Toward Broader Readings of the Quarto Lines

         Finding the Runes hidden in the Sonnets bring some clarification, but also new challenges: Some of the Runes are very hard, and most are at least moderately teasing and frustrating to read for coherence and sense. Given the problematic Q lines and unfamiliar runic permutations, some of the 154 Runes first reappear to us as blurs that need focusing, and others appear as murky mysteries or as dazzling sleights that make us blink.

           A first necessity for reading the Runes is to let go of what we’ve previously thought given lines “mean” and to start with clean slates as Quarto readers. Another requirement—hard for me personally—is to eschew calling the Runes “subtexts,” since they originated as coeval creations and in fact may in their crafting reflect even more time and patient care than the Sonnets do. If anything, they are conjoined—the way what used to be called Siamese twins are joined. The truly “subtextual” aspects in Q are the deeply buried puns, such as those cataloged in the index, and the acrostic games and “gameboard” elements.

         From the point of view of readers who’ve known about the Sonnets but not about the Runes, the latter, of course, feel subtextual; inference suggests, too, that Will saw them as private, not public. Whether he saw them as “secondary,” however, is another matter.

          Before tackling anything “subtextual” in any runic text, a first goal for reader/players is to try, as I have tried, to construe the artifactual linestring so it “makes sense”—and concurrently to experience the text as a game that’s attempting rather successfully to thwart the very reduction to linear meaning that we’re trying to make. My editorial punctuations and paraphrases offer one set of possibilities in the case of each rune, but readers will derive their own versions and have their own experiences.

          At first, the Runes may seem to be doing violence to the lines they bind together, especially as they expand the “meanings” in the familiar old saws: e.g., “S. Hall, I come, pair thee two, a summer's day” (Sonnet 18.1); “Let me knot two [suggesting Sonnets, Runes]—the marriage of true (…mirage oft rue) minds” (Sonnet 116.1); or “Bare runèd quires where late the Sweet Bard sang” (Sonnet 73.4), also “…where Earl (…W., Harry, Earl) ate the Sweet Bard’s [h]angin’ meat… (73.4-5). Readers who object that I’m misreading, mispunctuating, or misconstruing Will’s lines are confused about how his punning plan works. At least two roadblocks may routinely bar our treatment of the Q lines as such gamy letterstrings: the modern disdain for puns as trivial humor, and modern bardolatry, the reverence for Will that makes us discount “low” meanings as somehow “beneath” the dignity of a “serious” poet.

          As readers progressively salvage the Runes from oblivion, new attitudes toward Shakespeare’s Q texts and lines will emerge, recapitulating in various fashions the struggle I’ve already undergone myself, and complementing the suggestions I make in this book.

          Earlier I’ve offered samples of a few familiar lines in their old and their new contexts. Here are a few others that show further how each Q line gains an alternate set of meanings in the Runes:

In this authorized string of lines, when the poet speaks of “‘re-membrance’ of things past(e)”—not only lost but also “pasted together” and perhaps “sham” (cf. paste OED 1659)—he puns about the very act he’s (and we’re) engaged in, putting artificial parts together again to create a pasteup text that may seem spurious. “Outcast state” (cf. “exiled kingdom”) even seems likely as a neologistic printing term describing a “discarded” text. (OED shows “state” as an engraving term in 1874.) The pun “Witch, eye (Witchy…) black ink, half-supposèd dead” describes the Runes; more overtly, the details “state” and “summon,” along with the pun on “lackey,” combine to suggest lost kingliness and thus a lost domain or sphere.

          The double entendre “which I, Bill, aching [a king], half supposèd dead” is a still another pun about the loss of a mysterious province—really, as this book shows, half of the poet’s verse cycle. The concurrent pun “witch able, a king,” depicts Will as a magician in control. “Summon up” not only suggests “add line to line,” as in a tally—the proper business of “my adder’s sense” (Sonnet 112.10)—but also “conjure into being.”

