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Comments
One
hacks through thickets of ambivalent syntax and bawdy puns toward
reaching a clearing where, as I read it, this situation comes into view
in Rune 91: The poet is a minstrel singer whose “nightly”
songs aim at pleasing his friend, but this friend is tied up with “wanton”
companions and doesn’t show up to listen. With no audience or “inspiration,”
Will rationalizes and keeps on singing.
Although the poet’s self-deprecation is familiar to readers of the
visible Sonnets and may be purely conventional, the situation here does
describe Will’s personal reality—a minstrel with no audience,
“singing” in the dark world of the hidden Runes. Knowing of
Q’s runic game, with its inevitable imperfections, also helps us
understand terms like “burden” (13) and “attainted”
(4).
A calculated pattern of references to singing and storytelling include
“every hymn” (1); “measure” (7); “bearing
the…burthen” and “prime” (13), both musical terms;
and “any summer’s story” (14). (Punningly, summer
= adder = “numbers man” = metricist.)
Standing in apposition
to “lays” are these references: “this fair gift (jest,
gust) in me” (3); “faults concealed” (4); “a windy
night” (6); “these particulars” (7); “a better
(bitter) state” (8); “heart’s (art’s) history”
(9); “those errors” (12); and “story tale (tail)”
(14, suggesting “coda”). The question “Can knot [i.e.,
a riddle, a knotty text] dispraise, but in a kind of praise?” (11)
gets “answered” with a pun that both “praises”
and “dispraises”: “Sore.../Soar [= Rise aloft...] those
errors that in thee are seen” (12).
The rune sketches the unnamed friend and muse—“that
able spirit” (1)—as a dissolute courtier (see 2) whose indifference
drives his minstrel poet toward indiscriminate materials. The pun “knight”
(2, 6) joins with “come-peers” (2) and “lords”
(10) to depict the friend as noble—with “a… state”
(see 8). The pun “They are the Lords, and downy or soft [down arse
oft] their faces” (10) is playfully demeaning. Will’s only
known patron, Southampton, seems a likely auditor. The sea-language may
also be aimed at Southy, who had a naval background. Nautical puns include
those on “gust,” “piers,” “isle,”
“windy,” “rainy,” “sea,” “oar,”
and “knot.” Implicit associations among pirates, sailors,
earrings, and homosexuality energize the play “To every ‘him’
netted, a bliss pirate affords (...ablest pirate’s sword’s
/ In ‘O’…)” (1-2). “T’ Harry, the
Lord S., I endow an arse...” (10) may also pun on Southampton, Henry
Wriothesley.
The puns “Sore those ears that I inter, seen be earring...”
(12-13), “hair-fine be earring” (12-13) and “be earring
gold (...cold, old)” (initial words in 13-14) remind us that the
Chandos portrait of Will, the one reproduced on this page (above right),
shows a small, gold earring in his left ear. “Ears”—e.g.,
in the pun “ears are not my measure” (7)—was a sexually
suggestive term in Will’s day, while punning on “arse”
and “airs.”
Other
innuendoes (e.g., in 2, 10) may allude to the School of Night,
a London cabal that scholars often mention as possibly relevant to obscure
hints in Love’s Labor’s Lost. This coterie was rumored
to include Sir Walter Raleigh, also (of course) a sailor. “The cough
oft I suffer, just enemy, aye Swan tinges all...” (pun, 3-4) may
allude to the Swan Theatre and/or to coughing theatre audiences.
Puns
on “Hamnet” (1) and on the name “Meres, F.”
(14) are also intriguing. In Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury (1598),
Francis Meres published a full appreciative reference to Shakespeare.
One pun in line 14 of Rune 91 is “Cold make [i.e., ‘mate’
in Renaissance parlance], m’ Annie S. You, Meres., F., too, riddle
(...stow wry tale).” A pun on “eerie Hamnet” occurs
in 1 (code: ...euery Himne t...); another on Hamlet
or Hamnet lurks in the letterstring I am at (4). (Hamnet,
Will’s only son, died in 1596.)
Other variants
of puns about Will’s wife, Anne, include “In m’ Annie
S.’ look is the false heart’s history (...Southy falls hard...)”
(9) and “Cold make [mate], m’ Annie S., ye may restore, wide,
too [= ll = II]” (14). The last pun (like many others in Q) suggests
that Anne—once the mother of twins—was fat.
Sample Puns
1)
To you, wry Hamnet, Hath-a-bull aspired; Towery Hamnet had able
spirit of sorts; To you, rhyme innate I table, ass, peer, eye it, ass;
T’ Hat-a-bull, S’speare’s sword
1-2)
ford snow, (k)night, here; nitre
2) Know
Nate (Nun ate), hurrying o’er his come; Nun, eat her, Henry’s
come; compeers by night suggests the School of Night; eye scum,
peers
2-3) in
Horace’s empire is bane, I jet this; see empires benight the cause
of this; Henry’s come, peers, benighteth his office; I supinate
this
3) cough;
sour jest enemies (enemas) wan tinge; airy jest
3-4) enemy,
eye Swan, tinges false, concealed; in Jove, false counsel; false cunt’s
healed
4) faults
conceal dewy Runnymede t’ Anne; false council,…Runnymede to
end; salts [medical, nautical]; fit aye names W., Anne, t’ John
[in]
4-5)
rune I made ended asylum; dead asylum, yes, hell, see; daisy limb ye see
5) my
cell see, Dis gray see; see no wing t’ hell; Ass ill, Asylum y’self
disgrace; Grace know I in Judy, [signed] Will
5-6) in
jet y’ will, Juno to win, Diana get; will June ode a windy knight
arraign?
