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One who
reads the text of Rune 151 with sober respect and tries to ignore
the always distracting game elements in the lines may hear Will, as the
speaking persona, contemplating his role as a writer in the service of
a subject who does not turn to acknowledge his work. (In that sense the
poem is like Rune 150.) Organic figures of “growth” and of
light and darkness stem from the punning opening apostrophe, “You
who’ve failed to inspire leaves [of verse] or have affected
them adversely….” If the listening friend, Will’s unnamed
auditor, can “root pity in [his] heart” and let it “grow”
(2), the dearth in the poet’s verses will be alleviated. (Elsewhere
in Q, the pun rose/rows describes these lines.)
Among the
terms that imply natural organic processes are leaves
(1), Root, grows (2), and Growing (14). Less directly,
diction in the poem amplifies the motif of light and dark, of sun and
shade: In the world of the poem, water and sun equal health, while “dross”
and darkness need “remedy” (14). “Catch thy hope”
(3) hints at catching the sun’s rays—a pattern that contrasts
with “follow night” (5). “Enlighten” (12) expands
this image cluster, as does the notion of water as a balm (13-14).
The fact is that
line 1 evokes an edenic image of Creation, generating “the likeness
of a man,” with a coy, suggestive pun about Adam’s figleaf
in the wordstring “leave’s unswayed.” (Is the leaf fixed
and unflappable?) Jokingly, too, the poem opens with the pun “Howl,
[Holy; Wholly..] Eve’s sons we are, deathly kin soft. Amen!”
The end-pun “fe-man/semen” coexists. The “heart/hard”
that “grows” (see 2) has phallic implications.
Other image
clusters in the poem are about sickness and health, travel, and
religion.
Terms about
sickness and health include heart (2); defect
(9); the gauze to blindness (12), echoing eye, mistake
my view (8); sick (13); healthful remedy
(14); and a description of madness (7).
Terms about
travel include leaves (1, a pun); being ...from
me (4); follow (5); and “my Dis-course, a
‘summit’ my end sere” (7). The last, a playful paradox,
uses Dante’s name for the capital of hell—Dis—to pun,
“my path to hell.”
The word
“likeness” (1) triggers an image cluster about religion because
the term puns on “icon” and “capacity for adoration”
(a neologism). Topical correlations include pity, heart, hope, turn
back, follow, fiend, divine, marvel, mistake my view, worship, love, abhor,
contented, enlighten, and suggestions of vision and baptism. “Ribbed”
and “Noah Age,” implications in the acrostic codeline (see
below), reinforce a playful preoccupation with religious topics.
The phrase
“catch thy hope” (3)—an inversion of “mistake
my view” (8)—compresses a directive to the “departing”
friend that time has proven accurate: i.e., “Know that your future
resides with me as the writer who will make you immortal.” “Doth
follow night” (5), a linked expression, implies metaphysical darkness
but also may tell us literally that Will writes at night, expending “hours
of dross” (6).
Since the word
catch to Will meant a ludicrous round sung with voices
overlapping (OED 1601), that terms puns on round / rune as a
raucous, confusing song. Adjacent puns in line 3, e.g., include, “But
[i.e., Only] if thou catch, thy hope t’ rune be
asked of me” and “Bawdy fit [i.e., stanza], oh, you catch,
typed: a rune bays, key t’ tome.”
Some terms
comment indirectly on the challenging, mind-testing genre we
see being practiced: Line 7 rightfully asserts, “My ideas and mode
of rhetoric here are those of a crazy person.” And “oathers”
(pun 10) encodes “coterie members bound by oaths of secrecy.”
Other puns
in the text have bawdy insinuations: e.g., “Knight, howl: I kiss
end bawdier, mess divine; I end selling whores” (5-6) and “thy
poured rouge to bind” (11-12, sketching a fussy courtier). Line
2 encodes phallic bawdry, with plays in root, heart/hard, and
“wen [i.e., protuberance], it grows.” The usual suggestion
of testicles lurks in “blind eyes” (12), and line 14 suggests
ejaculation. Phallic “growth” is one subject here.
