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Will
crafts this work so that his listening muse, the unnamed “thou”
of the poem, hears various compliments, complaints, advice, bawdy jokes,
and puns. While the “hands” of 1-3 conventionally imply “rival
poets” vying for the muse’s attention and enjoying their own
minutes of fame, the opening joke also points to Will’s ability,
as Sonnets/Runes poet, to write “ambidextrously,” composing
two poems (or cycles) at once.
Whoever
“she” (12) is, the poet offers to “fulfill the treasure
of [his muse’s] love” (10) by keeping the muse’s name
alive, and—more directly—by instructing the muse (14), maybe
in the Runes’ arcane methods. Syntactically, “she” in
12 points back to “thy love” (10). In Q, Will’s perverse
“she” is, at least in one sense, always the “ms.”
or “Mysteries” that Will and his muse share an interest in;
as such “she” is fictive, a poetic construct. If she was also
“real,” we do not know her name.
Ironically,
the name of the poet’s muse has also not survived. My own
deduction is that Will’s obfuscation is intentional, maintaining
privacy while allowing various living fellows to conclude that the poet
was addressing them individually. We don’t know whether any muse(s)
actually ever read the buried texts and played with the potentialities
in them that the poet labored over so carefully as ostensible tribute
and specially tailored private entertainment.
Early
lines in Rune 131 suggest the motifs of composing, card-playing,
nature and art, and masturbation; other image clusters are about sight,
flowers and sun, and buried treasure.
Card-playing, e.g., fits such details as “hand” (1), “envy”
(OED “seek a rival”), “jacks” (2), “straight”
(3), “red and white” (4), “taken” (7), “roses”
and “suns” that might decorate cards (4, 6, etc.), and—less
directly—the mention of close oversight, good faith, “treasure,”
and wit or its absence. “Be holed” (5) suggests “discarded,”
and the pun “four ‘signs’ each hand” (1) suggests
the four suits.
Jokes
about phallic activity include puns about “cruel ‘I’s,”
“wiltings,” and “will-‘I’s” (i.e.,
phalluses). This pun is representative: “Wilt thou, hose. Willy
S. large and spacious—Will—will fulfill that rift, your ‘O’
fit, high, low...” (9-10). Such sexual wit links suggestively with
jokes about ambidexterity (1) and depressing brevity (3).
Seemingly puerile namepuns extrapolated from the fifth lines of Sonnets
134-136 cluster here as insistent puns on Will (8-10) and his “large
and spacious will” (9). “Will” in Renaissance parlance
meant sexual drive or lust, and “wilt” (e.g., 9) means “go
flaccid.”
Here
the Will-wit finds a mate in such puns as “Anne, truly
not the morning sun of heaven, / Me from myself thy cruel eye Hath [sic]
taken” (6-7). Here “eye-Hath-taken [with ‘taken’
= ‘away’]” suggests “eye Hath-away.” “Jack”
(2) and John (easily encoded as “in,” a concurrent cipher
for “Anne”) may play on Dr. John Hall, Will’s Stratford-based
son-in-law.
Letterstring
puns in the typographic forms of the lines themselves—another
of Q’s routine game elements—include here these sample potentialities:
“...in Nate (knight), your spire do I invite—hose, Jack’s,
thought nimble, leap!” (1-2);
“...Howard, Owen vied” (1-2), perhaps a topical play; “Do
I envy Theseus kissed?” (2);
“Theseus kissed Hat.[a routine cipher for Anne Hathaway] in a.m.,
belly up, annoyed...” (2);
“Jack is t’ Hat. an humble, lapping-jawed nose (knave...)
on her body, despised after 8:00” (2-3), maybe a ribbing aimed at
Dr. John Hall;
“Eighty have seen Rizzy’s damn ass get reddened, wide”
(3-4), a routine kind of jibe aimed at Henry Wriothesley (pron. “Rizzley,”
etc.), the 3rd earl of Southampton;
“rosy as day, mesquit(a) [i.e., mosque] reddened” (4);
“Row F [i.e., line 6] is dim as catarrh’d Anne” (4);
“Eye half-seen rows [i.e., lines of text], damasked, ‘read’
and witty yet” (4-5); and
“Wyatt [the early sonneteer?], John [Hall?] good evades ‘O’
[i.e., the round, the rune] messy, ‘thoughty,’ bold...”
(5).
(For fuller exploration of such possibilities, see below.)
Much
of such letterstring wit in the Q linestrings is bawdy, or would
surely have been read as such by whatever in-group reader/players first
saw it. Scatology lurks, e.g, in Q’s letterstring “...she
thin...” (12). “Behold” (5) and “but” (e.g.,
8, 13) are always suggestive. The final line, puns (in one of its forms),
“If ‘I’ [a phallic pictograph] midget touch thee wet,
better (...bitter ‘I’...) it were” (14). The opening
of the poem puns, “Fore-fins itch. Ha!”
Sample Puns
1)
Forcing, see each end hath puta; Force inch; sedge;
sage; itch aye in death, phew! you donate your ass poor; for finch handy,
th’ puta
1-2)
in Nate (knight), your spire do I invite; Howard, Owen vied; whore, (our)
duenna thou seize, kiss
2) Do
I envy Theseus?
2-3)
Jack is t’ Hat. an humble, lapping-jawed nose on her butt, despised
after 8:00; t’ Hat., Ann, I’m Philippian joy; I’m belly-pain
aye
3) bawdy,
I’ve pissed straight; aye, said (Iced, Acid) Shakespeare raged; I
said “Shakespeare,” right?
