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Comments
The ambiguously identified
“unlettered cleric” (1) sets a comic tone. The epithet
may refer to the friend, the poet (a self-confessed “poor”
writer), or any unrespected admirer of Will’s work. The word “riches”
(3), ironically renaming the clerk’s shrill approval, triggers the
poem’s main conceit, replete with foil, as Will proceeds to deliver
his own little sermon in a “form” (5) that is abstract, convoluted,
self-righteous, and moralizing (4-9), but not above “lascivious
comments” (11). Finally, the poem, tongue-in-cheek, undercuts both
the clerk’s ignorant enthusiasm and the speaker’s pious response.
“That riches” (3)—echoed
in “nature’s riches” (10) and “rich increase”
(13)—is a key phrase. Though initially ironic, “riches”
in line 10 suggests the muse’s attributes--phallic plenty, with
broad innuendo in “husband” and “expense.” Finally
(in 13), “riches” suggests autumn’s bounty. “Rich[ness]”
(13) connects “jewels” (12) with “flow-ers” (14),
both sexual puns. (A “flow-er” is “someone or something
that flows.”)
Contrasting with “bounty”
as a conscious foil is the “basest jewel” (12)—”lowliest
poem,” but also an appositive for the ignorant clerk’s talk
(1-3). Will is finally “in the least of them” (8)—dead
(2), at rest (7), his life at an end (8). The poet’s “base
jewels” foil the friend’s (and life’s) immutable richness.
The witty paradox is that Will’s poems may themselves become infinitely
“esteemed,” teeming with multiplicities.
The “story” that
the poet “sets down” (4-14) is richly suggestive of sexual
intercourse, with innuendo lurking in such puns and details as “a
Moor-tall pitch” (2), “come in the rearward” (6), “a
joy above the rest” (7), “husband,” “expense”
(10), “Making lascivious come-end to sound his port” (11),
“basest jewel” (12), “ass-teamed,” (12-13), and
“big with…increase” (13). Thus Will makes “lascivious
comments” about the friend’s “sport” (11)—seemingly
riotous intercourse. The pun in “riches” (3) on “wry
chess” and various combat metaphors (2, 6) expand the motif of “sport.”
Q’s “And for that” generates an impolite verb: “Anne
farted” (3).“The basest jewel, Will...” (12) is a namepun.
And “flowers” (14) puns not just on“flow-ers”
but also on “slurs.”
References to writing
and letters begin in the puns “unlettered clerk”
and “ ‘A’ men”--who, punningly, are “lettered.”
Printing terms occur in “struck” (2), “set down a story”
(4), and “set a form” (5); puns on “leaf” and
“well” are routine. “Teamed” means “paired”
(like Sonnets/Runes), while “increase” (13) puns on “ink-grief,”“in
[the] crease,” and “inker aye see.” Lines (or poets)
may be “flow-ers,” an “ode-er” writes odes, and
“pitch” puns on inkiness. “Change” and “rich”
also conjure up bits of economic diction.
A buried joke is that it may
be “Anne” who shows puritanical enthusiasm: “Anne, like
unlettered clerk… !” (1). (Sonnets editor Stephen Booth cites
a critic who suggests a pun on “Anne” in Q’s And.)
In Sonnet 85, which shares a line with Rune 90, a more sober
play on family business occurs: “Anne, … still cry, ‘Hamnet’
[Q Amen,/T], O very ‘Hamnet’ [Q Himne t]...”
(6-7). Hamnet was Will’s son, the twin who died young. The pun “Anne
deserted her H’s, an [w = IN / an] heiress, maid serving...”
(3). may remark playfully on Will’s wife’s speech patterns
(as in My Fair Lady) and on her giving up the name “Hathaway”
to become a Shakespeare.
Other puns add gamelike
texture in routine fashion: “A pun: ‘Thy Partisan
Set’ do own, ass, Tory...”(4) is one of a number of puns in
Q that play around with “naming the sets”in Will’s scheme.
“T’ Ovid, a sore (...ass, whore) may be undesired” (5)
and “a jib Ovid hears, too, in Antilles” (7-8) seem to be
linked, allusive plays. Hearing the first as “Ovid eyes oar, maybe
undesired” makes both puns “nautical.” Another incidental
pun in the lettercode is this: “I can now take note, his hanging
does bane denote; erase our hate” (9-10).
Closing puns may have in mind
Will’s son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, a likely projected auditor for
the hidden wit of Q during the years of the poet’s retirement in
Stratford: e.g., “The teeming ode-homme, big, witty, here
I teach John [code in] series / of different slurs in ode, or runed anew.”
An “...O, runed anew” means a “round” and thus
a “rune, runed....” The final phrase “in new”
also puns on “In HeLL” (with the four minims of w yielding
VV, which, tipped over to the right, encode LL) and thus on “John
Hall.”
