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Rune
58 emerges as the string of 14 second lines in Set V, Sonnets
57-70. While none of the 154 Sonnets in Q has ever been heard before
to comment on the poet’s struggles with double composition—and
on how the Q project itself makes “sins” inevitable—that
topic is now insistent, and not just in the Runes. The opening of Sonnet
66, “Tired with all these…,” for example, now
means much more to us than it did before. And “Those parts…the
world’s eye doth view” (Sonnet 69.1) now must mean “the
Sonnets—not the Runes.”
This
particular text can be read as a complaint addressing the unnamed
friend in which Will’s reverie (1-3) is interrupted by recognition
of the mutable human condition (2-8); the sestet embeds a conceit (and
rhetoric in general) that veers ambiguously toward bittersweet optimism.
Beauty, a “beggar,” is a naked Cupid figure; the term is also
a figure for the runic poem itself, which has to borrow lines from the
visible sonnets to be born and which lives and dies in front of two (eyes,
on-lookers) but which, like flowers, has no durable life—being created
in a form that instantly self-destructs. “The thought of hearts”
(13) echoes 1-2 and refers to Will’s heartfelt concern but also
suggests Cupid.
The vaguely paranoid last line reinforces our notion that the friendship
and activity in which the poet desires to “control…times of
pleasure” (2) is “impious” (11) for being an illicit
passion. “Slander’s mark” (14) also echoes “time’s...hand”
(7)—both inflicting damage on “the fair.”
Among
such echoic patterns that add texture and coherence are many
terms about time. Too, the word “thought”—repeated early
and late (2, 13)—allies with “our brains” (3) and contrasts
(throughout) with “feelings.” “O’erworn"
(7) has echoes in “outworn” (8), “o’ersways”
(9), and the pun “wear-y” (5). A clothing motif lurks in these
wear/worn words and in “fold” (puns 2, 6), “sew”
(4), “mend” (13), “hue” (5), “dyed”
(12), “rich…cost” (8)—and in codeline plays on
“habit” and “hue” (see below). Two pairs of end
rhymes also joke about clothes (o’erworn/mend) and nakedness
(born/end). “Smirk” (pun 14) encodes an “attribute
of a neat dresser” (OED).
The
pun “our baroness (barren ass) bejeweled” (3) jokes
about testicles. Elsewhere in Q, “begild’d” may mean
“yellowed with infantile feces”; here a “beggar born”
who is “loo’d” and “dyed” (11-12) varies
that scatological joke.
The
play “four Flanders marks” (14) amplifies “economic”
images such as “whores in debt” (1), “our centimes afford”
(1), “rich…cost” (8), “beggar” (10), “wit’s
three cents” (11, p = th), “Want nothing” (13), and
“poor” (9). A mini-pattern of imagery about gaming includes
“roll your times of pleasure” (2), “injurious hand”
(7), and “hearts can mend” (13).
Sample Puns
1)
A pun, th’ whore’s Anne; ascended; “the horse
undid” amazes you (I may suffer); you, poor knight, our centimes
offer defer
1-2) desire
assaulting thought; fire assholed in th’ “O”
2) Eisell;
Eye S. Hall; cunt-roll; Awful din, th’ “O” huge, t’
cunt-roll your times of pleasure; counter holier times; lay Artemis owes
3)
Hath. be Annie, base whore, whore, whore, barren ass big, wild; beef;
O rare arbor eye: an ass big; our Orb, rune, is bejeweled; guild [i.e.,
coterie]; our brain is pickled (speckled)
3-4) rains
beguile De Soto; De Soto, our man, you eye; bejeweled, solder my knight’s
half tin, taut, airy end
4)
Sotto, ermine you eye,’tis halved in two; to thee I runed;
so dour my nuts (knots, naughts)
4-5) Harry
in demity is tawdry; in daughter-end, my heavy “I” I’d
stow; our B-runes be Jew-led, so dour, minute, shaved
5) Midas
taught you, “ear-y” knight; Move ye eyed, stout Harry, knight
