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With
“Eve’s apple”—enticing and dangerous—as
its central poetic figure, Rune 97 comments both on the flawed attractiveness
of Will’s unnamed listener/muse and on Will’s imperfect embodiment
of this allure. The poet’s tone is ambiguous. His praise of the
muse’s “countenance” (2) is full of negative innuendo.
His self-criticism feels conventional but, as usual, can be literally
explained by the complexity of the Q project, which makes writing “good”
verse hard.
Though
the main conceit seems sparsely developed, many sly details (often
comic or ironic) allude to Eden. As something “thou mayst [not]
take” (7), “Eve’s apple” (9) is both ”blessèd
fair” (8) and a sweet thing turned sour (10). As a symbol of the
“large privilege” of choice, a matter requiring that one “take
heed” (11), this apple showed a “blot” (8) and “turn[ed]
sourest” by prompting Original Sin (10). “Alone” (7)
seems ironic because line 3 suggests an ideal Edenic connection, line
4 implies a committed “marriage,” “vow” (5) hints
at a wedding oath, and “strains of woe” (6) even supplies
the wedding music. “Your countenance filed up (...silly dupe) his
line” (2, my emphasis) suggest’s Adam’s lineage,
his sinful descendants. “Strains of woe” (6) also suggest
transmitted sin—with a play on “defiled” in 2.
Further, line
1 may admonish the listener, “Respect each other because you’ve
said your vows”—with “the breath of words” implying
Creation, the beginnings of speech, and Adam’s first system of nomenclature.
Jokingly, “re-specked” (1) means “marred again.”
“Strains” (6) echoes “stains”; and “dull”
(13) is a foil to “shiny” (like an apple). Line 11 puns, “Eat
dirt.”
Also
crafty are these puns: “your Count and Aunt’s [de]filed
up his line” (2); “your cunten Aunt’s [de]filed up his
line” (2); “Thus halve I Ad(this adder)am….”
(3), with the puns “this add-err” (i.e., additional mistake)
and the cider amplifying the wit; “stemmy cell see”; “ill
vowed, Eve [code: Q eb] ate” (5); and “mistake”
(7). “Winter” (see 13-14) contrasts with an implicit summer
of “growth” and apples (9), while “strains” (6),
“sourest” (10), “subtle a cheer” (13) and “winter
still” (14) suggest cider-making. “Eve supple” puns
both on her “growth” (9)—from ribby origins—and
her gullibility. A “hiss line” (2) is what the serpent used
on Eve.
Other
lexical links seem calculated. Initial words in 12-14 pun “butter
y[e] et.” “Cherry ye et” occurs in 13-14. “You
away” (14) contrasts with line 2, which implies presence. “Seemed
it Windier still” (14) echoes “breath of words” (1).
“Retch” means “bring up phlegm,” so the pun “W.
retched in thy salon” (7) coyly links “Eve’s apple”
(9) to Will’s own Adam’s apple.
Diction
beyond the obvious about the topic of writing also occurs, including
such examples as “I had [i.e., embodied] thee” (3); “a
terse, yucky simile to the eye foe be” (3-4); “strains [musical
lines, types]” (6); “in this alone” (7, ironic in Q’s
double scheme); “this large privilege” (11), a conceit for
the cornucopic cycle(s); and “they [i.e., the poems] sing...”
(13).
Lines 13-14
encode a tedious joke about the interrelated letters Y, W, and
U that may be rendered, “…subtle eye, see here /
Y, & seemed it W in tears [i.e., torn in two] telling
U, ‘A W eye’.”
Other
incidental puns, routine game elements in the Q verses, include
these: “...a gay Anne S., Tommy see, aye silly, wood [i.e., crazy]...”
(5-6), where “Tommy” may be Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing
agent; and “White see: M.D. eyed winter still and dour”(14),
where “M.D.” may have Dr. John Hall, Will’s son-in-law,
in mind.
The closing
letterstring elements and you away suggest “Anne doughy,”
one of hundreds of suggestions in Q that Will’s wife was fat.
A
more complex play in 14 uses Y as a pictographic “seam,”
a bodily crevice: “Y, Anne [= et = and] seam, died; W [a ‘double
groin’] inter: ass, tail, Anne doughy.” Yet concurrently
plays on “wide,” phonic Y + et. And and
you away is a bifurcated play on “Anne [...] away.”
With
Yet = “Wyatt,” the name of theearly English
sonneteer, the same code allows such a reading as “Wyatt seemed
aye t’ whine tears...” (14).
