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Though
typically ambiguous, this texts insists on being read as a tour
de force of phallic wit depicting Will’s unnamed beloved auditor
being seduced by a fiendish woman (3-4) who fellates (6) and masturbates
(14) him. Offended by such “strange malladies” (Q13), Will
can still rationalize a lapse (8-13) into this “sensual feast”
(1), noting that sleep, that old defense against sexual lures, no longer
works (13-14). Even the word malladies puns on “male at ease,”
“my laddies/ladies,” “male eyes ‘I’s [phallically
suggestive],” and “male ‘I’ ‘dies’.”
In Renaissance parlance, “to die” means to reach a sexual
climax. (The deduction that I and O are routinely suggestive pictographic
sexual symbols is my own.)
The pun “th’
huss” (5, Q thus ) gives “her” (3) an ambiguous
referent. Whether a mother or not (3), Will’s “she”
is a figure with a “virgin hand” (14)—suggesting
a parallel with his scripted Mistress/Mss. who colors, in particular,
the texts of the two closing sets in Q, collectively Sonnets 127-154 (and
the Runes with the same numbers).
“Dis-content”
(3) is a pun on “hellish subject matter” because
“Dis” is the capital of Hell in Dante’s Inferno; this
pun hints that “her…infant” (and not the “mother”)
may parallel the text itself, full of infernal stuff.
Other punning
details suggest a scenario in which the “she” who
manually abuses Will’s male friend may be the poet’s own wife,
Anne: These puns include “Anne, all my…faith in thee is lost”
(12); “…ease on (Harry’s on...) / Anne, my hone stiff,
a thin thistle oft” (11-12); and “…by a virgin Anne
disarmed” (14).
The text, in fact,
is rife with such derogatory “Anne-wit.” Initial puns include
“To Annie...” and “Two, Annie S. and Sue Hall, see as
two I’d hid...” (1). The pronoun her in 3 points
toward the pun on Anne, initial in 5. (Earlier critics have suggested
that And elsewhere in Q may pun on “Anne.”) And
tought it thus (5) puns, “Anne, twated, th’ huss...,”
while a new (5) puns, “Anne, Anne,” with w = IN
= Anne. Q’s thus a new puns “the hussy knew,”
a play that’s strategic in deciphering the scenario. That in
my minde thy worst all best... (10) puns, “Th’ Hat.-enemy,
m’ Anne, thy whore, stall-beast...” with “...m’
Anne did your stall-beast exceed, ass triumphing low...” a pun in
10-11. And finally, hand (14) puns on Anne—with hand
and disarmed consciously complementary. “Dis-armed”
means, punningly, “equipped with infernal weaponry.”
One pun
in 11-12 is this: “...eye ease, and over there, Avon, Anne dull,
my own niece t’ sight....” A variant, concurrent pun is “...sties
know, Sir: There our Avon-Anne dilemma hones the scythe.” Even “dilemma”
puns on “double limbs.”
Other bawdy puns gravel a textured path: “awl,” “soft,
hairy ends,” “rents,” “cunt-end,” “woo-inch,”
“high spur,” “love ‘I’,” “peer,
‘I’d’,” “taut,” “true [i.e.,
right-angled],” “wither,” “greet,”, “eat,”
“tup,” “8 up,” “[dis]charge [suggesting
both offspring and semen],” “body’s end,” “death,”
“piss,” “fizzy seed” “ass, awl-mense know,”
“peer, scent (ascend) m’ hone,” “awl beast ex-seeds,”
“flesh, ass-tease know (in ‘O’),” “eye ‘snow’,”
and so on.
Any reader
here who objects that I’m “making all this up”
should remember that whole scholarly book studies have been devoted to
Shakespeare’s bawdry. Everyone agrees that Will loved “low”
puns—though, I confess, no one yet has broached the gamy range suggested
here.
Punning
diction also adds figurative unity to the text by interlinking
economic, military, medical, gustatory, and vaguely religious imagery.
Readers who seek them out can find their own examples.
