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Comments
This
composite poem made up of the 14 end-lines in Set VII mixes its
poetic figures egregiously, “speaking in effect” (see 1) as
if to contradict Will’s assertion that his poet’s “mine”
of “matter” is exhausted (2).
Partly
a self-denigrating complaint, the rune explores the isolating
results of Will’s decision to put the best face on the unnamed muse’s
life. His theme—relevant to the poet and to his muse, but with larger
implications—is the contradiction between what’s inside and
what shows. The pun “speaking insect” (1) clarifies some of
the wit and meaning in the ideas of not being kingly (3), of wretchedness
(7), of “weeds” (10), and of fearing winter (13)—while
the pun “speaking in a sect” suggests both “…coterie”
and “…sectioned parts.” (The Runes address an in-group
audience and are assemblages of verse sections.)
The
poet’s “dumb thoughts” (1) suggest his unexpressed
(and wrong) ideas, with the hint of a dumbshow that makes line 3 seem
to allude to the Mousetrap scene in Hamlet. These “silent
ideas” have succeeding analogues, all of them figurative equivalents
for the runes: e.g., a “king” with “matter” (3);
the friend’s “right” (4); the poet’s “love”
for him (5); what the poet “knows,” the friend’s “sweet
virtue” (9); the beauty of the lily (10); and a sharp knife (11).
Contrasted
with such “dumb” ideas are figures describing what actually
appears in print: “speaking in effect” (1), implying both
showy conceits and “ineffect” (i.e., bad rhetoric); a “lack
of matter” (2, 3); something “bared all wrong” (4);
a subject “compared” (6) in figures rather than shown directly;
a lost subject, and distressing matter (6-7); “thy show” (9),
implying superficial representation; a knife “ill-used,” the
rendering not sharp (11); a “good report / That leaves” (12-13),
suggesting evanescent art; and finally, an art that seems frivolously
playful and concerns itself with the muse’s “shadow,”
not his essence (14).
Similarly,
the poem recognizes (in 8-9) a likely contradiction between what the friend
really is and how the poet chooses to perceive him. The friend’s
“sweet virtue,” then, is a part of the show (9), or shadow
(14), that appears lily-pure. Underneath is the aroma of festering mortality
(10)—and of a muse who is hard and destructive (11), deserts friends
(6, 14), asserts prerogatives (4), and is so vain as to “hate comparison”
(5-6). Thus we hear such disparaging puns as “knife, ill used, doth
lose his edge / As thou” (11-12), “myself will bare all
wrong” (4), and “I must ne’re love him” (5).
These
separate dichotomies between reality and appearance then, suggest
a staged deterioration: 1) The friend’s character is real; 2) the
poet chooses to misperceive it; 3) and he expresses his misperception
in showy but faulty conceits.
At the opposite end of such analysis, one reads the poem for its play,
with puns and bawdry that nearly derail any train of serious thought.
As usual, letterstring puns in the lines as well as the lefthand acrostic
string of emphatic capitals seem authorized to house ambiguous wit.
Entertaining
puns, for example, that are encoded in the textual letterstrings
include these:
— “eye
Nice, a city endless” (1-2);
— “Thoughts,
our theory, yet may sell, few eye labor” (4);
— “I
jet myself, Will, liberal rune” (4);
— “notice
a missal (...missile) to hiss away and maim oft” (6-7);
— “Thomas
T. be false, and yet I know it not” (8), berating Will’s known
printing agent, Thomas Thorpe;
—“false
Anne died, I know it not” (8);
—“...witty
S., the artist, knave, ill-wifed, doth lose his edge (...love his Age)”
(10-11);
— “thy
‘God report’ [possibly the King James Bible project, in progress
before 1609] that leaves Luke pale t’ read in jetty hue, interesting
e’er (...ear; ...error)” (12-13); and
—“...pale
Ed. [i.e., ‘editor,’ likely a joking epithet for Thomas Thorpe]
reading to you [cf. Hamlet, who ‘enters, reading’], enters
in error; a sweeter, shadowy wit had he, if he did play” (13-14).