3-4)
Eighty have seen Rizzy’s damn ass get red and wide; In Io, wide nose
on her butt deaf, pissed Shakespeare riotous in her office (suggesting
orifice) dim
4) dim,
a skater dandy; rosy as day, mesquit(a) [mosque] reddened; rows said a
mosquito retained Wyatt; a musket reddened wight (Waite)
4-5) Eye
half-seen rows, damasked, “read” and witty yet; Row F is dim
as catarrh’d Anne; masked, our dandy Wyatt’s waiting; reading
Dwight, Wyatt, John goads aye t’ his home; goats; hied Wyatt in God’s
eye
5) Yet
in God, faith of homme is aye that thee behold; be holed; foams
eye; Yet John God evades; John good evades O messy
5-6)
fated Tybalt I ended; t’ Hat., Tybalt ended ruling autumn horn(y);
if homme evaded thee, behold Anne; the bold Dan did rule
6) “ruly”
in autumn, whoring, eye inches enough; Ended really knotty hymn our Nine;
horn [phallic] in Jesu knows heaven
6-7)
horn, inches enough, you in me form; you in hymn ever roam; In ms., Romish
hell see, thick our veil; the Morning Son of Hugh-John, me, Fair Homme,
myself; In ms., Rome missal, Southy’s relayed it, aching
7) ms.
Romey see leafed
7-8) Know
rule in ode: Be free; no ruling oat be free; fit, hickory laddie hit a
keen butt, howled
7-9) eye
Hath. t’ ache in butt-hole tonight, Anne, oral, knotty beef ruled
house o’ Will
8-9) O,
to be free will T.T. house you ill, his larking spate I owe; Knot be free-willed,
t’ house you ill
9) hoof;
Wilt [i.e., go flaccid] thou, W.H.; Willy’s large Anne spacious;
specious
9-10)
Who fuels large Anne, despite I.O.U’s? Will, Will…; I owe you
swill, loo I’ll fulfill
10) fool’s
ill, that erasure of thy loo; Will will fulfill the treasure of thy loo
filthy, trace your ass t’ hell; why level filthy trees you raze?
10-11) you
race t’ hill of Isis, seer you pet (…you put by our party, Hall
looks t’ huss vainly, thinking that shit); oft Helios (Heloise) I
seek; th’ treasure of thy loo efface; oft Aloeus is corrupt
11) Isaiah
is corrupt (by our partial looks); buyer; Isis see erupt; rue pit, buy
our partial loo; by whore-part, eye Hall
11-12) lo,
Augustus vain, laid in kinked Hat.-shit—in case, mewn, jet [black];
whore-part eye, awl looks thus; “owe,” verb hard; hard eye Hall,
Luke said
12-13) shitting,
kiss me, you inched element; Hen, kiss my young tail; Th’ huss “V”
anal (venal) ye et, inky inch, that shitting quay’s my young tail;
hound jet’ll maid hollow fit
12-14) Hat.,
shitting, kiss my young tail, limit how low Shakespeare’ll see, where
(weary, W., Harry, VV, hairy) butt-end my sight eyes
13) thou,
low Shakespeare-hell fury, butt in; you’d enemy fight; tail made
hollow Shakespeare’ll see; maid hollow fiddles you, Harry, but in
miss (ms.) I jet; see W., Harry, (hairy) butt in ms. (miss) I jet (aye,
yet); meadow lost’ll few here bawdy name
13-14) m’
Jesse jets image heady aye (hideous); few hear bawdy name if I jet icy
midget; miss (ms.) I decimate
14) Aye femme
itched t’ itch the wit, bitter it were; I, Semite, touched you; wight
bitter eyed W., Harry; witty Betty read “W., Harry”; aye Tibet
turd we are; aye Tibet dirty were; icy midget touched you aye; eye Tibet,
dirty, weary; touch the wet (weedy), bitter “I” (battery) to
Harry (too hairy)
Acrostic Wit
The
downward acrostic codeline—FD I IY AMB WW ITTI—houses
many self-consciously encouraged potentialities, as these samples illustrate:
“Fit [stanza] eye, iamb witty,” “Of day I am be W[illiam’s]
wit to eye,” “Of Dei [i.e., God] I am body,”
“Fit [Fed] I aye am by William’s witty eye,” “Fit
‘I,’ iamb, be William’s witty ‘I’ [phallic],”
“‘Of day’ (iamb) be witty aye,” “Seedy [F=S]
iamb witty (…aye my body),” and thus “City, I aye am witty.”
The
TT letterstring in Q always suggests Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing
agent, who signed the frontmatter of Q as “T.T.”
The
upward (reverse) code—I TT IWW B MAYIID F—suggests,
e.g., “Eyed too, be May ides,” “Eye two beam (B.M.) aids,”
“I ‘To be’ made. S. [a signature],” “Aye, T.T.,
you be maid of…,” “Aye, T.T., you be mighty if…,”
“…you be mighty F[--ker?],” “Aye, T.T. [Eye titty],
you wipe [whip] Maid F,” and “…a tomato deaf (eye tomato
days [daze]) [code 8-MAY-2-DF].”
Suggesting
the possibility of a “dateline” are MAY II (reversing
AM); TIWW and DIIY (cf. to, day); and II-D (to-day). One
reading is “12-08-May today is [F=S]”; another is “Aye,
28 May today is.”
Such
seemingly incomplete forms as “I ‘To be’ made
of...” in the upward acrostic codeline suggest turnaround or hairpin
encodings. The up/down hairpin suggests “Aye T.T., you be mighty
effete, eye ye m’ beauty (body, bawdy),” “Aye, T.T., you
be made of soda, yam (…maid, fatty-yam) body (…of seedy iamb
bawdy),” “I, too, be made (maid) seedy, eye my body,” “Eye
‘To be,’ made ff [double forte], die, amid
[B=8] bawdy,” and “…you be made of damn bawdy.”
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