The
diction of the text is relatively straightforward. Husband
(10) means “control wisely, ration.”
Sample Puns
1) Handily Colonel T.T. our dick lower (lore) kissed; Handily
kernel T.T. read; Anne…cry “Amen!”; see a lark; seal
ark; seal her kissed till, Shakespeare’ll see her hymen; our guest
tills wry hymen; cellar key still see rhyming
1-2)
till, Crimean, ape of a Moor tall
2)
A boom, o’er tall pitch, that Shakespeare ruse committed;
pit (Pete) shitted fit; oar
3)
Anne farted (deserted) riches; …fart a rich sewer is, mighty;
Anne deferred, Hat-er-I teaches W., Harry’s mighty syringe (siren);
W.H., a wry smitty, is erring; where is Midas earring? my Dis (deaf) earring
3-4)
Syrian Jew
4)
A pun, thy Partisan Set; see Anne S., Anne [et], Down, assed
whore! Tory; onus
4-5)
Ed’d own a storied “O”; the Y part I see, Anne,
fetid O—“W” (Wen), nest, “O” red; thy part,
I, see and set down as too red; parti-; to write o’ fetus whore
may be undesired
5)
t’ Ovid a sore may be undesired
5-6)
see Angus omen there reared, oaf, ass uncured; encored [i.e.,
repeated]; inch, semen there rue, hard oaf
6-7)
Come in the rearward of a cunt, queer dew (duo) wherein “I”
’d find ass a joy above the rest (rift); See omen, the rare, warty
African, queer dowry eye, knight
6-8)
a son quired, worry aye, night sends, eye Job, Ovid, Harry S., too
7)
W., Harry, Knight, sinned (sins); W.H. Rhine eyed; finned; a
boat; raft; a jib Ovid hears
7-8)
there stew ninety, leaf-to-stem; Himmel I see Hath. end; toasty
hymn, my leaf (malaise) attend
8-9)
W., Hen., in the leaf, tough theme, my leaf hath end: Harry S.
9)
T’ Harry is Orient hiatus an ode; thatch; Attic Anne—O,
take note, high change; take notice, hanging does bane denote
9-10)
O runed Hat. aye, see Anne-knot, naughty, see itch-engine
9-11)
hitch engined husband, Nate, your ass-riches fair homme
expends, making lascivious comments on thy sport (...thy ass-port)
10)
ex-pen [i.e., former writer] see; Nate, your ass rich is from Rome
10-11)
your Asser eyed Jesus, Rome, expanse see, my king laughs; expend sesame,
making laughs aye
11)
Sumac in jellies see; Seam aching, lass, see “I” vicious come
in t’ sun thy sport (t’ “son” this port)
11-12) come
in t’ sandiest port, Thebes to you (Jew) well will be
12) Thebes,
east o’ Jew-hell, will Palestine (Philistine) aid; The base Shakespeare
eye, Will, Will (Willobie) be Will Shakespeare teamed timid
13) The
demon god, human, big, wide, here aye cankers; the region sea erase
13-14) The
teaming ode, human pig-wit, hear, I teach John series of different slurs,
Anne ode orient [i.e., dayspring] in hue
14) Oaf,
desiring t’ slur synod, our Indian hew; Andean; John H.—you;
snotty “O” runed John-Hugh
Acrostic Wit
The
emphatic downward acrostic code—AAAV TC WWTA ([M?]TTO—incorporates
a lefthand parenthesis mark that may stand for “C” or “I.”
(Ambiguously, the initial M may also function in the code.) Given these
permutations, the code suggests, e.g., “A wit cut Act II,”
“Ate cud, ass, too,” “Odd queue taste, too,” and
“ ‘Out t’ sea,’ weighty motto” or “...wet,
eye sea motto.”
The
upward (reverse) code—OTT( [M] AT WWCT VAAA or OTT
[M](AT WWCT VAAA (with two possible orders)—suggests, e.g.,“Oats,
m’ 8 [phallic?] wicked weigh,” “Odd, my 8, wick t’weigh,”“Autumn
see, a twist weigh,” and “Autumn seat West weigh.” The
last reading might mean,“Contemplate the retirement home over in
Stratford.”
Other
decodings include some that direct their wit toward “T.T.”—Thomas
Thorpe, Will’s known printing agent, the signer of Q’s frontmatter:
e.g., “O, T.T., ms. eyed wicked. Why?” and/or “O, T.T.,
m’ seat (seed) waste away.” Any W (and especially any WW)
in the acrostic code may also represent Roman numeral meanings and/or
pictographic “fangs.” Thus the codeline may mean “O,
titty-cat fangs [pictographic VV] see, too.” Since Southampton’s
Tower companion is known to have been a cat, any catty wit may
have Southy in mind as a focal member of the potential audience.
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