The
pun “a Swede, here shadowy...” (14) is one of many
suggestions in Q that Thorpe is a “Swede.” This insinuation
occurs in Rune 1.1 and crops up all over the place in Q in ways that have
led me inductively to this small hypothesis. Doubtless it was fun for
Will to think of “his Dane” and “his Swede” as
foils. Thorpe would have enjoyed the joke as much as Will.
For
other punning potentialities in the line, see Sample Puns (below).
The
possibility of a coterie reference to the KJB project in “thy
God report” (12) is particularly interesting. One pun (of many possibilities)
in 12-14 is this: “As thou being mine, mine is thy God Report that
leaves Luke pallid reading. (Th’ W inters an error. I saw
it here fade. Do you....?)” The closing pun “I with Thief
did play” may mean, “My cohorts were like the Thief on the
Cross, crucified with Christ.” The closing line, “As
with your Shadow, I with these did play,” if aimed at one of the
KJB committee members, might mean, “While you fiddle with texts
about the Holy Ghost, I fiddle here with these gamy texts.” (See
below, where Titus may occur as acrostic wit. And see the index
to subtextual terms, particularly re. [Michael?] Rabbett, [Richard?] Edes,
and [John] Boys.) Since distributions of labor applied on the KJB project,
matching up names with such plays as Luke (a pun here in 13) may eventually
be fruitful as a way of narrowing the field and deciding whom Will had
in mind as his coterie audience. Progressively I’ve become convinced
that Will, in his solitary project (but with Thorpe’s collaboration),
thought of the parallel between himself and the committee concurrently
working on that “other” momentous project.
Q’s
form vs’d (11) is especially versatile, punning,
e.g., on used, wifed, whiffed, and versed.
Phallic
bawdry, as usual, tinges the text. “Edge” (11) routinely
has phallic overtones. “...Know f--k matter, that (thought) farty,
rigid: Myself, Will, bare ‘awl’ wrung—fore ‘I’;
muffed, an ‘ear’ low...” is one variant of the puns
in 3-5. Lines 4-5 concurrently encode an entertaining pun on “farty
rectum,” suggesting such a scenario as this, e.g.: “That farty
rectum, y’ ass, [wi]ll fuel bare awl—wrong form use, t[oo]near,
low....” Phallic puns in 12-13 include these: “A stubby inch,
mine” and “A stubby inch, m’ ‘anemone’ is
thick, odd, repartée tells (...our [whore-]portal is low)....”
The interactive
forms so. / all (6-7) pun on “Sue Hall,” Will’s
daughter. Thou maist (opening 8) is a close form of Thomas T.,
suggesting Thorpe, the printing agent.
Sample Puns
1)
“Monsieur, Madam,” thou jet, ass, speaking insect;
Miss, whore, my dumb thoughts; Ms. o’er (ore); in a sect
1-2) eye
Nice, a city endless
1-3) Is
Peking Jonah’s city, Hen, Jack, Tommy T.?—Turd Hat. enfeebled
my Nine [i.e., nine muses]
2) Thin
lacky Tom, a turd, had enfeebled mind; I’m adder [cf. “summer,”
metricist]; I matter t’ Hat., enfeebled mind; Mater; Th’
Nile I see (icy), get I maid t’ hurt, hating sable demon (domain)
3) John,
flee Peking, boudoir-king ; join flea piquing in butt; King in “O,”
f--k matter
3-4) f--k
maid earthy, ’tis whore, thy right; f--k my dirty Hat., farty, rigid
miss; missal fuel (swill) bare, all wrong; f--k my turded ass
4) our
theory yet may sell, few eye labor; ill be Earl W.
4-5)
hell-fuel burial, rune-giver eye; awl wrong, fore-“I” muffed,
an ear low; Hall, wrong for aye—muffed, an earl!; That farty rectum,
y’ ass, [wi]ll fuel bare awl—wrong form use, t[oo]near, low...