       Similarly for the first time we hear new meaning and playful wit in this unfamiliar directive to Will’s unnamed friend—or to some other auditor, perhaps us:

      In addition to the plays “… dear love forgèd me—quite / a pun!” and “love forged me quiet,” this bit of lost text embeds the nameplay “Shake” and the fuller pun “Witch Shake., against thee, see [c = see], old….” (OED shows “pun” 1662, origin obsc.) The ligature ft [i.e., “long s” + t] as a name cipher helps create the pun “Witch Shake., aging Shakespeare,” “…see boss [protuberance], Witch Shake., again ft, thistled,” and a joke about “Which Shake[speare]?” The third line also offers puns on “soul,” “sold,” “cud,” “code,” and “God” (in Q’s could, “cold”), while “fled” (in the first line) admits the puns “flayed”—a writer’s joke about parchment and about “losing one’s hide”—and “slayed,” because ƒ and “long s” interchange visually. (Booth calls the letterforms “nearly identical” [ix]). Finally, this tercet encases a joke about the torture that comes from “stichs” or line units: e.g., “…e quite [equity, acquit] / a pun [‘acute, a bun,’ suggesting a protruding buttock, or ‘equate a pun’] thou see: bough-switch, ass ache again, stick (‘stich’ [line unit, verse, card trick]) old…”—or some such. The “whispered”conceit suggests that the figurative “boughs” are like Q’s line units, which have been “left out in the cold” all these years, and which, further, are like instruments of abuse, like switches on buttocks. The put-upon reader here begins to understand the meaning of the play, “After my death, dear love forged me quite a pun!”

          A third example, one of the Runemaster’s immodest self-references, helps show how much new stuff there is to be found in the Expanded Q, “this composèd wonder” (Sonnet 59. 10) with its “newfound methods” and “compounds strange” (Sonnet 76.4). The address below, like the one just above, seems to be directed toward a future recompositor or, rather sarcastically, toward the “beloved friend”—who may in the poet’s mind have seemed likely to be the same person:

Here the image of “breathers” figuratively reinforces the phrase “what in thee doth live,” while “doth live” and “are dead” foil each other neatly.

          “Farfetched” puns (the term is meaningless in Q) in the linestring include these: “And hard is witty Swede [i.e., Thomas Thorpe, the ‘editor’], gray see Ed. be / in ‘O,’ peer’s toothy, bawdy, wadding that ‘oath-leaf’”; “When all Lethe be…”; “When all the beraters of this world [cf. ‘my sphere,’ The Globe] are dead…”; “beraters oft hiss [The Globe]”; “We null the beraters of [The Globe]”; “We annul thee…”; and “Be readers (Beraters) of this whirled, or dead.” The quiet pun “arts…be / an ‘up-raise’” anticipates “tall building,” while a joke about “mouths” resides in the collaborating phrases “in operas [1644, from It. and Fr., and from L. works] toothy be you taught (…taut, twat)” and “the breathers of this world are dead (…the breath, or soft high swirl, darted).” The initial play “Ann darts, witty, sweet…”—like “Witch Shake.” in the preceding example—may be another latency about the poet’s wife. Concurrent puns, distracting but entertaining and thus part of the game, include these: “good Libbie (written) Hall”; “In operas toothy, bawdy, waiting to heed oath, Livy, he’s tall”; “aye vestal be you, ill, dying, and of God…”; “wry dune alt [high] he bred here”; “goodly pee, ridden ‘awl,’ to Hebrew there (Hebrew’d heiress) soft is.”

         Readers deterred by such puns or doubtful about their “authorization” (for certainly a reader cooperates in creating or re-creating them) may at first choose to ignore such minimalistic word play, concentrating instead on the obvious and substantial surface coherence, the sense and logic, in the three restored sequences above, studying at first the emphatic rather than the tangential evidence for the poet’s authorization of the sequences, analyzing the lines for evidence of craftsmanship and order rather than disorder.

         However far a reader may want to pursue them, the lurking sequences of newfound meanings in the Q lines and their combinations make it easier than before for one to take the poet at his word when he talks (as in Sonnets 27-28 or 43) wearily of late-night composition, of being frustrated and bone-tired at bedtime, and of not being able to sleep because of the “journey in my head (irony enemied; irony enema’d; ‘iron-eye [or phallic ‘I’], enemy, heed’).” Our increased understanding of Will’s real difficulties and frustrations as he labored to complete his arduous grand design may lead us to hear his complaining aspects as fairly honest, not just conventional.

