Shakespeare's Verbal Art [1 ed.] 9781443887748, 9781443883849

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Shakespeare’s Verbal Art

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art By

William Bellamy

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art By William Bellamy This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by William Bellamy All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8384-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8384-9

For Sara and Nicole, Paul, Daniel, and Astrid

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One ............................................................................................... 14 Words Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 57 Origins Chapter Three .......................................................................................... 113 Shakespeare Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 165 Sonnets Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 417 Othello Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 452 Hamlet Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 494 Twelfth Night Index ........................................................................................................ 523

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the Master and Fellows of Clare College, Cambridge (and in particular to the late Philip Ford) for sponsoring the programme of research upon which this book is based. I am indebted also to Colin Burrow for his early encouragement in relation to the anagrammatic dimension of Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and the Turtle”, to Frank Kermode for advice and support in relation to what he calls the “little language” of Shakespeare’s plays, to John and Gillian Beer for their early acceptance of the authenticity of anagramma figuratum, to Helen Vendler for her guidance and unfailing courtesy in our discussions on the anagrams in Shakespeare’s sonnets, to Richard S Peterson in relation to Ben Jonson’s anagrams, and to Frederick Ahl for advice and encouragement in relation to the covert dimension of Latin verse. Thanks are due also to Gavin Alexander, Stephen Booth, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Andrew Gurr, John Kerrigan, Raphael Lyne, Jean-Marie Maguin, and Michael Squire, who have contributed to the project in various ways. Special thanks are due to Alastair Fowler, who has over the course of several years given most generously of his time and expertise in relation to concealed anagram and chronogram. I am grateful also to my wife Sara Bellamy for her advice, encouragement, and unfailing toleration of anagram.

INTRODUCTION

Whether the foregrounding of seale is remembered when one encounters lease depends on whether the reader shares with Shakespeare the Renaissance fascination with the way words look when printed. Shakespeare belongs to the world of print, a world in which anagrams were recognized and enjoyed. —Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

This is a book about Shakespeare’s virtuosity in the art of anagram. Based on recent discoveries in relation to the inherent duplicity of preEnlightenment text, it aims to show how Shakespeare, the greatest poet of his age, may prove also the greatest anagrammatist.1 The English word anagrammatism is ultimately derived from Greek anagrammatismos (“the art of re-writing”), and is used here in its broadest and original sense, to describe the concealed reiteration of any textual entity in terms of another.2 The textually embedded anagram that is typically deployed by Shakespeare is thus to be distinguished from the stand-alone, self-advertising device that might for example take the form of “D’EVREUX: VERE DUX” or “FRANÇOIS DE VALOYS: DE FAÇON SUIS ROYAL”.3 For Classical Latin and Renaissance poets, these popular devices are merely debased versions of the concealed anagrams that form an integral part of the text within which they are customarily embedded. As will become clear in later chapters, a conventionally “sub-textual” anagrammatism is not only pervasive in Shakespeare’s verse, but is fundamental to his verbal art. The anagrammatic poetic, as thus defined, is apparently pre-Homeric in origin. It is pervasive in Ancient Greek, in Classical Latin, in later Latin, and in the vernacular literatures of the Renaissance. It became obsolescent in the general purification of the dialect of the tribe in the European Enlightenment.4 The duplicitous text that would for example incorporate Shakespeare’s unmarked transposition of the letters of Ǖeale in the form of leaǕe (to cite Helen Vendler’s example) is necessarily disingenuous.5 It is incumbent upon the poet writing in the Graeco-Roman tradition to compose his verse in such a way that the revelatory anagrams hidden within it appear to arise

