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This
compliment to the muse characterizes the poet’s private
act of love, his writing. Some vague lines seem unflattering to the unnamed
“you” (1): e,g, line 5 suggests conceit, and 10 hints at “shallowness.”
These putdowns are consistent with the usual tone of the Q Game, which
indiscriminately aims overlaid compliments and insults at the reader/player—and
especially at the “friend,” Will’s customary (but unidentified)
primary auditor.
Typically,
much of the wit focuses on the Runegame, on writing itself. “This
verse” (1) and “my gentle verse” (11) are core descriptions;
appositive terms include “this” (2) and “This”
or “This silence” (13). Parallel references occur in “I
always write of you” (6); “thy memory” (7); “that
which I compile” (8); “He” (9), pointing vaguely to
the poet; and “Your monument” (11). The puns “hymn”
and “copy what in you (...anew) is writ” (14) are also about
writing.
Established
editors have often noted that the tension of “mixed metaphors”
is a puzzling and distracting aspect of Q’s overt Sonnets. In the
Runes this mix is an active part of the eclectic wit.
Rune
79, e.g., compares the writer and/or his text to an almost invisible
fire (4); to a “feast” that is “sweet” (5-6)—in
lines that may apply to the poet; to a paradoxically “lending”
word-thief (9); to a swimmer struggling to stay up (10); and to something
devious, requiring guile to understand (12-13). As to thievery, the verb
phrases “May seem false” (2) and “stole that word”
(9) prepare for “my sin” and “impute” (13), while
“copy what anew is writ” echoes the idea of “stealing
diction.” “Dregs of life” (4) suggests an ashheap as
a metaphor for the Q texts, and the marine conceit in 10 redefines the
term as “flotsam.” Marine-focused wording also includes “My
fin you did impute” (13), a bawdy pun on Will’s “fishiness,”
while the puns “all full with sea-sting” (5) and “your
monument shell be my…verse” (11) help to anchor such
sea figures in the larger flood. Though “gentle verse” (11)
is congruent with the picture of silence and a “hymn” (13-14),
a “monument” (11) seems unlikely to stay afloat.
Burning,
feasting, swimming, or chiseling, the poet “compiles”
his heaps of figures.
The clustered
“O’s” (1, 2, 6) not only create bathos, since “O”
is a pictograph for “round” (or “rune”) and bawdily
suggests a bodily orifice. The ocular joke “O O, eyes so little”
in the acrostic (see below) uses O’s as visual jokes the way Augenmusik
once used whole notes. Even the word looke (1) encodes “oo,”
pictographic oglers.
Other
bawdry is inherent. Because a root sense in “impute”
is “prune,” line 13 jokes about a radical operation carried
out on a frontal “fin.” “Come-pile” (8) is a bawdy
pun that prepares for “afloat” a little later, the poet asking
for only the “shallowest help.” The comic suggestion is of
an orgy, a sea of semen. Similarly, “your monument,” “genital
verve” (11), and Will’s vague “sin” (13) are broadly
suggestive. The poem even closes with body-part wit: “Let him but
copy what? Anus red.” Concurrent puns on “hymn” (code
him) and on “butt,” “beauty,” and “bawdy”
(code but) amplify the joke. The lettercode in line 2 puns, “Oily,
a sty, Howard, Raleigh may see m’ evil scene t’ hiss.”
Such enigmatic topical nameplays riddle the Q lines.
Typically,
a good bit of wit may be aimed at Thomas Thorpe, known to be the “T.T.”
whose initials occur twice in Q’s frontmatter. Thorpe, I propose,
would have been intricately involved as collaborator in overseeing the
process of printing Q so that the poet’s gamy, jot-and-tittle details
did not get lost. Recurrent wit in Q seems to label Thorpe “the
Swede”: Lines 6-7, e.g., pun, “O, know Swede, level, wise,
wry, ’tis you...!” Letterstring forms that “automatically”
encode “Tommy” here and elsewhere include time (5)
and thy me... (7), and forms that encode “Thos.”
include this (2) and thou s... (3). The string thou
hast (4) encodes “Thos. T.” Even that (e.g.,
8, 9) encodes “Tha. T.,” a primitive nameplay. One pun in
7 is “Locate Tommy, m’ whore eye (...aye).” Lines 2-3
pun, e.g., “My fee-ms. all see. In this, ‘enemy’ Thos.
is T.T.”
Among
the “automatic” family names that occur
in Q’s common forms are will, shall, all, So, and And
(12), suggesting Will, S[usannah] Hall, Hall, Sue, and Anne. Even
the word in (e.g., 2, 3) encodes plays on both John (= IN
= Jn.) and Anne. (In 10, shallowest suggests both “Sue Hall o’
[the] West [i.e., ...of Stratford?]” and “S. Hall o’
John [= w = IN] est [= is].”) Line 4 suggests
“Susanna Ha… eye, fit but lost” (Q So then thou
ha...). Line 12 puns, “Anne, docile O, ye twinned: Heavy Device
did hiss....” The play is one of hundreds in Q on Anne’s heaviness.
(Anne, of course, was the mother of twins, Hamnet and Judith, whose names
also occur in Q forms.) Line 7 puns, “Look, Anne [= w = IN
= in] Hath-Y [i.e., Hath’way] may my whore eye. See Anne, naughty
County Anne,” with low bawdry of the same sort one hears in Hamlet
3.2.