The whole
poem, in fact, can be read in phallic terms, with “fiendishly
following night,” “worshipping thy defect,” and “loving
what others abhor” implying homoerotic modes of affection. He
in line 11 may mean the speaker’s member. “Wen, awl, my beast
doth worship the hideous etc.” (9) is a concurrent joke.
“I seek Whitehall,
the help of Bath desired” (13) is a topical pun of a different order.
Whitehall is a metonymy for “the government,” while Bath offered
healing waters.
The poem
manages incidental rhymes (me / be / remedy) and has
other near-rhymes and end-terms linked by sound (e.g., friend / fiend;
are / abhor; and grows/ dross).
Sample Puns
1)
fey O-semen; John [W=IN], wholly using Sue, hard, he
lacking (licking; liking) ass of a man; Holiest V, an ass warty like an
ass of a man
1-2) Holy
son of war did ally ken, ass o’ seaman rude; W.H., O, leave son of
Waite the likeness of a man, root pity in thy heart; licking ass, face
a man-root, pitying thy hard…; my end-row debate, tainting high art;
semen rue, debating thy hard
1-3)
…O, leave son sweet (Leveson, Swede), the likeness of a
man-root pitying—thy hard that, when it grows, butts thou catch
2)
W., Hen, eyed G-row as bawdy fit; eye T.T., aye, entire T.T.;
in Tyre, T.T. hied whinnied jeers
2-3)
in thigh, here T.T. had wen, it grows beauteous; hard, t’ Hathaway
knight grows bawdiest hook—8 [inches] shitty, hooped; the twinned,
gross butt eye, Southy, see it shit
3) catch
round, rune; thy H-obit [“ladder’s” death-knell] you rune;
shitty-heaped your neb, eye sick tome bawdy; But if thou cat see, type
turn back, Tommy; …cat see high, tipped urn
3-4) eye,
Southy, caged Hi-ho!—Peter in Habakkuk tome (to me) bawdy baying;
be a Sikh to m’ abbot, being both ass or homme,
maybe oded witch of rune (serene; siren); too, thy yawp t’ urn be
a Sikh tome bawdy; Turn back tome, Beauty being both of Rome,
bawdy, to each friend
4-5)
fair homme, my bawdy twitches runed oaths hollow
5) Doth
felony get W.H.?
5-6) Knight
Holy kiss, eye indebiter; A sign debate, Hermes divine, unfeeling whores;
Do this allow, knight, who like (lick) ass, “I,” (“eye”),
end by terms; …bitter ms. divine in feeling whore soft, Row F (C,
S); a sane debate hear, misty wine eye
5-7) Do
the solo whinnied howl, aye giving debate or, missed (ms.’d), eye
whinnies hell (hail) injure asses dour o’ Semite, haughty ass handy
6) Hermes,
divine John, feeling whore’s ass-dross; D-rows; whore’s austere
O’s; aye Nantes Hen jars; Hermes’ divine ancile (…ancille)
lingers oft
6-7) Sad
Row F [i.e., 6] cement, you jet sand mid high F-course, eye cement, my
answer; lying juries, oft rough, Semite, ought assent; D-rows hymn yet
how Addison dim ye discover, see a Semite man sour; Bitty Hermes’
divine anvil injures oft rows’ empty Hugh-jets and Midas’ whores
7) Empty,
haughty, sinned Midas
7-8) Adam
in Surinam aye ruled; see, Orpheus, my demons are no marvel t’ entomb;
saint, my deafest whore seize, madam in Surinam aye reveled (eye revealed)
7-9)
deaf, see Orpheus made men serene, Homer, veiled in th’ huge hymns
t’ ache, mewn (…t’ aye commune)
8) Know
m’ earl’d Hen, t’ whom I, fit, aye came (…t’
whom I fed aye come); Gnome, our veil thin in th’ “O,”
you gamy ass, take my view
8-9) eye
communal my bested oath; a comey wound a Limey best (beast) doth worship
9-10) W.,
Hen., awl, my beast, doth worship th’ hideous ass “O,”
th’ “O” huge I (phallic “I”) love, what others
do abhor
9-11) see
Tottel ode (owed) oathers [cf. T’s Miscellany 1557, including
Wyatt and Surrey], top Horace[’] content, Ed; the warship Thetis-ass
taught how jelly-white oathers do abhor his cunt-end: Ed, the wiper-drudge
10-11) Oathers
daub Houri’s (Harry’s) cunt-end, didie poured rouge;
O, though I love you, Hat., others do a boar hiss (…eye Boris); whore’s
cunt-ended, thy poor drudge to be
11-12) Ed,
thy porter huge, Toby, ended Owen (…anally jetting thee; …the
gauzes, too; …the gusto blinding ass[es]); Hiss, see Auntie, Anne
titty-poor drudge; Eddie poured rouge to be handy, to enlighten the Jew
12-13) Anne,
to enlighten the cows, tup London asses, eye sick (I f--k) Whitehall;
the gauze to blindness I seek; to Belinda, an ass, I sick Wit Hall, the
help of Bath deferred; toppling din efface (Dublin Dennis eyes), I seek
Whitehall
13) lady’ll
piss-bath desire; Whitehall tile, peace, bad (bait) heady sire, Ed; Whitehall
tile pave bad head’s ire (bated sire); I f--k widow (Wit Hall) lady,
hell-piss both desired; Wit Hall the help of bath desired 12-14 cf. the
blind man and the Pool of Siloam (St. John 9:1ff.)