Introduction

2

naturally and without regard to the poet’s volition. The practical poet is obliged by long-established convention to disown responsibility for the linguistic transpositions (such as that between Ǖeale and leaǕe) which are invoked within the covert dimension of his text, and around which his verse is in fact composed. It is thus that the concealed re-writing of what Jean Starobinski calls les mots sous les mots (“words below words”), while greatly enhancing the expressive power of text, necessarily implies a linguistic doubling. Because Shakespeare affects to disown responsibility for his exploitation of the expressive affiliation of words such as Ǖeale and leaǕe, it has been impossible for post-Enlightenment readers to attribute intention to such gestures with any certainty. Yet sub-textual expression in the covert dimension of pre-Enlightenment text is found to be of fundamental importance in understanding the “point” or “meaning” of any particular textual entity – whether a word, phrase, metrical line, stanza, or complete poem or play. As a consequence, modern readings of Shakespeare’s texts have necessarily been superficial (“of the surface”), and often wholly inadequate. This is because what Shakespeare appears to be saying in the overt dimension of his text may be amplified, modified, or radically subverted by anagrammatic utterance in the covert dimension. The revelatory anagrams in the covert dimension of text must by read in counterpoint to, and in combination with the overt dimension. A striking example arises in relation to the markedly disingenuous text of Sonnet 55, in the overt dimension of which the poet promises his patron Henry Wriothesley that he will shine more bright in these contents:

N

Ot marble, nor the guilded monument, Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Then vnswept stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time. When wastefull warre shall Statues ouer-turne, And broiles roote out the worke of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne The liuing record of your memory. Gainst death, and all obliuious emnity Shall you pace forth, your praise shall stil finde roome, Euen in the eyes of all posterity That weare this world out to the ending doome. So til the iudgement that your selfe arise, You liue in this, and dwell in louers eies.

Shakespeare’s original reader, recognising that Henry Wriothesley is damned with faint praise in “you shall shine more bright … / Then vnswept stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time”, will thus have been alerted

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art

3

to the conventional presence of counter-thematic anagrams in the ambient text. As we shall see, Quintilian refers to such covert gestures as controversiae figuratae (“figured contrary themes”). In the first quatrain, anagrams of the words SLIME and SEMEN (referring here to the residues of sexual intercourse) are concealed in the covert dimension of the text, and must be read in revelatory apposition to the overt dimension if the poet’s meaning is to be understood. An anagrammatic reading of the sonnet as a whole reveals that the young earl is accused of having had “wilfull taste” of the poet’s mistress.6 The residual evidence of that illicit love-making (i.e. “sluttish slime”) will, the poet explains, shine bright in the traditionally concealed invective of the sonnet. As will become clear in Chapter Four, these anagrams and Shakespeare’s invective are deployed in accordance with ancient protocols. For the original reader, tutored in Latin language and literary convention from an early age, the syncopic SLIME anagram in SLuttish tIME will be as obvious as it is counter-intuitive in the eyes of the post-Enlightenment reader (who is cognitively biased in favour of the pristine indivisibility of words). Vendler, sensitive to such gestures in Shakespeare’s sonnets, would doubtless respond also to the phonetic anagram in SLuttish tIME, which can best be appreciated when uttered aloud in the form sluttish time … slime … sluttish time. When, as convention requires, the anagram is substituted for its textual matrix, and when the relevant lines are re-written in the manner of anagrammatismos, the underlying truth is revealed: “But you shall shine more bright … besmeered with sluttish SLIME”. A full account of the sonnet, and of Stephen Booth’s painstaking attempt to understand the designedly transposable syntax of lines 1-4, is given in Chapter Four. The question then arises as to what an inherently binary text might mean in the context of Shakespeare studies, and indeed in relation to preEnlightenment scholarship generally. It would seem, for example, that Vendler, the most acute of commentators on Shakespeare’s sonnets, does indeed remember Ǖeale when she encounters leaǕe. And Stephen Booth, the most accomplished of editors of the sonnets, seems determined to defend what he calls the “ocular pun” in fickle glass, his Ǖickle in the unmodernized text of Sonnet 126, where the word glass has the sense (inter alia) of hourglass:7

O

Thou my louely Boy, who in thy power, DoeǕt hould times fickle glass, his Ǖickle, hower:

In both of these cases – in Vendler’s Ǖeale/leaǕe, and in Booth’s fickle/Ǖickle – Shakespeare’s covert gesture, if deliberate, would take the form of a trope characterized by repetition with revelatory variation. In

