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Comments
To
recapitulate a moment: Sets X and XI in Q house the infamous
Dark Lady or Perverse Mistress poems. Thus these sets add new challenges
and a puzzling dominant “character” (often prefigured earlier)
to Q’s implicit dramatic interrelationships among poet/persona,
friend/auditor, and “mistress.” As students of Shakespeare
know, this “mistress” partly parodies several centuries’
worth of idealized females whom Renaissance poets conventionally honored
with poem cycles.
Though some
“real” Dark Lady may have existed, my own deduction is that
she is essentially figurative, a conceit for his own torturous contrivances—for
the Q lines and texts themselves and especially for the “peer-verse”
Runes: The Mistress is, in short, both Q’s mss.
and her Mysteries. Will’s puns about writing and printing
typically conflate “ms(s).” and “Mistress.” Other
concurrent coterie puns are “mystery sighs,” “ms. duress,”
“ms. distress,” “ms. dress,” and “misty
heiress.”
By
introducing a strangely intervening “female,” one
purpose these two closing sets serve is to mask the homophile odor of
the overt Sonnets, so unconventional for being love poems written mostly
to a man. Winking innuendoes about some down-and-dirty “mistress”
that Will and his “friend” share an interest in are well-known
as ambiguous features of the Dark Lady poems.
The
antithesis of light and lyric beauty, Will’s Mistress is
a creature of inky blackness whose “‘I’s” are
nothing like the sun” (Sonnet 130.1): Printed “I’s”
are straight and black, while the sun is round and bright (like an “O”).
In addition
to the “new” Mistress, Set X introduces the infamous Will-punning
sonnets (Nos. 135-136), two namepun texts that cut across the 14 runes,
initiating their playful sestets.
In
Rune 129 specifically, Will’s inky-black Sonnets and Runes
are like Beauty and Her “dark” alter-ego—Her “heir”
and “murderer.” These two figures, further, are analogs (and
potential companions) for the poet’s “self” and his
“other mine,” a dark place full of treasure—a “vexing”
mine that, as the poet concludes, is “Will’s place”
(8-10). The poet seems to prefer to avoid the real Beauty and
argues, torturously, that he’s less likely to be paired off with
her if his rhetoric remains “untutored” by “sorrow”
and thus less mature (12-14). By favoring the poet with a sympathetic
vision even while saying harsh things, the listening friend or player
(2, 13) can advance the poet’s plan.
Plays
on printing include “Black [is now] beauty’s successive
hair […cipher]” (1)—like a thin line of print.
Swaying fingers” (see 2) suggest a hand moving from line to line.
Puns on “well” (5, 10) link with “mighty th’ inky
ms. o’ my untutored youth” (12), with such puns on “knot”
as “eye fit [stanza] knotty (...naughty), two...” (7), and
“Wound [spiraled, rounded] me knot-wit” (13); and with the
plays “leaf’d,” “X-pressed” (i.e., acrostic-printed),
and “sand(y) words” (14, suggesting erasure, punning on sans).
The acrostic HIMM (6-9), punning on “hymn,” points
to line 2 (suggesting playing an instrument) and to the (sexually suggestive)
pun on “bad singing” in “wounding…with thy tongue”
(13). (See Acrostic Wit, below.)
Innuendo
in 1-4 elicits bawdy images of public hair, dark nipples, sexual
motion, and groping caresses. Such puns as “...f--ks see you here”
(1) link with plays on wounds, torture, knowing, lying, mite, tongues,
“Will” (10) as carnal desire, and “fore-well”
(5) and “…her mine” (8) as pudendal metaphors.
Other
coterie puns include “tease, focus cipher witty” (1-2) and
“dual, this old gnosis [OED 1703, special knowledge of
spiritual mysteries, cf. gnostic 1585] admitted [i.e., conceded]
th’ ear” (10). As a comic catalog of body parts, the rune
houses “fore-feet” (8) and a nose (10).
One
directive joshes Thorpe, the T.T. of Q’s frontmatter, Will’s
known printing agent and collaborator in effecting Q’s string of
jot-and-tittle tricks: “Thomas old nose [i.e., smell (imper.
v.)], eye sodomite editor, thick, naughty, bawdy, a sewer...” (10-11).
Sample Puns
1)
Butt; Bawdy nose be lazy (lacy), keep out aye; “I’s”
be jack-beauties; a Sikh be odious; teases you see; But now eye
subject: Bawdy ass f--ks five here; see cipher witty
1-2)
Harry W. eyed it; …witty is; see Southy, I rooted his wet ass; f--k’s
favor you eyed
2) Witty
ass, witty ass injures W., Hen, the huge Anne t’ leave W. A. [I.]