Sample Puns
1)
Then, oather, suffer; forty bared hiss; swords respect; an odorous
ass whored (oared)
1-2) Thin;
T’ Hen, oathers forty breathe off words “Harry S., pieced
beauty, W., Henr…”
2)
W.H. in your cunt eye, Anne see filled up; W., Hen., your cunt aye none
see, sealed up; dupe’s line; vassal eye né
2-3) will
deux-piss line; filled you pizzle [penis] in th’ huss; you
sh…i…t [Q s haue I had] thee a sad ream; you shitty
ass…
3) Th’
huss Have-I-had teased reamed “O,” this letter [...ladder,
i.e., acrostic rune]
3-4) terse
you see his mellow V; a terse, huge simile to the eye foe be
4) Suck
a seamy love-tooth
4-5) chase
mild Ovid odious, oblong, farty, aging; Sue, cheese mellow, toothy aye,
of “O” below, gave “O” earthy again; th’
eye’s odd, reamed oaths later suck, aye seamy, low
5-6) Tommy
see, aye silly, wood, abating; Forty “edge” Anne Shakespeare,
Miss Hell-Vial, woody, beaten daughter: Shakespeare runes (reigns, rains
“O” sewage)
6)
Anne-daughter veteran is of woe; In doughty rift our Annie is; woe
suggests woman; woe-witch, an “O” wife (...whiff); W.H. itching;
an O, seamy woe [cf. Eve’s apple, 9]
6-7) W.H.,
eye China Sea, moored, see Eden; In O, ass, immure a touched John; in
O see m’ wo-, wretched in this, awl wan
7) wan
thought; wretch, dentiste alienated thou mistake
8) Be
you twat, ass’s “O”, beloved of Harry—that S.,
Harry, is noble; ass desired Hat’s ears, now bloody; fear snow bloody
8-9) low
towel (dowel) eye; Harry S., know blood, howl, accuse applied oath; blow
thou, (below, thou) lick Eve’s apple
9) Will
I cave supple; Holy cave supplied oath; thy bawdy G-row
9-10) Rover,
sweet ass T.T., hangs, turns; Howl I cue, easy pealed (…supple,
doughty, bawdy, gross or sweet)
10) Forest
weedy, Shakespeare things turn forest, bait hardy
10-11) eye
ready Adeste; Yet hear deed (Y’ et her dead) t’ ache
head
11) cedar
heart; this large prow allege; T’ kettle dirty, lusty ass, leer;
eye slur, jabber; hurdle oft is large; lofty
11-12) eye
victual t’ jab
11-13) “edge”
bawdy duenna, t’ follow thee and f--k, afford her a fetus
12) Butt,
dough knots owe, aye low, thin f--k of art; fart
12-13) John,
f--k ass-arteries t’ heaven, jetties witty, subtle; Farter I fit,
he’s inched; eye Sue, idea is “O” dull
13) foe, dull
ass hear; subtle leisure; you lecher
13-14) Harry,
ye to sea made it; itchy, red (ready), is omitted wen; itchy, red ass
emitted wind; you’ll lechery yet see emitted; witty, subtle age,
red see mead; subtle, a cherry ye et, seamed it, W [runic Wen],
terse till; subtle lechery’d seem dead
14) Shakespeare
ill, endive aye weigh; t’ island you aye weigh; to island dewy;
M.D. eyed wine tear, still and dewy; W. enters “till”: Anne
Deux-a-way (Deux-I-weigh, Do-away)
Acrostic Wit
The
emphatic downward acrostic code—TBTS FAW B HFT BOY—suggests,
e.g., “Tybalt’s foe be hefty boy,” “‘To
be,’ ’tis fob [i.e., a trick, artifice], ladder [= H, acrostic
rune], fit [i.e., stanza], boy,” “…’tis faux…,”
“‘To be,’ ’tis fob-letter forte t’ boy,”
“T. beats fop, hefty boy,” “Tupped is faux,
pasty [code F = S] boy,” “Tub, ’tis fob [i.e., artifice],
ladder fit, buoy,” “Tipped ass, fob, ‘ladder’
fit boy,” and “Titus/Tight-ass [B=8] foe be hefty boy.”
Tup means to fornicate. Here, TB is at the Top
of the acrostic ladder, a phonically appropriate position.
The
upward (reverse) code—YO BT FHB WAF STBT—suggests,
e.g., “You bet fob waves tipped,” “…was [F=S]
stabbed,” “You bit of hip, wave, ass t’ beat,”
“You bait fib, waif, Shakespeare bitty,” “You beat fate
[B = phonic 8], wife (...waif) stabbed,” and “White [B = 8],
tough hip waves t’ beat.” WAF S suggests “Wife
S.,” i.e., Will’s Anne.
With
B = 8, F = S, the upward code suggests, e.g., “Wights hate wives
tight ” and “Wights hate wasted tea.” The reader/player
deduces such conventional equivalencies—and others including ST
as the Shakespeare name cipher—through hours and years of experience
with the Game. Original players would have had coterie indoctrination
into such conventions. Doubtless Will discovered some of these alphabetic
shortcuts as he went along and conventionalized them in his thinking as
he perceived multiple meanings emerging, instantaneously and to some degree
automatically. His “Great Mind” (as he calls it) must have
enabled overlaid concurrencies to coexist far more readily than most of
us more limited mortals can imagine.
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