         Too, ironic or deprecating contexts in the Sonnets are now less likely to belie the potential accuracy of such comments as “my verse astonished (my verses tones [cf. ‘tomes’] hid; my verses, to one eye shut; my verses twin…; my V [pictographic groin], arse, a stone I shit)” (Sonnet 86). Such epithets as “new-found methods” and “compounds strange” (Sonnet 76), broached above, occur in Will’s comments about his own writing. And the term “both your Poets” (Sonnet 83) now becomes pregnant with the meaning “Sonneteer and Runemaster.” Knowledge of the buried scheme, in fact, invites us to reconsider many of the details and much of the matter that is in the Sonnets—but especially the poet’s profusely recurring references to himself and his preoccupation with his own on-going activity as a writer.

           Thus the discoveries posted on this site have far-reaching implications for reading the texts that have been before our eyes all along, since the original coterie would surely have read not just the Runes but also the Sonnets broadly, for their wit. Offering new approaches to lines and thus to the whole of the Q texts, the present book not only reveals 154 lost runic texts but also begins to restore to us the Sonnets themselves, showing us the original interconnections among the visible texts as the author first juxtaposed them on hand-scripted pages, and revealing in particular their coy playfulness, their leg-pulling and game-playing character, on a scale that far transcends the white-noise level of punning we have already detected in them.

Hominy, ale, ye end up sick… Howmany ahol y and ob feq… (33.3)

For tooth-essential salt, I bring John’s own semen (…in Seine seamen; …in fancy hymen)
                                                      For toth yfenfuall ƒault I bring inf en ce,Imayn (37.7-8)

Applied in cunt handy, thin, misty 8 [inches]—I needle y’ ass remote (…y’ ass-rim odd)
                                                      HaplyeIt hin keont hee,an d then myf t ate A ndheauil y ƒ romwoet (38.1-2)

Apply th’ ink Auntie Anne did in misstating devil’s row mute
                                                      HaplyeI th inke onthee, an dt hen myftate,An dheauilyƒ ro mwoet (38.1-2)

When Lucan were dead, is Rome the thing it was?  When louecon uer ted f rom the thing it was (49.7)

To Livy, a fecund elephant see-saw needed (…aye fecund elephants Esau kneaded).
                                                               To liue a fcond l i ƒeon fe co ndhead, (63.12)

Science mandates our steins erect, yours (ewers) down: Indeed, eye meaded jaw, doubting
                                    Since mindeatƒ ir ftinc arrect, erwas done. Andt i methat gaue, dothn (64.3-4)

A rooster roast done (…roasting), Anne did eye meat: Hat.-jaw (Mated Judith…) doth now his gifts (jests) [i.e., his crowing] “un-sound”                  a rrecte(r) rwas done. An Dt i met hat gaue, doth now his giftc on ƒound (64.3-4)

If state offers you limited aid, John, (…I own [admit]) you hear a lack.
                                                      …f ftate, Oƒeareƒ u llmedit at io n, w here a lack, (65.8-9)

Handy form, my far off, witty oathers’ altar, near panting Magi witty, bawdy…
                  hand From me ƒarre of, with others allto neere, Painting myage with beauty (70.4-6)

Andean (Ending…), th’ hymn is t’ ill Greene but weepy, twatted witch.
                                                      …andhein th em ft ill greene, But weepe tohaue,that which (70.7-8)

In ark you aye see kitchen jet, hid yellow taper shows my nights’ waste (…knight’s waist).
                                                      …n orq u i c kechan ge?T hyd yallhow thypre tious my nuits wafte, (72.6-7)

Worried, eye Shakespeare ill, alone: You read his ame.         Whywrite I ft ill allone,eue rt hef ame, (75.6)

In a Ming [vase], thy enemy be less (…bellows…) seasonal repartee.  N a ming thy name, b leffes an ill repor t. (92.11)

Eye slick alembic old, high sill, oak stair, and slate (…oak’s terrain oscillate [OED 1726])
                                                      I ƒlike aLambehec ould hi sl ookes tr an flate. (94.12)

