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Rune
71, a lighthearted poem on a sober subject, might be called the
“Duel of Eulogies,” or “Who Will Go First?” Will’s
coyness about identifying his primary auditor in Q makes the question
“Who is it?” (14) doubly intriguing.
The
rune is neatly organized. The first four lines imagine the poet’s
death and instruct the unnamed friend to refrain from eulogy and keep
a low profile; the last four imagine the situation reversed and suggest
what the poet would write on the friend’s gravestone—very
little. The midsection (5-10) discusses the poet’s feelings for
his muse and evaluates the poems as “uninspired” but potentially
useful for recalling the friend’s “beauties.” Like many
of the runes, this one partakes of fliting—that is, a mock putdown,
a kind of “roast.” Such friend-berating implications undercut
the serious content—especially at 11-12.
Puns that add playful confusion include “that time
of ‘ye are’” (3), “when that fellow rest”
(4), and “thy beauties ‘we are’” (7).
The poem uses diction about eulogies and epitaphs—one relevant pun
is “In ‘O’ languor, m’ urn-form…”
(1)—as well as routine legal terms such as “leased,”
“arrest,” “invoked,” and “married.”
Other details cluster around the topic of time and seasons: e.g., “No
longer morn” (1); “barren of new pride [i.e., lacking new
growth]” (6); “That time of year”; and “May-st”
(3).
However
serious or jocular, the line that allows the reading “I
grant thou wert not married, too, my muse” (12) seems quietly biographical:
The poet himself is married and yet makes a point of his being “alone”
(9) and of seeking outside friendship, as in the present instance. He
suggests a vague concern with marriage in such details as “recitation”
(2), “barrenness” (6), and the puns “So are you two
[Sue, are you two?]” (5), “Sue S. t’halve, I enyoked
thee [i.e., son-in-law John Hall?] for my muse” (8), and “W.,
Henry [Q’s f looks like r], O, you dowried whore” (10-11).
“To make” (11) puns on “Two mate.” One lurking
conceit seems to be that the friend is a kind of bride, a “beauty”
(7) invoked “for my muff” (8) who does not “need painting”
(13); if the persona were to die (1-4), the friend should not play the
weeping widow, but should be “cunt-ended when that fellow rest”
(see 4).
Differently, the two lines that start with “So”
read covertly as apostrophes to Susanna—Will’s daughter Mrs.
John Hall, one possible muse—while other plays confound any conclusion
about who’s listening: e.g., “my Muse eye, never Sue (…newer,
Sue)” (12-13) and segments that seem to be directed at W.H./Southy—Henry
Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, Will’s only known patron.
Lines 10-11 pun, “Aye faint (A saint...,) W.H. annoys you, dowried
whore evil.” One thrust of Q (and of this text) is to frustrate
the reader about the muse’s identity. Coterie readers of the poet’s
own day would have enjoyed the same confusion, each finding enough clues
to make him think, “It’s me!”—and plenty to suggest
otherwise. Conveniently, WH always suggests both Southampton and (because
WH encodes the form IN H, suggesting Jn. H.) Dr. John Hall, Anne
and Will’s son-in-law.
Other
details pointing to Susanna Hall as possible auditor include
the play “O, wry S. Hall, live” (11) and the emphatic acrostic
suggesting both “Nota bene. Sue ‘tis…” (code NOT
B SV[V] TS…) and Sue (…SWOOIIW). But the pun “Write,
O, Wriothesley [Q RIshallliuey], your epitaph to make” (10-11) points
elsewhere. Other plays on “Southy” (a plausible nickname for
Southampton) appear in SO/VVHy/THy (5-7), SO/THy (8-7),
and “SO oft haue I” (8).
Q’s form Neuer (13) reverses to reueN (suggesting “rune”),
within the pun “I Rune saw that you did....” Thomas Thorpe,
Will’s printing agent, would likely have heard wit in to my (12),
suggesting “Tommy.” One terminal pun is “...witch see,
Anne S., aye m’ whore (...amour, etc.)” (14). An overlaid
“medical” version is “Who is it Hat. sees most? John
H. [= wh = IN H], eye, check Anne’s femur.”
Now that “That Time of Year…” (Sonnet 73) is
a recognizable set-piece, lines 2-3 suggest to us “recitation”
of that poem; an outside possibility is that the poem was composed ahead
of its context here, had gained in-group admiration, and was worked into
Set VI with a consciousness of that status. (The method of runic composition
would have allowed that.) With a bit more certainty one can suggest that
Will may be mocking the sentimental and periphrastic rhetoric of such
lines as his own, the third here, and also predicting the popular taste
for it with a fine prescience.