6) Give
not Owen [Glendower? overlaid on “windy”] Diana; “Jew”
note; Erin eye, m’ horror (error)
6-7) nigh
Tehran, eye more O-beauties, particulars: Iran-ode mime, azure (my measure)
6-8)
a rune eye, my horror, beauties particulars, airy knot, my measure icy,
a bitter state, tome be long
7) see
you Lear’s Orion, autumn; icy you leer, Syrian ode mime
7-8) Aryan
ode may monsieur aye see; Aryan odd, my monsieur icy
(...I see; ...is he); measure I fee: a better state [printed ms.] to me
belong; a furious Hebe et her ass; measure Isaiah better, his tete
to me be long
8-9)
a better fed atomy (...bitter, fit) belongs in my Annie’s loo
9) Enemy
nasal OO [= see]; In m’ Annie S.’ look is the false heart’s
history; kiss this ulcer, ’tis history; many Salukis th’ evil
see
10) T’ Harry,
the Lord S.; They are the Lord Sundowners [cf. line 2], oft Harry’s
asses; T’ harried hell or Dis Anne, down, errs oft
10-11) sundown errs
oft here, faces sea; seize Canada, deaf peers
11) See aye knotty
I’s pierce butt-end, a kind of praise (pee-raise, pee-race); I see
abut Inca, India—surprise!
11-12) if Paris
be you, tiny kin deaf Paris is; Pharisees’ whore thou fear; See
aye naughty eyes pierce beauty and—aching, deaf—praise his
O-art; a kin deaf praises Howard, whose errors they’d eye (they
dye) naughty; deaf peer, eye Caesar thou fear
12-13) rot stayed
in thee, arising, burying thee; Sore thou Pharaohs thought, in theory
Annie baring the wand; Sorties arose, that India ravine baring
13) prime [mathematical,
musical] peer, eye me; Enos the peer eye
13-14) know, Southy,
Pyramus old; to neighbor, then, owes the peer a maze; eye mickle dim ache;
neighbor in jetty wan, to neighbor thin
14) Cold ma[t]e,
m’ Annie S., you immerse [i.e., baptize in the Protestant manner],
saved whore, why t’ Hell? Annie S., immer saved whore, get hell;
m’ Annie’s homme, arse fit to riddle; ache m’
Annie S. immerses; Cold May came, Aeneas you may restore; “Called”
(Cold), mecum Annie is humorous, fit, whorey tail
Acrostic Wit
The
lefthand acrostic code—TN TO AG B II T C S BC—suggests,
e.g., “Ten to a gibbet [gallows] see, site [B=8] see (...sight 100
[=C])”; “Tint o’ Egypt seize, B.C.”; “Ten
dodge bait, seize ‘B.C.’”; and “Ten took bitty
seas by sea.” Other readings include these: “Ten dodge bitey
seas busy,” “Tend t’ H., Betty, Sue’s busy,”
“Ten dodge Betty, seize Bess,” “102—age (be 2
t’ 100) is B.C.,” “Tint o’ agate [B=8] eye aye;
tease is busy,”and “102 Age bitty see, sub-sea.”
The codestring II T C S BC may read “T.T. [i.e.,
two-T], see, is busy”and “...T.T. [i.e., two-T] sees B.C.”
The joke suggests that Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing agent, is
reactionary in his focus. A full reading along these lines is this: “T.T.
[i.e., T & T] o[f] Age 8: T.T. sees B.C.” Here the idea might
be that Thorpe is puerile or that he lives ca. 8 B.C. (One remembers that
Thorpe, working on the Q project, would have uniquely cultivated a player’s
minimal focus, looking at individual letters as alphabetic characters
fraught with implicit possibilities.)
The
upward (reverse) codeline—C BS CTII B GAOT NT—suggests
such readings as these: “See B.S. See ‘To be,’ gaity
end”; “Site’s City, I be Gate in it [a mild sacrilege]”;
“See B.C., city ape, God, New Testament”; and “See busy
type gaity [gaudy, goat, Judy] end.” Variant readings include “See
busy City, I be Gate innate,” “See busy seat [housesite, butt]
I eye be gay. Ode end,” “See Bessy taught [II= TWO], gaity
end,” and “See busy City aye eyed: God (...goat), New Testament.....”
(The
anachronisms CBS and TNT show the runes’ ongoing inventiveness—and
how a gameplayer cooperates with the strings to help generate “decoded”
wit.) The inherent play in the letterstring GAOT on “goat”
would certainly have been apparent to Will as a parallel to the “sacrilegous”
reversal of GOD to DOG.
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