic readings.

Lurking in 1-4 is the wild conceit that the auditor is “all eyes” (1) and “earless” (i.e., lacking female genitalia) but concurrently womblike (3); “holding in” stretches out the joke that the friend is an unproductive womb—with the same figure a hidden analogue for Q’s unborn poems. “Still” (9), next to “widow,” hints at “stillborn,” and non-fruitful abuse (4) suggests masturbation, with reinforcing puns in such details as “that beauty which you hold” (13). The adjectives “Steep-up” (7) and “lofty” (12) are phallic, while “well-tuned” (8) is a pudendal pun. “Abuse” (4) and “use” (6) link as overt contrasts.

“Niggard” (4) prepares for the new figure, “usury”—illegal profiteering by miserly types—and for the phrase “hold in” (13). The poet’s charges against the friend as “criminal” escalate from “usury” to “murder” (10); as a “being asked,” he is like an interrogated felon who “lies” (2). The legal term “contracted” (1) works—as “reduced and shriveled”—to foil the notion of “increasing” that’s explicit in 11 and general in the poem; as “engaged,” the word prepares for the linked motifs of consummation (5-8) and widowhood (9). The elements “contracted” (1) and “brief minutes” (14) open and close the rune with legalisms—both implying diminution and “commitment.” Lease (13) is an economic and legal term that underscores the “loaned” and temporary nature of beauty. Contrastive terms include “own by right” (pun, 1) and “possessed” (10). The phrase “Herein lives” (13) cultivates the same motif. Even the question about “where all thy beauty lies” (2) seems a question about beauty’s bedroom—and thus about real estate. The pun on “room” in “womb” (3) amplifies the pattern.

The text has an early rhymed couplet (eyes/lies), halfway-and-end rhymes (hill / tell [7, 14]), and an incidental rhyme cluster, increase / leaves / leaf (11-13). The gap in Q8 may be an eyejoke about the “emptiness” of a well. Maybe some vertical acrostic game going on in the full text needs a “double space” to make the letters align as authorized. An intentionally altered letter “mars” a rune-pun in 5, and a “Willobie” play occurs in 9.

The name of Anne’s hamlet, Shottery, lies deeply buried in the Q-string s hate,Herei (10-11), overlaid on scatological wit. Q’s “use” (6), looking like vfe, allows puns on “verse”and “wife” and also segues into a pun on “Anne H.” (7). “Why doost” (4) puns on “Widow Shakespeare,” with st in Q a routine family name pun that I’ve deduced—an s “shaking” a spear-like t as if by the handle. Thus 4 puns, e.g., “Thin, beauteous niggard, Widow [why do...] Shakespeare thou abuse[?]” Other family nameplays in 13 allow the pun “Sue, S. Hall, that beauty which you, Hall, John lease [...love, leave].”

Sample Puns

          1) Butt; Beauty, how cunt-racked (edit, hie, noun buried aye is); thine own buried ass
          2) T’ Hen., being ass, key, Tower’ll thy beauty lice; W., Harry; Hall; as key to “W,” hear “Hall”; Hen. be in casket, W.H. realty bought; bawdy alias
          3) For W., Harry, is she Sue fair, who’s uneared womb
          4) Thou beauteous niggard W.H., why do Shakespeare thou abuse?
          5) rune [reverse, with initial “n” altered]; [pur]sue m’ rune; time meter; Summer metricist
          5-6) saw you my rune, that verse [vice, whiff] is not forbidden
          6) T’ Hat.-wife, aye snot is our bed, in use wry (no, sirree; new, furry; new fury)
          7) Anne H. avenge, see limbed thief tup you, phew! heavenly hell
          8) Eye Southy t’ rue cunt-chord of Will-tuned sounds; Well t’ you, Ned (Nat, Nate, knight)
          9) Will; Willobie; thy widow Anne S.
          9-10) T’ you, Earl, dull be thy widow Anne’s till, weepy, farty, overt ass or pussy steweth murderous hate
        10-11) witty merd-row shat Harry in loo’s waste; You “Shottery” [Anne’s native hamlet] eye in loo’s wisdom
        11) Harry, anal aye use wife; Hairy, anal, I use wife; John, loo’s wisdom; Herein live, Sue, eye Sodom bawdy ending series; foe
        11-12) Anne dying, see her heavy wen, lofty t’ raise (erase)
        12) assy be a rune o’ slaves’ offal
        12-13) Use Sue, S. Hall, debted beauty which you hold in lease; that bawdy witch you “holed” anally
        13-14) a sinner see, Anne, eye ass whored, unit o’ bare ass, my Anne you eyed, ass, tail
        14) Nor rune (reversed); Enter (Inner, In her), see Annie fart; you Nat (knight) “O” bare, ass, minute his tail; minute [i.e., written record] stale; too brief my knight’s tale

Acrostic Wit

The downward acrostic codeline—BT FT FT AIT FHWSN—suggests, e.g., “Beat [i.e., accent] fit/fit [i.e., stanza/stanza], 8 fusing [suggesting two quatrains?],” “8 [B = 8] to fit, fit 8 fusing,” “Be tough to fit 8, fusing [phallic],” “Betty fit ‘fit 8,’ fusing [...if you sin],” “Be tough to Fit 8 if you [H.W.] sin,” and “Be tough to fit 8 if H.W. is in.”

          The upward reverse—N SW HFTI AT FT FT B—encodes such potentialities as, e.g., “In Sue (Ensue) hefty 8 fit fit [i.e., an appropriate match] be,” “In Sue H[all] fit I’d fit ‘fit 8’,”and “In ass, W.H. fit ‘I’, 8 fit fit be.”

          The rune seems likely to be a phallic joke of some sort about a hefty “8 [inches]” that “fuses” in a “fit” way, with H.W./W.H. (encoding John Hall, Henry Wriothesley, and/or Anne Hathaway, with W = IN = John or Anne) or Sue Hall as recipients of the action (and the poet’s wit). Letterstrings suggesting tight, fit, sin, 8, hefty, fusing, and so on encourage a reader/player to fill out the ambiguous scenario.

          In the Q acrostic codes, the convention may be that F=S, even in the capital forms, since long s and f look alike in the typography; thus an S in the codeline may stand for an F, and vice versa. Note that Will’s initials, WS, occur—as they often do in the acrostics—and that SW H suggests “Sue Hall.”