13-14) blind,
an ass sea-sick, Wit Hall…; fire, Dick, our Owen gay be 8 handy;
our Edgar [cf. Lear] Owen [Glendower?] gay bade (paid)
14) G-row
enjoy…; eye both and deal (dull) th’ sole rhyme, Eddie; a bad
hand held has you leer [empty], m’ Eddie; bait hand held eisell remedy;
healthful, our maid Y; th’ fool rhymed, why?
Acrostic Wit
The
elements of the downward acrostic—WR BB D BM NW OH AIG—encourage
a reader/player to note the letterstring BM and thus to scout out scatology.
The codestring also spells out “New Age” and “Noah Age”
(code NW OHAIG) and a potentially edenic play on “ribbed”
(code RBBD). Since B may stand for 8 (and phonic eight), as in modern
text-messaging, possible readings multiple here, including these samples:
“Where baby’d B.M., new ‘O’ eye,” “Where
be bed, be my Anne witch,” “Weir, baby’d B.M. in wedge,”
“…in witch,” “Were baby t’ B.M., new itch,”
“Warped B.M. in woe-edge [i.e., the hard acrostic line],”
“We’re baby dumb, in woe itch,” and “W. rubbed
item [and, presto, a...]: New Age” (with code BM = 8M = item). The
last reading focuses on Will as a godlike magician. Thus the first line
may be a question, with the implicit answer “Will is Creator here.”
“Edge”
(meaning “margin” and “knife”) implies the acrostic
row. Thus the reading “W. ‘ribbed’ item: New Edge”
makes sense as a codeline reading.
The
(contiguous) text of Rune 150 depicts Will as an importuning
babe., and the acrostic seems to expand that idea as if the topic were
on the poet’s mind
The
upward (reverse) code or Rune 151—GIAHOWN M BD BB RW—opens
with an insistent play on John, possibly Will’s son-in-law. Readings
of the codeline include, e.g., “John, maybe, th’ baby rue”;
“Join m’ bed, be bare. [signed] W.”; “John, m’
bed be bare (...barrow; burrow). W.”; “Gown, maybe, dip, Brrrr!
W.”; “Join m’ bed, be bier”; “Join my bed:
Burrow”; “Jew in m’ bed be bare. W.”; “Join
my B, the [my bitty] BB Row”; “Jawing may be deep, bare VV
[fangs]”; “Join, maybe, Devereux (DeBrough?),” and “Jew-name
be Devereux (DeBrough?).”
The down/up
hairpin codeline suggests, e.g., “Were ’88 [a]date [B=8],
my new-age John made ’88 row [i.e., the ‘row’ of ’88,
the Armada year]”; “…my Noah-edge join, mate, 88 row”;
and/or “Warped B.M. and witch join my bad burrow.” This “burrow”
suggests the “bad pockets” in Dante’s Inferno and may
also echo “rotten borough.”
The
up/down hairpin suggests, e.g., “John, maybe ‘Devereux’
write—bad item, new age.”
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