[cf. chess]; t’ Hugh (you) a rune I jet; my hideous daughter-whine
I jet; a Rhiney jet
5-6) negating
Ptolemy is Oval Anne, Ptolemy, Eve, repartee (rip hard); Hairy Knight,
Anne awl, my foul Anne
5-7) I
Tyndale missal eye and dull my very Bard-wit
6) Hall;
missal; Anne, all my soul, Anne, all my every part; handle my sullen’d
awl…
7) W.-item
is in your eyes; Uriah’s hand; eye May sonorous; you shan’t
see her used and dour; Shanty (chantey) cherished Anne
7-8) Tan dowry were Nate, rich, proud; Witty times [metrical]
John juries and cherished; end o’ row ornate (hornèd), rich,
proud, coughed off
8) T’
Harry icy Hebrew’d cause devout war in a buried age; outworn be
your wry adage
8-9) our
neighbor eyed you, tough, odd Moor tall
9) but
is Adam o’er-tall; bawdy, eye Sodom; is Worcester poor? tie our
(dear) Schwester poor; Beauty’s atom (Adam) or tall “I”
tires (towers), wasteth heir-power [phallic]
9-10)
Tower’s ways, t’ Harry poor, a stubbled desert, aye, bigger;
power aye is toppled, deferred
10) assert
a bugger be horny; a stubby hole did fart; egg; herb; a pitcher be horn
10-11) A beggar
be horny Anne, wet is brave end, see
11-12) witty
is Paris in cigarro’s impiety; End with Hesperus and see
grassy hymn, piety, wind-beauty livid and dyed
12) Anne
died—ass lower, sad “O” enough; aye slurs [verbal; musical]
do know; beauty lived in Dido’s ass; end Titus slurs; bodily; indict;
err, Satan owe
12-13) flow-er,
sad Onan, t’ “no-thing” thought, that haughty oaf, hard
as Cain
13) Wan; No-thing’d
Hat.…—hard scan, m’ end; artist, see Anne
13-14) O farts,
“See Anne, men, divorce’ll end her as m’ raucous Eve,
riotous, airy”; Thetis’ hearty ass see and amend
14) Fore is
land, Arse, m’ ark, was ever yet this airy (aery); ever yet th’
S., Harry; “Four Flanders marks”—you read this, Harry;
riotous air (heir); dear is Mark 10, a sewer, yet heavier; cue aye serrates
Harry; Dearest Marcus; thievery
Acrostic wit
In the
visible downward acrostic codeline—VIHS [=F] MA WT BAAWWF[=S]—the
capital letters “f” and “s” may merge, conventionally,
because the lower-case printed forms looked alike in Will’s day.
With that interchange working, the codeline suggests, e.g., such readings
as these: “Whiff m’ witty beef,” “Vice may wit
boss [i.e., decorate...with knots?],” and “Why is my wit (my
ode) bouffa [i.e., comic]?” Other readings include “Wife
m’ haughty boss [protuberance, etc.],” “Wife, m’
witty beef” (a reference to Anne’s obesity?), “Vice
[Squeeze] m’ ode: Baaaa…,” “Vice mode [i.e., scheme
of sounds, musical scale] be off…,” “Wise mode bows
[musical],” and “Wise, Mighty—Be Off!”
The
upward (reverse) codeline—FW WAABT WAM S HIV—may
be read to mean, e.g., “Few habit [sets of clothes?] Wm. S. have,”
“Few, webbed, Wm.’s hive,” “Few wiped Wm.’s
hue,” “Foe aped Wm.-show (…hue; …‘ladder
fore’ = initial vertical acrostic),” “ Fitting [VV=
10] way be t’ Wm. S. ever [IV=4],” and “…t’
Wm.’s heifer [suggesting Anne].” The “dateline”
interpretations “Feb. 7 [= T?] whams you,” “Feb. 7,
10:00 A.M, show,” and “Feb., 2:00 a.m., show” are typically
inconclusive and non-exclusive. Numeric readings such as “Few, 8,
7, 10 [= VV], eye m’ five [S=F +HIV]” suggest themselves at
every turn to an experienced player of the runecodes.
The
up/down string encodes “If Rabbett [in a tongue-tied form
], Wm. shivers (is ever ass), my wed boy-wife,” “Few Rabbett,
Wm., shew, some odd boy-wife,” and the like, possible jokes about
the King James Bible translator William Rabbett, one candidate for the
role of instigator of the Psalm 46 wit playing on Will’s name.
Other suggestions
in the codeline are “habit,” “shivers” (code SHIVVIHS),
“buff”—and “Shiva.”
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