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As
is well known, playwright Robert Greene used the derogatory epithet
“Upstart Crow” in 1592 to characterize Will, then an up-and-coming
actor and author. Lines 12-14 in this knotty text of Will’s, Rune
60, seem almost certainly to pick up on Greene’s phrase and toy
with it.
The
text itself, as usual a challenging game, finds a reader searching for
verbs to hang clauses on and struggling with other syntactic and lexical
ambiguities. Typically, numerous meanings inher in the text . Perhaps
lines 5-11—roughly the middle ones—are digressive. “Contend”
(4), a pun on “continued,” labels our struggle, and “durst”
(12)—the past participle of “dare,” meaning “challenged”—repeats
the concept.
Though the conceits of 1-4 and 12-14 seem unrelated, the “vassal”
of the poem’s “forward” (or preface) is congruent with
the image of a trained fighting bird. Line 3, punning “the second
[punning on ‘fecund’] birdhen of a former child,” implies
that the friend with such a pet is childish. (“Second” alludes
to dueling. The auditor’s first fighter is likely a falcon,
not a crow.) The pun “Ordure’s [tin...] t’ habit on
a living brow” (12) may joke about bird droppings on a knight’s
visor, and other “combat” figures and puns dot the poem—e.g.,
“foes,” “mock my fight,” “foe grounded,”
“in-warred,” “brass,” “mortal rage,”
“action,” “stronger,” and “force-worn.”
“Second burden”—roughly, “double bass”—is
also a musical kenning for the deep-set Runes. Terms that echo
“burden” include “grounded” (because “ground”
means the low bass line). “Lines and wrinkles” suggest a parchment
sheet and musical squiggles. The closing phrase, “heaven’s
sweetest air,” pursues the musical motif, as do “[religious]
services to do” and “re-choir” (1). “Re-quire”
(1), “bound,” and “leafure” (2) suggest books,
maybe music books. And “Sequent toil, all forwards” (4) suggests
a church procession. Other related details include “do music”
(pun, 5); “youthful mourn” (7), like an altar-boy’s
whining voice; “brays eternal” (8); “nosed wrong, or,
the nasal air” (9); “Commend” (13), which suggests “to
praise or grace” and, as Commendum, alludes to clerical
tenure; and, e.g., “G-row” (6), “B-row” (12),
and “C-row” (14), which name sequential lines in Will’s
lyric.
The “rage” and “faith” that the poet’s
“heart/art” enslaves (5-11) epitomize Will’s two main
clusters of decorative figures in this poem: “combat” and
church singing.
The phrase “Commend/ A Crow,” emphatically capitalized in
Q (13-14), encourages us or any reader to “praise Will,” a
raucous singer, while “co-mend a Zero” may mean “reconstitute
a round [or rune].” “Crow” jokes about raucous cacophony,
while “Zero” suggests mystery and nothingness. Will’s
“sight” is “grounded inward…/ With lines and wrinkles”
(6-7) partly because he is preoccupied with runic composition. A joke
about “W”—poet, patron, or both—lodges in “W.,
whose affection is no stronger than ‘Ass lower [a slur]!’”
(9). Some other low wit is of the sort that delicate readers may want
to ignore: “Fec-uent/fecund toil” (3) suggests bathroom grunting,
line 4 depicts the posture of defecation, and “awl forwards”
sketches an erect penis. (Students of Shakespeare know that his previously
discussed wit was often indelicate.)
An opening pun on “Norse ruses” (code Nor
seruices...) may be consciously encoded wit, since it suggests
“primitive tricks” with origins in early English history.
Incipient puns on “Pharisees” (code feruices)
and Yorick (code: you req...) also hide in line 1.