4

Introduction

both cases the variation, if deliberate, would consist in a re-writing involving the concealed transposition of textual entities. Hitherto, those commentators who have claimed authorial intention in relation to such instances have been unable to authenticate their readings by reference to any known regulatory system which might govern the construction and deployment of textually embedded anagrams and thus enable them to be read with confidence. In line 5 of Sonnet 81, to take a further example, Shakespeare’s patron, Henry Wriothesley, is assured that “Your name from hence immortall life shall haue”. Henry Wriothesley is not named overtly in the sonnet or the sequence, but Andrew Gurr (for example) believes that Henry is designedly memorialised in line 3 in the form of a self-referential HENRY anagram, an anagram that depends in part upon the privileging of the acrostic letter-groups at the respective extremities of a potentially separable textual matrix: 8 HENRY: HENce your memoRY

The syncopic SLIME anagram in Sonnet 55 would then be persuasively comparable: SLIME: SLuttish tIME

In the latter case, Shakespeare’s commonly found sound-play on the words time and teeme (which were nearly homophonous in the period) has the effect of revealing an optimally relevant underlying truth. In the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary the word teeme (“a pouring forth”) refers in general to sexual emission. The “point” of the word slime now becomes clear, in that the slime which characterizes the philandering Henry and which will shine bright in the sonnet, is in fact a sluttish teeme. It should be emphasised that such indecencies are endemic in Classical Latin. Lucretius beautiful DAEDALUS anagram in the proem to De rerum natura is also comparable. It is easy to imagine how such anagrams may have developed from the rhetorical device of syncope, in which a letter or letters are omitted from the middle of a word (or word-group): DAEDALUS: DAEDELa tellUS

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art

5

When the phrase hence your memory is notionally abstracted from the text of Sonnet 81 and read in isolation in a double syntax, the poet’s naming and remembering of Henry is strongly marked indeed. It is from these three self-transactional words, standing alone, that Henry’s memory is manifestly to be derived. The three-word textual matrix of the anagram is so composed as to refer in the overt dimension of the text to the figure concealed within the covert dimension. It is only when the HENRY anagram in the covert dimension is read in revelatory counterpoint to the overt, that the promise in “Your name from hence immortall life shall haue” becomes meaningful. It is thus that Henry Wriothesley is famously anonymous in the overt dimension of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Nevertheless, many post-Enlightenment readers, cognitively biased in favour of the inviolable integrity of words, will object that the alleged re-writing may have arisen as a mere accident of language. In the absence of a universally recognised and consistently applied shared set of compositional rules which might govern the construction of the putative HENRY anagram, and enable it to be recognised as definitively “authentic”, there has in practice arisen an interpretative impasse, a critical aporia beyond which it has hitherto been impossible to proceed. Fortunately, however, it has now proved possible to extrapolate such a set of compositional rules from the unfinished work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and to validate them in relation to a wide variety of texts in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and English.9 The present study aims to describe the principles and practice of concealed anagrammatism in terms of Shakespeare’s pursuit of what is found to comprise an essentially anagrammatic poetic. The compositional rules attaching to textually concealed anagram (or anagramma figuratum as the poet Horace describes it) are elegantly simple in principle and strictly observed in practice.10 The concealed anagram (the anagramma figuratum) is in fact discovered to comprise a composite figure consisting of three distinct mandatory components. First, the existence and location of the anagram must be marked by a word or phrase which begins and ends with the first and last letters respectively of the theme-word. For obvious reasons, Horace calls this component of the composite anagram the forma (“outline model”). In the case of Shakespeare’s HENRY anagram in Sonnet 81, the phrase “hence your memory” itself comprises the obligatory forma or outline model of the theme-word. Because the original reader shares with the poet the universally recognised protocol that confers a special privilege on the acrostic letters at the extremities of words and phrases, the phrase Hence your memorY is an easily recognisable textual surrogate for the themeword HenrY. The forma or outline model of Shakespeare’s HENRY

Introduction

6

anagram is enclosed in square brackets in the annotated version of Sonnet 81 below. On this occasion, what might be called the acrostic co-identity of forma and theme-word is emphasised in the text and in the marginal annotation:

O

R I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, From [hence your memory] death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortall life shall haue, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, The earth can yeeld me but a common graue, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