Sample Puns
1) Know longer my horn, sore, mewn [i.e., confined], I am dead;
“Noel,” un-German form; W., Hen. eye amid heady “O,”
leaft [on pages]; In “O”-languor, m’ urn-form, whinny
immediate
1-2)
he, Nahum, did olive t’ the world show, vile task
2)
Olé’s t’ the world faulty; Old, eye
Shakespeare, the World [suggesting The Globe] of old taste, queued o’er
City; “O” [pudendal] leased you, our lad, S. Hall did ask
you to recite [i.e., wedding vows]; laddie’s old task, uterus “I’d”;
East, the World faulty [cf. “East of Eden”]; “uterucide”
2-3)
old ass, cauterize it, eat it; To re-site [i.e., relocate] t’
Hat-i-may’s yard, home, I, Shakespeare, enemy behold
3-4)
Hat, “Tommy’s year” thou mayst in me behold, but be
contented when Tho. T. sell our fit [i.e., stanza]; Tommy, O seer, thou
may aye fit in me: behold butt, be “cunt-ended”; home, I,
Shakespeare, John [in] may behold, Beauty, son
4)
Butt, bacon-tinted wen
4-5)
W., Hen, that fellow Shakespeare saw, a rude homme,
yet haughty ass—ass foot to leaf; our fit ass, whore, you Tommy
thought
5)
Is “O” a rudiment thou jet? Sue; Sir
5-6)
asses’ subtle ease, wise my verse
5-7)
[initially in the lines] So…/VVHy…/THy [delineating “Southy”]
6)
W.H, yes, my verse foe be, aye runes new peer-eyed; my verses’ “O”
be a rune, oft new-pried; high, eye Samaria’s foe, baron’s
new parade; foe, barren o’ sinew, peer eyed (“I’d”)
6-7)
arses, Oberon’s new pride, thy glass will show
7)
Thickly Sue’ll feud, hee-haw t’ High Body, I swear; Thick
laugh will shout hee-haw; Will S. you’d hee-haw, thy bawdy swear;
Thick lay ass-swill
8)
Soft, thief I invoked; Sue, oft have I invoked thee for my muse;
Soft have I John yoked thee fore, my muse; muff; soar, my muse
8-9)
this army hymn you fuel, fiddle wan did call
9)
Eye awl, “O,” Nate “I’d,” see “awl”—a
pun; tail wan t’ hide; one did see Hall up, untidy
9-10)
decent; docent; …did call upon Thetis—Anne, too
10)
feint; O, Heaven t’ win, Jove, you’d “O” write;
Heaven twin [i.e., Hamnet?], I of you do write, Arise, Hall, live, your
epitaph to make; Heaven, twenty, a few, do right (write); dowry; knave;
knife; “O” housing twins you deride
10-11) aye
Saint W.H. annoys you, dowried whore evil; writer eyes Oliver, epitaph
to make; in Io, pseudo writer, I shall live
10-12)
deride our eisell, liver pity, fat homme, ache I grant
11) O,
wry shell you; you RIP; make [i.e., mate]; tomb, tome, Tom; ache;
Our evil Livy (Levi), Europe adapt
11-12)
megrim [i.e., migraine]; titty, how warty; I grant Thornton ought marry
Ed, Tommy, my wife
12)
Ignorant Howard, an oat, married Tommy; Tom hurried to malmsey
12-13)
muffin; Tommy, “muffing” your fetid ewe, died panting; my
homme, you Seine aver; thou wert knot-married, Thomas
13) eye
Rune (...I rown) [Q Neuer], saw [a saying], the two died panting,
needy; th’ toad eyed pain, tinging Ed
13-14)
engine, adieu, was it t’ hot? I never saw th’ touted
painting—in Edo, is it?