5) “farm”
you fit near “loam”; in “ear,” L’homme
W.H. emitted oft hate; “Forum” you fit in here
5-6)
W.H., homme, thou doffed 8 [inches?], compared; thou dost eat
come
6) Come,
party (pardie), with love of The Will; Come, peer dewy, idle “O”
see oft; he, Will, knot seamy sow
6-7) notice
a missal to hiss; faulty swine, dim, moist, red, shit make
7-8)
“Awl’d,” Hiss-away, Anne, my moist, wretched ma[t]e,
thou mayst be false, Anne, yet aye know it not
8) Anne
died, I know it not; eye naughty knot; T’ home I have t’ be;
fall scene died, I know; Bess eye, licensed, wide-eye kin (ken)
8-10) know
witty, “notey” Southy, sweet were tune of W., Harry, “notey”
fool
9) “I”
fit, his weedy virtue; his witty word you answer not
9-10) Will
I list Hat “sister,” “female,” “sour whore,”
“fat and weighty ass”? Aye fit, high, sweet virtue, Anne S.
were not—this howl aye, allies
10-11) Witty S., the artist,
knave, ill-wifed, doth lose his edge (...love his Age)
11) [phallic]; knave ill-versed
doth love high sedge
11-12) loo face, ditch
“assed”; loo-faced Ed, gassed helping m’ Annie, menaced
12) A stubby inch—mine,
m’ Annie’s; eye Nomini aye, Southy
12-13) thy “God
report” [suggesting an allusion to The KJB project] that leaves
Luke pale t’ read, in jet-hue inter sneer; m’ Annie is thy
God Report, that loo-slough
13) pee awl’d, red
inch, th’ wen to arse, an ear; Winder cf. “windy
round”; leaves low-coupled, read (red) in jet (inched you inter);
T’ Italy slow, cappelli dreading
13-14) in ear, ass-withe;
the windy arse, near ass (an heiress); sneer aye, Swede, you’re
fey, dowdy, hideous Ed, I’d plea; enter sinner’s wide “ewer”
fey, doughty; pale Ed, reading to you, enters near [cf. Hamlet, who “enters,
reading”]
14) Eye Southy; Aye Sue
eyed your ass; Ass, with your shitty “O” Judith aft did play;
I, witty thief, died, pillowy; aye witties dyed th’ [p=th] lay;
A sweeter, shadowy wit had he; fetid, peel aye; fated, peal I; aye sweet
your shit; aye Dido I wooed; adieu, you eyed the seated play; I Wyatt-thief
did play
Acrostic Wit
Like
the main text, the acrostic codeline encodes “Thorpe-wit.”
(The initials “T.T.” occur twice in Q’s frontmatter,
and scholars acknowledge that the signature is Thomas Thorpe’s.)
In the downward letterstring—MTI TF CAT IL TATA—the
bawdy codestring FCAT opens up suggestive readings including, e.g.,
“M’ T.T. f--ked a lady (...laddie) t’ aye,” “Him,
T.T., f--k aye [I] till ‘Ta! Ta!’” “Him, T.T.,
f--k, idle daughter,” “Mighty tough cat, ill T.T.,”
“Empty eye tough kettle, T.T.,” “M’ T.T., off-site,
ill T.T.,” and “Empty, tough cattle taught I.”
The encoded
form Titus [code TITF, with F = S, conventionally] reinforces the
likelihood of coterie wit about the KJB project, the “God report”
(see Sample Puns 12-13, above).
The
upward reverse of the codestring—A TAT LITA C FTIT M—encodes
such possibilities as these: “A tight Lady C. fitted him,”
“A tight laddie, see fit item,” “A titled ass, fit item,”
“Addled ass, fit item,” “High tea, delights of tidy
hymn,” “Aye T.T. laid a sieved item,” and “A tight
lid, a sieve: tidy hymn.”
The down/up
and up/down hairpin variants of the codeline yield other possibilities
that a player here can toy with.
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