H(enr)y

The second mandatory component of the anagram is the device that Horace calls the figura extensa (“extended figure”), which takes the conventional form of an internal acrostic. The figura extensa or extended figure must begin in the first letter or letters of the forma, be constructed thereafter in due order of spelling exclusively from the first or last letters or letter-groups of words, and must end in the last letter or letter-group of a proximately ensuing word. The extended figure of Shakespeare’s HENRY anagram is thus compliant with these protocols: HENce youR memorY

The letters forming the figura extensa of the anagram are emphasised in the annotated extract below, and are additionally noted in the margin. Once the outline model has been recognised, the start-point of the extended figure is fixed, and its location is thus readily apparent to the experienced reader:

O

R I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, From [HENce youR memorY] death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortall life shall haue,

HEN-R-Y

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art

7

To reiterate, Shakespeare’s figura extensa is perfectly compliant with the narrowly drawn rules which govern its construction. It takes the form of an internal acrostic which begins in the first letters of the outline model, is constructed thereafter in the ensuing text in due order of spelling exclusively from the first and/or last letter(s) of words, and ends in the final letter(s) of a proximately ensuing word. These rules also apply to those figurae extensae which are not confined to a single metrical line, but which are extended over a plurality of lines. In such a case it is a mandatory requirement that at least one letter be taken from each consecutive line. No line must be left “barren”. If, for example, the extensa of a proemial anagram is composed in such a way as to span the first three lines of a poem, each of those three lines must contribute at least one letter to the figure.11 The third and final obligatory component of the anagram is that which Horace describes as the figura condensa (“condensed figure”). This component consists of a well-defined and relatively compact part of the text (typically a word, phrase, or line) which in the eyes of the accustomed reader is obviously dedicated to the theme-word. All of the letters of the theme-word must be contained within the figura condensa, where they are customarily dispersed in orthographically jumbled form. Less frequently, in the case of a particularly honorific or significant anagram, the letters of the theme-word may appear in due order of spelling. Here again, a special privilege is granted to the acrostic letters or letter-groups situated at the beginning and/or ends of words, and the theme-word must be capable of being constructed exclusively from the first and/or last letters or lettergroups of words within the figura condensa. In addition, the condensed figure must be self-bounding in the sense that the letters at its extremities must themselves be constituent letters of the theme-word. In the present instance, the emphatically “acrostic” structure of the condensed figure is readily apparent to the cognitively biased original reader. It is emphasised by typographical adjustment in the extract below:

HENce your memoRY ||>

HENRY

< ||

It is usual for the condensed figure to be located in the ambient text at the beginning or end of the figura extensa, but in the case of especially significant anagrams (as here) the condensa may be so disposed as to be coterminous with the extensa in the text. The condensed component of Shakespeare’s HENRY anagram is thus fully compliant with the

8

Introduction

compositional rules attaching to such figures. On this special occasion, it is coterminous with the extended figure. The figura condensa in “HENce your memoRY” consists of a well-defined phrase which in the eyes of the cognitively biased original reader is obviously dedicated to the themeword. All of the letters of the theme-word are contained within the condensa (on this honorific occasion, in due order of spelling), and all of those letters are capable of being provided exclusively by the first and/or last letters or letter-groups of words. Finally, the condensed figure is selfbounding in the sense that the letters at its extremities are themselves constituent letters of the theme-word. In order for the anagramma figuratum to be considered authentic, each of its three components must be compliant in every respect with the tightly drawn compositional rules attaching to it, and the disposition of the three components relative to each other must also comply with those rules. These are the fundamentals. In addition, the anagram must (as here) be marked by a prompt or prompts in the ambient text. It must also be meaningful and relevant in relation: (a) to the overt dimension of the text; (b) to the aesthetic strategy pursued by the poet; and (c) to other anagrams concealed in the covert dimension of the text. We shall look askance at a potential anagram that does not meet these conventional requirements. In the present instance, the sonnet is informed by the prior devise that envisages lines 1-10 as Henry Wriothesley’s textual monument or tomb (as in “When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, / Your monument shall be my gentle verse”). As will become clear in Chapter Four, Sonnet 81 is composed in the form of a Proteus Poem, in which the reader is presented with a number of alternative ways of reading the text.12 In one such perspective, Shakespeare’s HENRY anagram, situated with etymological accuracy at the head of the textual monument, takes effect as a quasianagrammatic epitaph that is not untypical of epitaphic inscriptions in the period.13 Horace’s thematically important signature-anagram in the opening words of Satires 2.6 (in the form of HORATIVS) is comparable with Shakespeare’s HENRY anagram. Here again the forma in Hoc erat in votis (“This was in my prayers”) is coterminous with both the extended and the condensed components of the composite anagramma figuratum: HORATIVS: HOc eRAT In VotiS