14) W.H.
“O” I sight, that ass aye is moist, W.H., itch, see Anne S.,
amour; witch see, Anne Seymour; Shakespeare witch, see Annie’s
amour (Anne-femur); W.H., O, eye seated, fey ass moist, W.H.
I see hissing, assy Moor; eyes moist; W.H., eye Jane Seymour (eye Jason,
see Moor); W.H., aye check Anne’s femur; …eye chickens, a
moor
Acrostic Wit
The
paste-up here has larger capitals than the other 13 runes that
follow in Set VI because its components are the first lines of the 14
sonnets in the set, and these opening verses in the printed version of
Q have oversized initials. The same bold capitals, I believe, would also
have been insistent on Will’s original hand-penned set leaf—forming
an acrostic grid system (both horizontally and vertically, and perhaps
diagonally) in the sonnet-shaped scheme that gives Q an architectural
feature that recurs on each set leaf. In any case, these emphatic initial
letters generate here in Rune 71 a vertical acrostic codeline for reader/players
to toy with and ogle at. Ambiguities result particularly in lines 2 (because
of the gap between O and L) and 6 (because of the divided W—printed
VV, with a “third” capital, H, initial in the line).
As always in Q’s
pictographic game, the “OO” sequence, as a mini-palindrome,
suggests paired eyes.
In
the down/down form of the emphatic acrostic codeline, plays on
Nota bene and “virgin” seem insistent, as does a
play on “Swede,” an epithet linked recurrently in Q with T.T.—i.e.,
Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing agent. This full codeline—NOT
B SVTS WOO II WO [L?]HV O VHOH[H?]RGN H—suggests such encryptions
as these: “Anne ought be sweetest wo... aye. Who? Virgin H[athaway?],”
“Knot [i.e., Riddle, Rune] be [Not t’ be] Southy’s woe,
O leave off whoring, H.,” “In ode, B.S. witty is…,”
“Nota bene: Suit’s woolly. O, Fortune [virgin]!”
“Noted [B=8] (In ode be…) Sue t’ swallow rune,”
Nota bene Swede’s woe...,” “An ode besuits
woe. To woe, love a (pudendal ‘O,’) virgin,” “N.B.
Sue,’tis woe-to-woe, live a (leave ‘O’) virgin,”
and “…liver, chin itch.”
The upward
reverse of this same codeline (i.e., an up/up variant starting “from
the inside”)—HNGR[H] HOHVOVH[L] OW I IOO WST V SBT ON—may
mean, e.g., “Hungry hovel owe I aye [i.e., I own]; [see = OO], W.
Shakespeare you spat on,” “Hungry hovel o’ waste...,”
“Hungry owl..., ” “Hungry Howell...,” “Henry
howl, ‘O’ waste [i.e., destroy the orifice], use baton,”
“Hungry Hall ‘O’ waste: use baton,” “Hungry
hole owe I, Jew-ass (Jewess), t’ Satan [B=8],” “Hungry
hollow I used to visit [B = 8], town,” and “Hungry Hall owe
[acknowledge]. Aye eye [OO= ‘ogle’] W.S., too, beaten.”
Here “hall” suggests both family seat and Will’s son-in-law,
Dr. John Hall.
The
codestring sequence OWST might mean either East or West
but also suggests “o’ W. St.” = “of W. Shakespeare,”
with st the conventional family name cipher. (In the lower-case
digraph, an s appears to hold a spear-shaped or dagger-shaped
t and “shake” it. The poet would surely have heard
plays on “Ass [i.e., S]-spear”) and “aspire” in
this easily encoded cipher. The happy accidents of the language code aided
and abetted in Will’s game.
“Swallow”
(SWOOIIWOLHVO, down) and “hungry” (HNGRH, up)
seem symbiotically interactive in the codeline.
The
down/up hairpin (starting in the top left position) suggests,
e.g., “N.B. Suit (sweet) is ‘woo’ to vulva, virgin itch,
hungry hole wooest you, spat on (ass bit on, as baton).” “Swallow”
(down) and “hungry” (up) seem to be interactive. Other variants
of this two-columned (or “ladder”) codeline can be similarly
explored.
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