Age, amend: Apples [cf. the story of The Fall] herald a sequence to hell.
                                                      …ag eme.And haplieoƒ ourold a cquaintance t ell. (96.4-5)

Saw-dust thou, too, eye in death, a rune (…erring).                   So doft thou too, a n dth e rein (102A.3)

Sought (Sewed, Sowed), high tummy, cell see: Bearing Judy, razor missed Anne.
                                                      Sot ha t my fel ƒe brin gwa te rƒor myft aine, (106A.11)

I teach (ditch) theatre for liquor, aye foamy (…I foam, Tommy; hold my tongue)
                                    I teach theehow,There fore likeher, I fome- tim e hold my tongue: (111A.3-4)

Human descending, the First Cunt, see it, O, ass lewd, hairy, bared fore-nothing, this wide V, never fecal, thin, gummy….        …umen t ,Finding the ƒirft con ce it o ƒ louet here bred, For nothing this wide V niuer feIcall, Then giueme… (111A.9-12)

Ass, you see meatus, that “I” half-scanned, addle Lancaster, my crape tights murky, nude…
             ACc u fe methus,that I haue fcant edall, LIkeasto ma keourappe tites morekee neWHat … (113.5-7)

You pawn your dearest lute, O callous (to call us) tupper, vender melodious.
                                                      …v pon your deareft louet o call,As topre uentour malladies (115.5-6)

Lame fool, dafter ward, suborns Lear error.          …lame fhoul dafter ward sburnec leer er.Or (116.3-4)

Tom [Thorpe] hawks m’ own fit (ft=Shakespeare) airs, handy things, in digest (… and, dead, hangs)
                                                      Tom akeoƒ m on ft ers, an dt hings (117.2)

Tomahawk [OED 1634] of mine stirs, handy thing is in, digs to boot
                                                      Toma ke of mon fters, an d thing s in digef t, But (117.2-3)

Tomahawk of mine (man) stirs Anne dead, inches in, digs to butt or ass, keen- inch to amuse a million decadent sonnets anew
   Toma ke of mon ∫ters, an dt hings in digef t, But r ec ken ing t ime,whofe million daccident sOno,itis aneu (117.2-4)

Tommy wove million decadent sonnets, any verse (“Annie-verse”) I X’d.
                                                      …time,whofe million daccident sOno,itis ane uerf i xed (117.3-4)

Witch-work is on leaves, effort numb readier is (…red whore scent).
                                                      Which work es on leafes offhort numb redhower s, And… (122.12-13)

T’ Ham S., elves babble dares, orate o’ Judy: Ham is Romeo, sibyl (…ass able).
                                    …t hem-f elues bebeuel Theref oret o giuet hem f rommewa s Ibold (123.9-10)

If it be poisson dead, is the lesser fin lousy (…Louisa)?
                                                      If it be poifon’ d,t is the leffer finne, Loueisa (125.2-3)

They say Dante is shallow. (They say Dante’s shallow-ribbed odes you eyed […ate].)
                                                      Thi sI doevowandthi s fhalleue rbe,T othis Iw it… (125.11-12)

Euripides you eyed in a scald’d, heavily soft, immune set (…seat).
                                                      …euerbe,Tothis Iw it n e scallt heƒole soft ime,Hen ce,t (125.11-13)

Sotted o’ the Roman, Mauritania eye, mighty (…empty) too.
                                                      fothat o the r mine, Morethenenough a mItha tve (129.8-9)

Aye litotes witty will make John giddy, shunned huss (…shown t’ us).
                                                      i ll:Tothyf wee t will mak in gaddi tiont hus. (130.8-9)

Maybe I, too, end in Japan.                   …my p i ttiew ant in gpaine. (130.14)

Awesome, ye see Livy and theme-sources eye (…again’ll err).
                                                      Oƒhim,m  y  fe  lƒe, and theeIam ƒorf  aken,Hel ear… (133.7-8)

Fertile, eye Cato write forms holy (hollow) in ode here.   …furetie-l i keto write forme,S hallwilli n ot her (133.8-9)