On this auspicious occasion, the figura extensa and the figura condensa are identical. Nevertheless, the mandatory rules attaching to each

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art

9

component are perfectly observed. The signature-anagram is of particular significance in this instance because Horace’s poem is in part a votive offering to his patron Maecenas in thanks for his splendid gift of the hortus or country estate now known as the Sabine Farm. The poem is informed throughout in the manner of anagrammatismos by the prior word-within-word conceit that finds the words HORTUS (in the sense of “country seat”) and HORA (in the sense of “leisure time”) concealed within HORATIUS in the forms HORaTiUS and HORAtius respectively.14 As a consequence of the innate duplicity of text written in the GraecoRoman tradition, the twenty-first century commentator must be alert to the danger of relying upon concepts derived from an exclusively superficial reading of pre-Enlightenment texts, whether in prose or poetry. It is also potentially misleading to construe such texts in the light of misapprehensions arising from our post-Enlightenment ignorance of literary history in this context. For example, William Camden’s wellknown definition of “Anagrammatisme” in Remaines of Britain (1605) has hitherto been read as referring to vulgar anagram in the mode of D’EVREUX: VERE DUX, but careful reading reveals that it is capable of addressing both open “anagram” and concealed anagramma figuratum. Camden’s duplicitous remarks are in fact helpful in putting Horace’s (and Shakespeare’s) onomastic anagrammatism in perspective:15 The onely Quint-essence that hitherto the Alchimy of wit coulde draw out of names, is Anagrammatisme, or Metagrammatisme, which is a dissolution of a Name truly written into his Letters, as his Elements, and a new connexion of it by artificiall transposition, without addition, substraction, or chang of any letter into different words, making some perfect sence applyable to the person named. The precise in this practise strictly observing all the parts of the definition, are are onely bold with H, either in omitting it or retaining it, for that it cannot challenge the right of a letter. But the licentiats somewhat licentiously, lest they should preiuduce poeticall liberty, will pardon themselues for doubling or reiecting a letter, if the sence fall aptly, and thinke it no iniury to vse E for AE, V for W, S for Z, and C for K, and contrariwise.16

In his opening paragraph, Camden defines anagrammatism in relation to “a Name” whose letters are deemed to be generically “elemental” in relation to that particular Name. A new, paradigmatic “connexion” of that Name is made by the transposition of its elemental letters (without addition, subtraction, or change) into “different words, making some perfect sence applyable to the person named”. It is noteworthy that Camden avoids stipulating that the “different words” with which the Name

10

Introduction

is newly connected must be made up exclusively of the letters of the Name. There may, in other words, be an unused residue of letters. Overall, in fact, his definition is designedly but unobtrusively capable of embracing both Horace’s HORATIVS: HOc eRAT In VotiS and Shakespeare’s HENRY: HENce your memoRY. As we shall see, an anagrammatic reading of Classical and Renaissance literary theoreticians reveals the existence of an absolute injunction to silence in relation to concealed anagram. If an author wishes to refer to events in the covert dimension of text, he must do so in terms of concealed anagram. Camden follows this traditional course by incorporating an ANAGRAME anagram in such a way as to describe the customary form and function of concealed anagram. Once again, it is the role of the anagram to reveal a specific truth which has the effect inter alia of re-contextualizing the overt dimension of the text: ANAGRAME: [ANAgrammatisme], or MetaGRAmmatisME, … which is a dissolution of a Name