Sample Puns
1)
O [cf. 2, 6] the round, rune; O eye feces aye: you look upon
thy sewer; Circe; Official; you, low, coupon this verse; Lily; capon t’
hiss worse; Oaf, see, I sail, you, lo, Cuba notice; looke the
word encodes oo, pictographic oglers [cf. the acrostic, below]
1-2) on
thighs were soil stirred; eye sewer solace, turd; Of Isaiah, Luke (a pun)
this were, silly ass; Selahs; Pontius Vere feels
2) is
Tower t’ rule? O, Leicester t’ rule; sturdy rule of May; fall
see ends; Raleigh may seem evil scene t’ hiss
2-3)
my fey ms., all sanity’s enemy t’ house; our true love, Massey
ms., all see, John teasing, mete Hugh see fit; O [rune] leaf’d,
you’re t’ Raleigh maize, a missile, saints’ enemy; May
seems aye licentious enemy
3) Enema
thou ceased, aglow in Jesus’ ire
4) Susanna
Ha… [Q So then thou ha…], halved but lost; Southy
end thou halved, butt aloft—that rag-soft leaf; head-rag; Titus
Tybalt’s tithe dear edges (hedges)
4-5) eye
feast, O meaty, meal full with feasting; Southy in house Tybalt’s
tithe dear guesses, laughs
5) wit
ceased, “engine” you recite; why this East Indian? you’re
f--ked; Foam-time, awl full, witty, see Shakespeare engine your sigh jet
5-6)
token of wit low Eloise writes you
6) O,
Noah sweet, I always write of you; to Lowell we sue; Onus witty, level;
O, know Swede, level, wise, wry, ’tis you; low, vile ways wry tease
you; O, no, ass we’d love, I awl waist wry, tease you
6-7) I’ll
weigh sword if you look
7) Luke,
you’d theme moor eye; Loo quiet thy mammaries, Anne, ought contain;
Look, W.H., a thigh, mammary, see a node, cunty Anne; Low, quiet time
m’ O wry cannot contain; see Anne, notice Auntie Anne
7-8)
Hat-thy-me, m’ whore, eye, see Anne, oat, cunty Anne yet be moist,
prowed oft; Hat.-witch, I come, pee ill (pale)
8) Wyatt
(wight, Waite), be most proud of that which I compile; moist pee, rudest
thought which I compile; W.H. itches amply; ode o’ fatted (fated)
witches, hommes pale
9) Helen’s
the virtue; Hell ends thievery; our twin dies, tolled; hiss, old, the
turd
10) holed;
your shallow fit, hell pealed, may be aye flawed
10-11) willow,
old dame you pass, lo, a tower; aye flawed, you Roman ewe mint (…homme
end); hold hymn up, aye flawed, your monument, S. Hall
11) Why, ermine
you mend
11-12) asshole
be my gentle Vere, fiend docile; your moan, human ’tis, Hall, B.M.
edging tail worsened “O”; S. Hall, beamy, gentle, worse Anne-dose
allowed
12-13) W.H,
endive devised t’ hiss; Eying Dido so loved, windy Ovid whiffed
this silent Caesar; Thy ass’s “I” lends form, ye sin,
y’ ode eye, dim puta
13) missing,
nude, eye dim puta; This silence for my sinewed item, poot; missing
new diadem
13-14) you
did eye hymn puddled, hymn, butt-sop, “phew!” attain; tail
item, butt sop, puta new is red
14) Hell,
Anne [et] hymn, butt see, O piety anew is writ (I swear it);
I sewer eyed; Latim [for Latin], I but copy what a new ass writ; thyme;
anise; anus red
Acrostic Wit
The
downward acrostic codeline—O O IS SO LYHYYATL—conventionally
uses the reversible letterstring OO as pictographic eyes, breasts, testicles,
or what not. Possible letterstring decodings include these: “O O,
eyes so little (subtle),” “…eyes so light [soil yet]
hell,” “O O, is Sue little?” “Oasis’ll ye
idle,” “Oiseau little,” “[None] isolate
hell,” “Wise (Why is...) Sue little,” “Eyes soil
y’ idol,” “[Phallic] ‘I’s’ soil ye
eye, tail,” and “‘I’s’ soil ye eyed, hell.”
The reverse
(upward) codeline—LTAYYHYL O S SIOO—can be decoded,
e.g., to mean, “Little ‘O’ [i.e., round or rune; pudendum]
is Sue,” “Let aloose 100,” “Let I aloose 100,”
“Laddie (Lady) high, low—asses I ogle,” “Little
oiseau,” “Hell-ditch [phonic H], low slough,”
and “Why is soiled lady yellow-assy, O, O?”
The
down/up hairpin encodes “Oiseau little lady’ll
lasso,” “Wise Sue, little Lady High/Low is Sue,” “Wise
Sue, little lady yellow is Sue,” “Oiseau, little
lady, yell, ‘Oiseau!’ (…lady, l’oiseau),”
“O, O, eisell [i.e., vinegar] ye addled aye...,”“Wise
Sue, little Lady I love [S=F, conventionally], Sue,” and “Oiseau,
little lady (laddie), yell, ‘Oiseau!’”
A throwaway
pun in line 12 of the full text illustrates how the Runes intimate numeric
wit that a reader/player gets in the habit of trying to parse: “And,
docile ‘O’ [= round/rune], ye twenty have devised.”
(Here twenty also suggests that the the runes have multiple, concurrent
meanings.) One numeric decoding of the down/up codeline in Rune
79 is “Zeroes—so little. Little zeroes see, zeroes.”
The ending “100” is part of the confusing wit. Another reading
is “Zeroes—so little. Little zero is 5100 [S = 5].”
With S = 5 throughout the codeline, other possibilities emerge.
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