The “rents/revenue”
figure (2) may allude to Southampton, Will’s only known patron:
Southy was an orphan deprived of his due by his guardian. The pun “oft
heir (Harry) rents / not(e)” (2-3) may be part of such wit, which
finds possible amplification in the emphatic acrostic running down the
lefthand side of the text: “Waiter” as “a warder of
the Tower of London” (OED 1551) suggests a possible play about Southampton
in The Tower, where he was held captive after the Essex rebellion. (See
below, under Acrostic Wit.)
In
the main text, wit aimed at Thorpe may include these overlaid
puns: “Ed.’s rune’s Austrian, ’tis not Parisian”
and “austere rune, ’tis a knot-uprising, (appraising...) jabbering
fonts’ discontent (...Dis-content)” (2-3). Here a “knot”
is a riddlic text, and “ed[itor],” I propose, may acknowledge
Thorpe’s jot-and-tittle control over the typographic details of
Will’s textual manuscript, which during composition and revision
the poet would have envisioned as printed forms. More simply, “editor”
might mean proofreader—in effect, us.
Sample Puns
1)
Two, Annie S. and Sue Hall, feast with thee alone (Hall, wan [one; John]);
To Annie, sin is vile; Too, Annie offends you, Hall; Twins in Sue Hall
see, aft, witty; Twenty sins you’ll see, a fit witty; witty awl wan
(with thee, Hall won); heal one
1-2) Too
innocent, Sue Hall is East with the aloe in Araby, daughter S. bids rune-use;
t’ heal honor o’ bed-oath, here’s Betty, serving you ass,
oft hairy end ’tis; see aye Shakespeare witty “awl” one,
rob doughty arse; witty Helen robbed others’ beds
2) oather,
sup Ed’s ruinous O; Ed’s (S.-)runes oft Harry ends; bids; oped
oathers Bede’s runes
2-3) Ed’s
rune’s Austrian, ’tis not Parisian; rune, ’tis knot uprising,
jabbering fonts’ Dis-content; Bede’s rune use oft herein; snot
prizing, hear pouring saint’s discontent; fur Eve new—soft,
hairy, end is not
3) razing
harbor, eye innocents; poor infants die f--king; Knot, peer eyes injure,
poor infant’s Dis-cunt end; note, uprising, Hebron
3-4)
end-to-end t’ Owen, jasper-eyed you eyed her foul period; two-inch
asperity withers O; Harville appeared
4) Purity,
with her foe, Willy, peer eyed; soul
4-5) with
her vow, liberate Anne; wry, dandy, turgid, eye T.T. using you; leper-eyed
Anne did audit thus, a newt, ogre ate
5) Anne
did oddities eye new; th’ hussy new tiger ate; Anne taught aye T.T.
how ass anew to greet
5-6) titty
up, thick her chest (jest), ass t’ hip odious
6) 8-up
[phallic; also a gameboard position]; Thy seer jests, thy body sinned;
arch, eye Southy, Southy bawdy
6-7)
ass endeavors did you hiccup; t’ abode I ascend; body’s end
Osiris did hue; eye scene deforested, huge; thy body’s end fiery
is, death; eye, Southy Boadicean desire (…Boadicea end, deforested
hussy)
7) Dis-ire
eye, sad Hath.-Witch; Desirous death, witch th’ high f--k did accept
7-8)
If I f--k did accept, low sighs note, ass, oat, ruse’ll mean snare
of inch upon (a pun) myself with present moan
8) Louis
I is not foe; Lo, ass-eyes naughty saw Jerusalem [t=j] in snow; Hell-offices
not sought, rue, Ass Hall; Loose eye, eye snot, Sue, true as Hall, mints
an “O”; true as awl, men snow; you eye S. Hall mense, no?
8-9)
ass, awl mensing whore, wench; Soloman’s no rune Japan may sell;
Soloman’s in whore (even Jew-pun may sell); know rune, Jew, pun-missal
see, witty pierce his awl-mincing O (Orvin)?