The “Name” in question here is the name Anagrame. Its new “connexion” with the “different words” comprised in “Anagrammatisme, or Metagrammatisme” is created by means of the “dissolution” of that Name in the form of ANA-GRA-ME within those words. In effect, a single word is envisaged as having been dissolved within three different words, whilst retaining is elemental nature. The gesture is conventionally marked in duplicitous deixis by the subordinate clause which immediately follows it: “which is a dissolution of a Name”. When the anagram is abstracted from the text and read in isolation, the theme-word is set in paradigmatic apposition (“a new connexion”) to the words “Anagrammatisme, or Metagrammatisme”. The references to anagrammatic licence in Camden’s second paragraph are also relevant to the protocols of concealed anagrammatism. One such dispensation, relating to the sub-division of complex words, is defined covertly in the anagram itself. The letter-group GRA in ANA-GR-AME (see below) is deemed to occupy an acrostic position in relation to the sublexical entity GRammatisme, the prefix Meta- being notionally detached from Meta|GRammatisme for this purpose: ANAgrammatisme, or Meta-GRAmmatisME ANA GRA ME

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art

11

The rules as to verbal sub-division state inter alia that prefixes and suffixes may be notionally detached from complex words in order to convert otherwise medial letters to acrostic letters in relation to the sublexical entities thus created. Here the otherwise medial letters GRA are sanctioned for anagrammatic use by virtue of the fact that they comprise the first letters of the sub-lexical entity GRAmmatisme. This rule also applies to adjectival and adverbial suffixes, as for example in the case of the word heauen|ly, where the letter n is medial within the adjective but is available for anagrammatic use because it is the final letter of the noun heaven. This dispensation is never used out of mere anagrammatic expediency. Its literary function is to facilitate expressive word-play, as for example in the word-within-word trope that for example finds the revelatory word Hora in Hora|tius, where the inflectional suffix -tius is notionally detachable from the name. Camden’s pedagogic gesture is wittily selfreferential in this context, since the Greek prefix meta- (in the sense of “beside”) is itself capable of creating a lexical entity which is super-added to another such entity. At the same time Camden is able (covertly) to cite the Latin word Meta, which signifies inter alia (a) an aim, end, or goal, or (b) the emblem which marks the end of the course in the Roman circus. Ovid’s use of the word Meta in the envoi to Metamorphoses, where it marks the achieved climax of the poet’s morphoses, was apparently a locus classicus of anagrammatic word-play in the Renaissance.17 Prohibited by conventional protocols from describing the dispensation overtly, Camden demonstrates the way in which the expressive power of covert anagrammatism may be exponentially increased by requiring the revelatory sub-division of words. The English anagramma figuratum is founded upon that of Classical Latin, and conventional or idiomatic usages in Latin are frequently adapted to the requirements of the English language. It is axiomatic that concealed anagrams must be constructed exclusively from the first and/or last letters of lexical entities. In Shakespeare’s age, participial terminations in -ing (for example) and plurals in s and es are frequently treated as notionally detachable from the singular word. The optional e- termination, as for example in green(e), may also be disregarded. Very occasionally, etymological considerations are also brought into play in order to authorise the analysis of a complex word in order to reveal a contextually apt “word within a word”. In addition, hyphens and apostrophes may sometimes be deemed to be omitted for the purposes of the rule as to the exclusive use of the acrostic letters of words.

12

Introduction

Camden’s citation of instances of licentious letter-substitution is also relevant to covert anagrammatism, although the customary tendency of the composer of concealed anagram is to avoid such substitutions as far as possible. Where substitutions are used, they are often found to be conventional, and thus easily recognisable. For example, the relatively low frequency of the letter x in both Latin and English seems to have encouraged the widely found substitution of s for x. Thus, covert references to the Earl of Essex (a popular feature of Elizabethan verse) customarily involved the composition of concealed anagrams in the form of ESSES. The substitution of s for the letter x was also conventionally invoked in concealed chronogram, where the registration of a year in the 1590s, for example, requires four instances of the numeral letter x. Similarly, Horace’s illustrative chronograms of the year 746 ab urbe condita in the Ars poetica again require four instances of the numeral letter x, and are also constructed in this respect by reference to the letter s.18 English practice in relation to letter-substitution follows Classical Latin practice in this respect. Diphthongs are deemed interchangeable with their constituent letters, including: a and e for ae; a and u for au; and o and e for oe. In addition, the letter t may be substituted for th, the letter c for ch, and the letter c for ck.19 Except where otherwise indicated, the Shakespearean texts cited in this book are based upon the first published editions of Venus and Adonis (1593), Lucrece (1594), and Shake-speares Sonnets (1609) and the 1623 Folio of the plays. Other quotations from the period follow the first published editions.