Th’ “Hat.-music” hath a farmer-pleasing sound.          Th at Mu∫icke hath a farremore pleafing found: (136.4)

Lo(w), you eye seamy Finn, and headier virtue hate.    Lo u ei s my finne, andt hydeare vertue hate, (141.2)

Dais, hurting ass, [wi]ll amend jabbering. …dehis heart in ƒ l amin g brand, (142.14)

Anne, to enlighten the cows, tup London asses, aye seek Whitehall…
                                                      And to inlighten thee gaueeyes tob lindn effe,. I fick withall (151.12-13)

The atomie (The atom, aye…) is tough t’ hew [cf. “split”]. I’ll wait. This shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt I hate.
         …th atthoum a if thaue t hyW ill, Yet this ∫hal I nere know but liue in doubt, I hate (153.4-5)

Some Routine Characteristics of the Runes

         1. Respect for order and sequence of elements in an overt text.
 
         2. Respect for parallelism of elements in an overt text.

         3. Employment of visually emphatic elements in an overt text.

         4. Employment of numerology.

         5. Regroupings of elements based on the items in 1-4 above, and analysis of those regroupings for those same features.

         6. Egregiously flexible and playful uses of alphabetic and numeric codes, as phonic and pictographic symbols.

         7. Wit always straining after new conceits, but, concurrently…

         8. Recycling conventional figures and allusions, especially those about the runic game itself (e.g., “O,” “rune” or “round,” “knot,” “rows,” “aegis line”) and clustered conceits about such topics as military activity, naval activity, legal activity, gardening and growing things, seasonal change, and the whole range of Biblical and classical subjects.

         9. Associative and spin-off logic that pushes coherence to the breaking point.

       10. Employment of materials and attitudes betraying bawdry, profanity, sacrilege, disrespect for the conventional, irreducibility, and other perversions of normalcy appropriate to a world turned upside down, concurrent with…

       11. Mystical piety that acknowledged God’s omniscience as the only really capable Reader of the Runes (and admitting any other writer or reader’s limitations) and that depended somewhat on the mystical symbols of traditional numerology; as time wore on, secular attitudes came to dominate what in earlier years may have been genuine piety and mysticism.

       12. The use of puns, the more extreme the better, with overlays of serious and non-serious matter the norm.

       13. Secondary employment of aspects of incidental word games—such as anagrams, acrostics, or palindromes—and of any and all the rhetorical and poetic devices and figures of speech known to writers since the lost, bardic beginnings.

1. FRom ƒaireft creatures we defire increafe,
    From fairest “creasures,” Weedy Sire, increase.
    From fairest “creasures” we’d ease our “increase.”
    From fair-assed Creator S. we desire inch-series.
    Fair homme, fairest creature, is witty siren’s rave.
            …fair ass, ’tis richer, sweet, afire…
    Sour homme, sourest creature, Swede [i.e., T.T.?], is our increase [as agent].
    Of Rome is Harry S., ’tis right, you’re swayed, Sire John (see our ass).
    Form fairest see. Erasures we desire: Ink erase.
    Fair homme, fairest creature, sweet siren, see, erase (…see her ass; see arras).
    Fair homme hairy ass, ‘tis red: Your sweetest ire-inch raise.
                                … Swedes, eye rune-series (…sweetest Iran crave).
    From serest creatures, weeds, eye rain (ruin, rune), see reef.
    Fair homme, fair-assed creature, Swede [i.e., T.T.?], if our ink erase....

 2. VVHen ƒortie Winters fhall befeige thy brow,
    When “farty winders [i.e., things wound up]” shell, besiege thy burrow…
    Wind, farty wind, arse offal, besiege thy burrow.
    Windsor, too, eye. Enter S. Hall, Bess, eye jet Hebrew.
    Wen—sore to enter ass—his awl besieged high burrow (…Hebrew).
    W., Hen. S., our twinned (tuned) arse shall besiege thy burrow (…th’ Hebrew).
    Wen, sore to enter, ass is. Hall, besiege thy burrow…
    When fortune tears S. Hall, Bessie age thy brow…
     Wind for tune enters asses’ hell by siege. The way? Burrow.

