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          This rune has us guessing about whether the person who from Will’s angle should be more farsighted and less dissolute is Southy, Sue, or someone else. The play “How much more praise deserved thy beauty, Susie” (2) and the deeper pun “My main delight—thou, Sue, whom nature hath not made for store (history)” (10-11) both suggest that the “world’s fresh ornament” (1) is the poet’s older daughter; but “Sue” puns on “So” and thus on Southy, who is much the easier to imagine as a decaying house (13). Both the “mirror” section (3-4) and the “husbanding” conceit (8) are ambiguous about gender. The listener does seem effeminate or vain or both (3-5), with improvident friends who are bad influences (11). A backhanded compliment (4-5) suggests that his self-love wastes essences that might be better used in “husbandry” (8) to rear a brood (6) that would keep his “house” (13) intact and thriving.

           Combining interrogatives with exhortation and observation, the tone of the lyric modulates between shrillness and restraint. Brief (7-8) but emphatic is the conceit of two musical strings “husbanding” each other in a gracefully descending duet; the scenario foils the listener’s solo “fall to decay” and is also objectifies the sonnet/rune duet—with erotic innuendo.
  
          “Highmost pitch” (7) even suggests a roof (with a tarlike covering) on a house that may “fall to decay” (13).

           More conventional figures based on economics and trade form another image cluster: e.g., “use” (2); “having traffic” (4); “unthrift” and “spend” (9); “change,” twice (10); “Let,” “made for store” (11); and such puns as “mint” (1) “fee” (3), “leased,” and “till” (5). A latent sequence of figures about clothing and dress—congruent with a concern about “art” (1, 3, 6) and “ornament” (1)—includes “wear knot” (5), “change my mend” (10) and “suffer a hose fall” (13). The convergence of “traffic” and “car” (4, 7) feels disturbingly modern.

           Masturbation wit (4-5) links with deprecating jokes that the auditor is “womanlike” (3); produces no “essence” (5); needs “ten times” more than he has (6); is like a listing vehicle “going downhill” (7); and is “falling to decay” (13). The “eyes” that prove the erection to be sagging (14) may be, jokingly, testicles, relaxed in a “down” position. Earlier, the play “Moor-praise” (2, cf. “Moor pee raise/raze”) touches on an old joke about race and endowment. Also innuendo-laden are “fresh ornament” (1), “beauty’s use/vise” (2), “spend” (9), and unnatural “non-storage” (11).

           Like others, this rune may be read as the poet’s address to his own composition, with himself the “unthrift” whose architectonic project “falls to decay” even as he erects it. Images about mirrors, trafficking with oneself, and the complementary strains of a duet elaborate this discussion. Since “world” (1, 9) suggests The Globe, one detects self-references in “the world’s fresh ornament” and “an unthrift in The World dust penned.” Other puns (below) may point to the profligate behavior of Nate Field, the boy actor. Tone and real facts are both hard to determine.

Sample Puns

           1) The hooded art know, th’ ewe, earl’s fresh “horn” amend; Thou that art Nate, world’s [The Globe’s] fresh ornament
           1-2) Thou, that art naughty, world’s fresh ornament, / How much More [the unpublished play by Shakespeare and others] praise deserved; a man, Thos. More, praise deserved
           2) Home you see, a moor appears…; deferred, desert; wife, vice, verse
           2-3) thy beauty, Sue, see, thou art thy mother’s glass, Anne S.
           3) T’ Howard hymn oathers laughing chantey [1869, cf. F. chantes]; T’ Howard thy mother’s sick laugh ends
           3-4) Anne S., hiney fore, having traffic with thyself, awl wan; Nate F.
           4) Four; traffic note car (7); this elf, all wan
           4-5) (masturbatory); Nathan were Nate F.
           5) Tee! Henry runed, fume immersed eyes, dilation left; laughed; leaf’d; least
           6) Ten times thyself we rape, peer; thin thou art; We rape ired Hen. (tee!), Howard; also “penis-size” wit
           6-7) Happier thee, Nate, O you art Beauty in form high-most
           7) Butt-wen—form high, moist peak; witty, we wreck, err; weary, wiry; wit very sour; M’ ark, how wan; Shakespeare ring’s witty husband to another [rune]; …to an oather
           7-8) (homoerotic); seer may wreck you
           8-9) Anne ought her loo quit, a nun there I fit; oather, Luke you hate
           9) into you, Earl, dust’s penned; into you Earl dost spend
           9-10) Doc hinged it
         10) Ouch! [Huge] Anne jetted how Judith aye (I) may change; that I may change my “M-end” (Row M, line 13, ends in “decay”); that “I,” my edge, Anne “jimmy,” mend
         10-11) that huge titty Hat-I-may see hang, my mind delighteth; my main delight—thou, Sue [So = Southy], whom nature hath not made for history; Hath., Anne—oat [swain] made for history; Hath-not-maid is our story (history)
         11) Homme Nate, you’re Wrath [in a morality?], not maid
         12) Tennis typed you; Thence thy bawdy, Doc, you ass, shun ma[t]e
         13) Who lets so fair a huss S. Hall, too, decay? Howl, Anne [et] S., foe sour, a hussy, offal, toad easy
         14) Butt formed hiney, ass, make [mate], an “O” letched, a wry ewe (Eve); But from thine “Eies!” make an “O”); Thin “I” is making “O” alleged error

Acrostic Wit

          The downward emphatic lettercode—THT FTT B M LOLT WB—suggests such gamy possibilities as “That fit [i.e., stanza] be m’ lulled web,” “…my lull-to-be [cf. ‘lullaby’],” “Thought fit be m’ lull: ‘To be…’,” “Thought of T.T., B.M. lulled web,” and “That fit be mellowed web.” With B = 8, the code suggests “That fit B.M. (...fated hymn) lulled wight.”

           The upward reverse acrostic—BWT LOL M BTT FTHT—allows such readings as “Beauty, lull hymn, bitty, fitted [i.e., stanza’d],” “Bawdy hell, old hymn bitty, fitted,” “Beauty, lull him: Be T.T. fitted,” and “Bawdy lull may be T.T.’s thought [F=S].”