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          True to its set, this text encourages “increase” and, in particular, stresses the poet’s role in maintaining his friend’s post-mortem memory. If the poet is the friend’s “tomb” (3), the friend himself, envisioned after the “self’s decease” (13), seems corpselike, a “beauty still” who is now not “mortal” but is observed by mortals (7), a man with “deep sunken eyes” (2), one “check’d with frost” (5). “Beauteous roof” (10) may mean the friend’s face or mind but also suggests a gisant—a decorated tomb cover embossed with the friend’s recumbent effigy. “If all were men dead so…,” the poet puns. Since the poem’s “you” becomes “he” (7) in one instance, maybe the “corpse” is a separate character in the scenario.

           Scheming, scribbling women also people the stage. In any case, the poet shows the living friend fending them off (8-10)—“well keepers” in several senses—while typically failing to use his limited vital spirits to sire a child (4-6). Adoring mortals, nonetheless, will forgive the handsome corpse his failure to’ve reproduced, and he will “fit with princes” (14) because his noble fame will endure, especially in the verses we see here.

           From its opening pun (“Making [Mating] a femme, Annie”) onward, the rune seems interested in marriage—and seems to view it negatively. (Willobie His Avisa, somehow relevant here, purports to represent a “Constant wife.”) The routine Q eyepuns vsurer and vfe (4) encode “wife” and connect with “every private widow” (9) and the general idea that women besiege the friend, his “beauteous roof to ruinate.” The image of Xanthippe dumping a full pisspot over Socrates’ head is covert, with “ruinate” being a close anagram of “urinate” (see acrostic wit below) and concurrently a play on “Rune 8,” the one that comes up next in the sequence.

           Image clusters concern economics and horticulture. “Abundance” (1) and the suggestion of hoarding (1-2) prepare for the epithet “Profitless usurer” (4), while “keep” (9) and “ruinate” (10) suggest economic activity. The cluster of figures about fruitfulness and barrenness includes “famine,” “abundance” (1), “Sap,” “lusty leaves” (5), “breed” (6), “summer’s green…girded up in sheaves” (12), and details suggesting decline and dying.

           Elements that suggest runic composition include, e.g., “deep-sunken” (2); “tome / Profitless” (3-4); “lusty leaves, quite gone” (5); “girded up in sheaves” (12); and the plays on “rows” (10) and on “fit” as stanza (see 4, “th’ row fitless”). At bottom, “abundance” is analogous to the sonnets while “famine” stands for the runes. The friend”s “new selving” (13) is happening even now as the runes open up their tomblike content. A “summer’s green” (12) is a “metricist’s productivity or envy,” and “green” (12) signals likely wit about Will’s “envious” detractor Robert Greene.

           To “rune-ate” (see 10) suggests “to practice rune-writing, to prate on about runes, and to mess things up by doing so.”          

           Read differently, the opening apostrophe can be heard addressing readers like us as we experience “deep sunken eyes” (2) and unrewarded expenditure of effort (4).

Sample Puns

           1) Make inches, “I” m’ Annie, W., Harry, a bound Anne silly is; fey [doomed] mine; Anne sly is; Mate Anne gave “Amen!”
           2) fey [unlucky]; to fay [fit snugly]; To Southy, Nate (knight) in you neighed
           2-3) knight, piss, you ink a nice oar, W.H.; eye-sore
           3) Whore W.H. owes he’s “O-fon,” dual be that homme; Willobie
           3-4) the tome be profitless   
           3-5) Th. (et Tom) be profitless usurer, why dost T.T. office sap, checked wit’s rows t’ end?
           4) Prosed lass, wife, rare widow o’ Shakespeare, thou use; verse; dust, dost, doffed
           5) Ass, ape checked wit’s rows t’ end lusty leaves; cf. “dotted with semen, and all out of anything to wipe with”; lusty loos quit John
           5-7) Jaunty Hat’s farty self tup, redden, oather, t’ heat my whore
           7) Yet m’ whore t’ Hall looks; Why Anne [et], m’ whore, t’ Hall looks; Hall, look sadder, hies beauty, Shakespeare ill
           8) Th’ eye deux/doux; they do butts wittily see hid; sweetly chideth who cunt-sounds?
           9-10) you rip rude widow-well (pudendal), my keep, seeking that beauteous roof (rose) to ruinate; W., Hen., Eve repaired, why dual make [mate] apiece?
         10) Seeking that beauteous row, see to Rune 8 [the next one down the list]; well chamberpot, alluding to Xanthippe, Socrates’ wife, who dumped a pisspot on his head
         11) If Hall were minded so…; Eye fall; Eisell [i.e., vinegar]; Aye S. Hall we reminded of oath; If Hall we reminded of oath [i.e., of marriage, in the runic coterie], that “I” (…that aye) Miss S. Hall’d cease
         12) Anne S.; Summers adder, numbers man, rune-poet, thus Summer S[hakespeare], …Ass; greene cf. Robert Greene’s famous attack on the poet; all, in Hall, John; Anne saw m’ arse Greene, all girded up in sheaves
         13) You fail, f--kin’ ass; You feel f--kin’ after your self’s decease; disease; You fail, seeking half-Tower
         13-14) seize Dick, a fierce “I,” witty peer-inches, “I” fits Hall-jowl (jewel)
         14) Our fate appearing seize, “I” fit; Horsy wit; One fit [1 stanza] shall go well; is it S. Hall, jewel?; if it’s Hall, go, Will; well pudendal

Acrostic Wit

          The downward acrostic code—M TOP STYT WS I A YO—suggests such decodings as “My top (Mt. top…) staid [unchanging], W.S. aye eye you,” “My top stayed wise, I owe [admit],” “Empty ‘up’ [the ‘up’ acrostic] sty t’ sigh, O,” “Empty ‘up’ staid was, I owe,” “Mighty ‘ups’ tidy, W.S., aye eye you,” “Hymn tups Tommy T., wise, I ‘I’ you,” and “My ‘To pee’ state [punning on ‘To be…’] we sigh, O.”

           The upward code—O YAI SWTY T SPOT M—suggests, e.g., “O, ye ‘I’ Southy t’ ‘spot’ him,” “O, yes, wit, ye tease poor Tom,” “O, yes, witty ’tis, pot-hymn (…Bottom),” “O, ye aye ‘I’ Sue, tight-ass bottom,” “O, ye sweet Y, ’tis bottom,” “O, ye aye [pur]sue Tommy T’s bottom.”

           MT (cf. “empty”) and POT are overlaid (see lines 8-9, and comments above).

           The hairpin (i.e., down/up and up/down) versions of the code have other potentialities.