 3. LOoke in thy glaffe and tell the ƒace thou veweft,
    Loo-kin, thick lies Anne dead: Healthy is ass thou viewest.
    Luke, John, thy glees sent t’ hell this ass, Tho’s T.
    Luke, eye Anne, th’ ugly saint-tail, thesis to have weaved.
    Low cunty jellies see aye in detail t’ hiss, ass, t’ house Shakespeare [=ft, the name cipher].
    Luke, eying th’ witch, laugh until the face toast.
    Luke joined Wycliffe and detailed his ass t’ house tea.

 4. VNthriƒty louelineffe why doft thou fpend,
    Unthrifty lowliness, why, dust thou [h]ast penned!
    Winter’s t’ ye lovely, nice, W.H.…
                        …an ass, why does T.T. house paint [...hose pin...]?
    Winter’s Tale howling, Ass W.H. widows T.T., who uses pee-end.
    Winter eye, still holiness white, oft t’ house penned.
    You in there eye style of lines wide. O’s [Rounds, Runes], T.T., husband.
    Unthrifty, lowly anus wide oft Thos. pained.
    Unthrifty, lowly, an ass, why does T. T. husband / those whores… [cont. 5]?

 5. THofe howers that with gentle worke did ƒrame,
    Those whores that with genital work did ass ram (died firm, did fry me)…
    Th’ “O”-sewers—thought witty, gentle, workèd—I’d frame (…farm, form, affirm).
                             …witty gin tell [i.e., device reveal] where key died, Sir, eye me.
    Thou see Harry Southy (tee!). Witty gentle W., o’er kitty [cf. “pussy”], desire me.
    Those who err state, “Wit gentle work did frame.”
                                    … genital work did Fr. [father] o’ (owe) me.
    Thou see “O,” worse-state [a printing term?] wit…
    Thos., your ass thawed with gently workèd, “I’d” serum.
    Thos., sewer is thought wit. Gentle work died, Sir, a midden [i.e., dunghill] … [cont. 6]

 6. THen let not winters wragged hand deƒace,
      T’ Hen, Lady Anne owed winter’s Ragged Andy face.
      T’ Hen, hell, Eden owed windier surrogate, handy fece…
      T’ Henley, 10 o’ 2, enter, sewer eye, get handy sauce.
                                        …rage, Dane, deface…
      Thin, Lady Anne ought wind [her way?] t’ her sewer again....

 7. LOe in the Orient when the gracious light.
     Low in the whorey end, W.H. integers I owe you—slight (slicked).
     Loo-end, hairy end windy, gray, seize…
     Loined Harry entwined, hickory shows, licked.
                         …to Hen. th’ “gray show” ’s light [i.e., dim (dour) entertainment’s gay (visible)].
     Lo, in the “O” (runed, windy) gray seas lie jet [i.e., black].
     Lo, in the “O,” wry end when the edge [knife], Horatio, you slight (sleight, slide).
     Hell windier eye, entwined hickory shows legate.
     Low in th’ whore, I and twenty, gristly, jet.
     Low in theory, end windy, Grey, Cecil I jet.
     Loin, th’ whore eye, and twenty gray seas’ll I jet.

 8. MV∫ick to heare, why hear’ft thou mufick fadly,
     Music to Harry W. high hearest thou? Music’s addle [“stinking liquid filth”]? Why?
     Muse? Seek two: Harry, Harry S., [&] T. T., whom you seek sadly (fatally).
     Muse (Muff) I see, cat too, Harry. Why, here’s T. T.—Thomas—aye sick, fatally!
     Muff, I see (icy), kitty awry, Harry S.… (…a wry Harry S.; airy, hairy ass)…
     Muff I seek (sick), two hairy wires, titty…
     Him (Hymn) you seek, too, Harry, W.H.; worse, T.T., whom you f--k fatally.