9) Harry,
you inch upon Miss Hall’s witty “pre-vent”; Rune G (a pun)
miss’ll see, witty praise and moan
9-10) with
pee, resent monied Hat., John, mime “in debt,” hue Whore Shakespeare,
awl beefed “ex-seed”; present money (moan) t’ Hat., enemy,
mint thy worst
10) thy whore, Shakespeare,
Hall, beast, exceeds; awl-beast “ex-seeds”; John, mime Indie-tour
(miming detour); in the Tower, his “tall beast” ex-seeds
10-11) tax cities
to rhyme venally (vainly); X-seeds [seminal acrostics] triumph in loo’s
easy sties? No, sir!
11) lovely Shasters
[Hindu scriptures] know farther reason; I snow (I’s in O), sir, to
Harry a son
11-12) eye ease,
and over there, Avon, Anne dull, my Honey Shakespeare, fat Auntie, ass
lusty
12) Eying Ptolemy,
hone fit, sayeth John; Anne dull may hone Shakespeare’s “I”
thin; Handy awl, my hone fit, is 8 in thee, 1 soft; India’s lost
(loved; aloft)
12-13) thistle
oft I gain, stiff, tearing gem allayed (elate) eyes (a lady’s); this
lofty Age Anne Shakespeare’s to range, My Lady S., eye sour Anne,
see her!
13) malady
eye, sour Annie cure; terrain game eye; Adios, Asser, again;
I avow rancor
13-14) eye
in zeros, flea peeing; see your wassail peeing, bargain handy; eye, in
a series, ass leaping, bear ginning, Dis farmed; see your W.S. sleeping,
by a virgin Anne disarmed; Annie (see her) was fool, ape, John, gabby
(gobby), a virgin handy I farmed (affirmed); Rizzy’s leaping
14) a virgin
Anne did “I’s” harm, Ed.; Virgin handy Dis armed; inch
by a “V” urgent, die, fair maid!
Acrostic Wit
The
acrostic codeline, as usual, embeds potential wit in the form
of ambiguously encrypted messages. The downward codestring—T
RN WAED L [I] RT TA AW—suggests such potential readings as these:
“Turn wood, Hell-art owe,” “T’ runeward leered two,”
“T-rune would lure T.T., I owe,” “Tear knew eye, Ed.’ll
ready owe,” “T’ earn a way, Ed.’ll hard ‘I’
owe,” “Tear, new aid, lured two,” “Turn away t’
Lear, t’ Daw [hinting at ‘Upstart Crow’],” “T’
earn Whitehall hell, writ owe,” “Turn, waddler, T.T. awe,”
and “Turn would lure T.T. away.” Here “T.T.” customarily
suggests Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing agent, whose initials occur
twice in Q’s frontmatter. “Ed.” (as “editor”)
may also mean T.T., whose collaboration (we can now see) was necessary
to effect the gamy elements in the Quarto scheme. Whitehall is, in effect,
a metonomy for the government.
The
upward (reverse) codeline—WAATTR L DEAW N RT—insistently
encodes “water” and “dew,” along with suggestions
of “lady” and “in art,” “you inert,”
and so on. Readings include these samples: “Water’ll dew (do,
deux, Dieu) in art (an art, inert, in earth),” “Wyatt
riled you in art,” “‘Water’ held you inert,”
“Wyatt or Leda owe in art,” “W [or runic Wen] eye aye,
T.T., our letter ‘W’ in art (Wen, arty; inert; an art),”
“Water, hell, dawn, art (Water held on [held dawn] hard),” “Waiter
held on hard,”and “Waiter led you inert.” A “waiter”
was “a warder of the Tower of London” (1551)—suggesting,
that both the up and down codelines may house some kind
of reference to Southampton’s stay in The Tower.
Wyatt, simultaneously
encoded, points to Sir Thomas Wyatt, Will’s famed sonneteering predecessor.
The
up/down hairpin codeline suggests, e.g., “Waite hurled (reeled)
you near th’ Tower, and Whitehall hurt, too.” Seizing the Court
at Whitehall was a goal of the Essex rebellion, during which Waite, a
defender, was killed. The acrostics in Runes 143-144 may encode related
plays.
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