Sample Puns
1)
Inner is her vice, studied, ill your query; Rune [reversed]; Norse ruses;
Nor fear you, eyes, to dawdle; I cease to dawdle; re-quire [i.e., re-group
pages‚ reassemble runes]; queer
1-2) Quire B; you wreck your being; tell Yorick you eye Arabian
Jew or vassal bound Tuesday
2) injure vessel bound to sty
2-3) bound to stair, leave, you’re thief; Be “inch”
your vassal; Bound to fit [i.e., stanza], eye your “leafure”
[i.e., pages], the fecund burden [i.e., “bass” parts, message]
3) This cunt burdens a former child; the fecund birth, a novice
or mere child; Bert (Bard), he knows of our mercy; buried enough, a former
child [suggesting Hamnet]; This son-to-be earthy knows a sore; enough
eyesore, Mersey isled
3-4) High, let John [In] see cunt oily, awl-sore, warty,
sad “O”, cunt-end
4) fecund; John, f--k you; deux content [suggesting
“double subject matter”]
5) W.H., ill shade (I’ll shit), O is licked toothy; Edom,
O, seek; the Duomo seek
5-6) seek message, Titus (Sue groaned); to th’ Doom, O,
seek ms. I jet—It is “O,” grounded inward in my art
6 ground [musical]; John, John, hard John; enemy art; rune dead, in wording
mired; wart; warden
6-7) enema-art (hard, heard) witty; hear title innocent, wry
(uncles), and see lesson high
7) in a sand torrential, swoon; south; solemn horn
7-8) fool, mourn aye in débris Saturnal 8 et
[eaten] urn awls love; Anne brays, eternal ass; salve to m’ whored
awl, rag…
8-9) Hall, slay, veto my whore, tell her a Jew who f--ked shuns
no ass; a Jew affection is Noster injured; Anne brays of eternal
flow to moor tall urges
9) W.H., owe [admit to] sea-actions no stronger than a flow-er;
eyes, know Shakespeare [= st] rune; eye snuff t’ wrong
her; curtains lower
9-10) eye snow, veteran, Jordan’s lower and pure
10)
Anne, dip your eyes t’ Satan
10-11)
eye th’ Napoli force, warring Andelusia, ’tis hell, feuds
11) lays;
Anne delays aye t’ sail; folk, I die
11-12)
with his f--k, I tire; with his folk, eye Tyre
12)
Ordure fit, inhabiting a loo; ape eye, tunneling burrow [with the line
about birdshit on a head]
12-13)
bitten elephant jab rowdy
13) Veteran
gabber true t’ you ensues; Sue S. foes command; see omen D; events
waste foes; oases see
13-14)
if oasis, see Oman, Dhaka, routed sly, eastern
14) A
C-row (zero = round) that’s lies; John winces, sweetest ire; In
heaven’s feud, Shakespeare higher (hire, err, ire); air [musical];
I knew a nice Swede of Tyre; eye sinew; a crowded ass licenses sweetest
Harry; Elysian asses, wee, testier
Acrostic Wit
The
downward (and visibly emphatic) acrostic codeline—NB
TIW IW AWAA OVA—suggests, e.g., “N.B. [i.e., Nota
Bene, Notice]: To you [Jew], a way over,” “N.B. to eye,
Wife A[nne?],” “N.B. to Jove aye,” “End, bitty
cry [WIWAWAA], over,” “End, Betty-cry, over,” “N.B.
to Woe, Away! Over!” and “N.B. to you [Jew], Away, [Away]!”
Other readings include “In bitty wave aye,” “N.B. to
Wife A[nne],” “Nate [B=8] to woo I waive aye,” and “Innate
to you, a way o’ Virginia.”
With
B = phonic “8,” the codeline may play on “Knight...,”
“Night...,” and “Nate...”—the last possibly
a young man in Will’s acting troupe. Plays on “neb,”
“wife” and “ova” (eggs) and an imitative pun on
“wave” (as WIWAWAAOV) are also possible.
The
upward codeline—AVOAAW A WI WIT BN—suggests
these possibilities: “Avow aye we [William] wit[ty] been,”
“Avow a witty bin [storage place, i.e., this rune],” “Avow
aye why wit been,” “Avow I why we tighten [B=8],” and
“Avow a wee-wee Titan [B=8].” “Avow I Wyatt been”
may ally Will with another popular English sonneteer.
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