 9. IS it ƒor ƒeare to wet a widdowes eye,
     Is it force, Harry, to “wet a widow’s eye”?
     I sight “forest ‘ear’d’,” to wit, a “widow’s eye” (…weedy sea, witty see).
     Eyesight, force “ear” [pudendal] to “wet a widow’s eye.”
     I sight force eerie too (I sit, force Harry to widow ideas aye).
     Eyesight fore is hairy [i.e., lashed?] to wet a widow’s eye
     “I” [phallic] sight, force hard. A weed (Awed; Odd), a wet (wide) “O” we see.
                    …hear duet, a widow sigh…
     I sight sorcerer, toad, odd dose eye.

10. FOr fhame deny that thou bear’ft loue to any
     For shame deny that thou bear’st love to Annie!
     For shame! That T. Thorpe arrest! (Lewd whinny!)
     Fore is Ham’et, Annie, that thou bearest [buriest]—love-twin. Why?
     Fore [Firstborn?] is Ham’et, Annie, that thou bearest low, twin. Why?
     If o’er is Ham’et, a-nighted, thou buriest low (law), too, Annie (lewd whinny).
     Fore-shamed Annie (tee!), Hathaway bare-assed, lewd. O, Annie! (O, Anne, why?)
     For shame deny, Tho., T. Tho’p, ear: Fit (if it) low’d o’ Annie.
                         …T. Th. (titty; lispingly, “Kitty”), O you be, Harry S. (hairy ass) t’ love.
     Fore is a midden [dunghill] yet. Ha. T. Th., O you be harassed, low…
     “For shame deny th’ titty, O,” you (bare-assed, lewd) whinny!

11. A[space?]S ƒaft as thou fhalt wane fo ƒaft thou grow’ft,
     A sophist ass, thou ass, halt, whinny! Sophist thou grow’st (…jurist).
     A soft-ass’d ass, Thos., halt, whinny! Soft ass’d thou grow, Ass. (Tee!)
     A sophist aye, Southy, fall to anus of ass T.T., how gross. (Tee!)
     As fast as thou, S. Hall, twin [i.e., Judith?] so fast thou grow’st!
     As fast as thou, S. Hall, twin, so fast thou grow'st
                                    …S. Hall to Anne, “So fast thou grow’st!”

12. VVHen I doe count the clock that tels the time,
     W. H., Annie, doesn’t this lock that tail? Southy, tie me! (Southy’d “I” me!)
     Whinny too Count, the seal. O, seek th’ tittle, Southy, t’ eye me.
     When eye do count [i.e., measure] this low, seek th’ “addle” [i.e., muck] t’ eye me.
      W., Hen., adieu. Count, this low see: Kitty, t’ tell Southy, “Eye me.”
               … eyed a cunt, this low. See kitty tail [cf. “pussy”], Southy…
     W.H. eye docent t’ heckle, O, see cat had tail, ass, that I may [cont. 13] ode at you…

13. OThat you were your felƒe,but loue you are
     O, th’ Tower, your cell see, but low you are (…lower).
     Oathèd—you W., Harry, yourself—butt lower!
     O, Tho. Thor., sell, fee. [See] beauty over (…but 1 whore).
     O’ the two weary whores ’ll see beauty o’er (…sea booty, O you are).
     Ought (O, tee!) Hathaway rears (rear ass,…). Hell see, but lower.
                              …ours, Elizabeth, love you are.
     Oath adjure yourself, butt-low you are.
     “O” thought: you weary yourself, butt-lover.

14. NOt ƒron [(sic) cf. ƒrom] the ftars do I my iudgement plucke,
     Not foreign, this tar [sailor?] sodomy, huge men t’ pluck.
     Nate F. runty star is. Dome [Wisdom; The Globe] y’ judge, th’ loo seek.
     Knot’s a rune: The stars, too, image E’mund th’ lucky [plucky].
     Not front, he’s t’ arse. Sodomy-judge, amend (Amen’d) th’ luck.
     Knot from the stars, dome [wisdom, judgment] ye judge, mint pluck.
     Knot from the stars (“domey,” huge), meant t’ pluck.
     Innate, [Not] form’d, he stirs: Demiurge [(?) OED 1678] mend th’ luck [i.e., Fortune].
     In ode Pharaoh, India-star’s dome, you’d commend…
     Notice rune… …eye-made mint… …tars do eye, my huge men…