Shakespeare; wits injure swain; few eat ass in Jersey; huge end lies waste;
thou, gent, life waste; end life, wife
2-3) W.,
Hen., thou, genitally fused, I “speared”; wise despair I heard;
half-way Shakespeare [ft, the name cipher] eye “speared,”
immured (…I “spear” averred)
3) O,
you sibyl odd, ye solace be; Eye speared merd-rows, bloody fool, O’s
be lame; merd-rows be lewd
3-4) bloody
philosophy lame is; amazing O be
4) eye
T. Wyatt in here; I asses know, bitty W.H., yet “Hen.” here;
bare Shakespeare-ass, a red one; Why, I, too, hit (hid) Hen here; whiten
Hebrew’s teaser dun; white whiten; à Meissen, up
you hie, to wait (white); n’er be rest certain
4-5) …sore
well thou know’st; our dun furrow’ll thou know; dun, sorrel
talk in O is t’ Tommy dirty
5-6)
Tommy—dear, doting, hard, half puta; my dirty ode injured
halberd; redoubt, John, guard, halberd on, be Jack Handy
6)
Half puta, in black, Anne dull avenge, my urn or an arse be;
aye see candy, loin; see candle, avenge my horn; O, nibble a Sikh,
and lowing, mourn
6-7) be
I (by, buy) Shakespeare, knot ye know, two torture m’ awl wan; my
horn-recipe eye, fitting odd enough to torture me; O, you earn arse-beef
t’ gnaw
7-8) jetted
ordure-meal wan may feel silly, forced, fetid, oather mine; all owe Nemesis
[l = I] ill
8-9) Missile
see, ill, sore, Southy taught her, m’ Annie, more than enough, a
mighty Hat. vexed he still (his till); sotted o’ the Roman, Mauritania
gamy eyed Hath’way; that vexed thief t’ ill; my enamored Hen
know
8-10) Hermione,
my whore, thin enough, emitted waxed heft ill and dual
9)
Ham’et Hat vexed; eye the two exits; to exit, hiss
9-10)
ill and dual, this old, aching O assist; I land—Will, laddie’s
old leek; gnome eye that vex th’ fiddling; island wilty heavily ken;
island will ladies o’ Lincoln owe
10) licking
O’s, eye sodomite editor; dual, this O you lick (like), an oasis,
Adam eye, T.T., editor; Adam eyed adder (Adair); Anne, Will; Anne dual,
thy foul nose is admitted t’ Harry; …eye sad, mitted [i.e.,
gloved], hairy; we seized empty editor
10-11) Harry
the yak gnawed; the retinue had bawdy asses
11) naughty,
bawdy, is sewer; Th’ eye (“I”) naughty, bawdy is, sewery;
see W., Harry, idle, yes; fury idle is
11-12) see,
W., Harry, Italy, state fame I jet
12) mighty
th’ ink-ms., homme; windy; omen tutored youth; That ass
(The tiff) imaged th’ ink, my foam-event; O minted hardy youth; th’
Inca may (so mean to you) dirty ode
13) Wound
[up is] my knot witty, nigh, beauty witty, too; O, you in Damon (demon)
owed whited hiney, butt, with thy tongue. [The line jokes about oral sex.]
13-14) eye
titty t’ own, jealous ’tis; hung least; bawdy, thy tongue laced
furrow (left sorrow)
14) Leased,
Leaf’d furrow’ll end, mew hoards; Anne, Dieu or Dis
express; Laugh,’tis our Roland; Roland, mew hoards; hoards endured
sex; endured sex Paris (Percy); sex peers see
Acrostic Wit
The
emphatic downward acrostic codeline—B WIIF HIMM ATT
WL—suggests, e.g., “Bewife him at will,” “Be
wife high, mate well,” “Be wife-hymn my titty-well,” “Boy
I fame at will,” “Boy, femme—eye T.T., Will,”
“Bewhiff Ham[n]et, Will,” “Bewhiff Ham[l]et well,”
“Be Will [I = L] femme, mate, tool,” “Be Will
of him (...hymn; ...Ham) a tool,” “Be wife, Ham’et, Will,”
“8, whiff Ham’et tool,” and “8 whiff him at will,”
The
upward (reverse) code—LWTT AMM IH F IIW B—houses
potentialities on the order of these sample readings : “Ludim [an
African people (Biblical)] may few be,” “Lewd am I, if you be,”
“Lute t’ Ham[net] I have to [II = 2 = TWO] be,” “Lewd
ham [Ham] I have to wipe [whip],” “Lewd hommes [F=S]
you be,” “Loo, Tom I have to wipe,” “Lewd May few
be,” and “Laud May, eye few bee[with no ‘s’].”
Such encodings
as “Loud [ironic] aye May, Friday [=F], the 12th [=IIVV], be”
are also possible; IIVV might mean 8 (10 - 2), 10 (1 + 4 + 5), or 12 (2
+ 5 + 5).
The
up/down hairpin suggests, e.g., “Laud Ham aye if you bewhiff
Ham at all,” “Ludim eye few. Wait (Wyatt…): Bewhiff Ham
at will,” and “Lewd am I if I whip Wife H. Eye mate well (...Eye
my tool).”
The
down/up hairpin suggests other variant “messages.” As usual,
the acrostic code is calculated to provoke indeterminate wit.
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