Notes 1

For the suggestion that Shakespeare may be “the greatest anagrammatist” of his age, see Alastair Fowler, Literary Names: Personal Names in English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 87. 2 For the use of Greek anagrammatismos, Latin anagrammatismus, and English anagrammatisme, see Chapter Two. 3 Both anagrams are cited in William Camden’s Remaines of Britain (1605). 4 On the Augustan rejection of Renaissance literary culture, see Banford Parker, The Triumph of Augustan Poetics: English Literary Culture from Butler to Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 23, 94-5, 176. See also Roger D Lund, Ridicule, Religion and the Politics of Wit in Augustan England (Ashgate: Farnham, Surrey, 2012), 1-24, 165, 200. 5 Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997), 95. 6 The phrase “wilfull taste” occurs in Sonnet 40, which also takes as its theme Henry Wriothesley’s illicit enjoyment of the poet’s mistress. See Chapter Four.

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art

13

7 Sonnet 126, which is composed in the form of a concealed technopaegnion in the form of an hourglass, is discussed in greater detail in Chapter Four, Section 7, “The Fourth Transilition”. 8 I am grateful to Andrew Gurr for confirming in private correspondence that he believes the HENRY anagram in Sonnet 81 to be intentional. 9 See Chapter One. 10 For Horace’s account of anagramma figuratum, see Chapter Two. 11 The principles and practice of concealed anagram are described and illustrated in more detail in Chapter One. 12 Optatian’s poem ‘Ardua componunt felices carmina Musae’ (“The blessed Muses compose difficult poems”) - which is capable of being read in a multitude of different ways - was known in the period. The use of the name “Proteus” to describe such verse was popularized by Julius Caesar Scaliger in Poetices (1561), in which his own Proteus poem appeared. See Aaron Pettari, The Space That Remains: Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 77. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 81 contains attributive SCALIGER and PROTEUS anagrams. See Chapter Four for a detailed analysis of this sonnet. 13 For examples of anagrammatic epitaphs, see H B Wheatley, Of Anagrams: A Monograph Treating of their History from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time (London: Stephen Austin, 1862), 122-172. 14 For the isomorphism of Frederick Ahl’s “word within word” trope in Classical Latin (1985) and Helen Vendler’s “word-inside-word” in Shakespeare’s sonnets (1997), see Chapter One. 15 Shakespeare’s commitment to onomastic invenio is described and illustrated in Chapters Four, Five, Six, and Seven. 16 William Camden, Remaines of Britain, 1605. 17 See William Bellamy, “Ben Jonson and the Art of Anagram”, in Richard S Peterson (ed.), Jonsonian Soundings (New York: AMS Press), 2015. 18 For Horace’s account of apices numerales and concealed chronogram, see Chapter Two. 19 Ahl’s account of what he calls “linguistic possibilities” in Classical Latin contains a useful summary of the licences customarily exploited in Latin wordplay. See Frederick Ahl, “Sounds at Play”, in Metaformations: Wordplay and Soundplay in Ovid and Other Classical Latin Poets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 54-60.

CHAPTER ONE WORDS

1. Duplicities Shakespeare’s way with words has been described by the most insightful of recent commentators in terms of the expressive re-writing of one word in terms of another. Helen Vendler, for example, writes: “Whether the foregrounding of seale is remembered when one encounters lease depends on whether the reader shares with Shakespeare the Renaissance fascination with the way words look when printed… Shakespeare belongs to the world of print, a world in which anagrams were recognized and enjoyed”.1 Vendler is not alone in her claims in this context, as readers of Christopher Ricks’ Shakespeare and the Anagram, Alastair Fowler’s Literary Names, and Mary Hazard’s Elizabethan Silent Language will be aware. 2 Fowler provides some persuasive examples, and goes so far as to suggest that “Shakespeare, the greatest poet of his age, may prove also the greatest anagrammatist”.3 In order to understand this designedly provocative statement, it is necessary to distinguish generically between two distinct modes of literary “anagram”. Fowler refers not to the open, epigraphic device that might take the adulatory form, for example, of DEV’REUX: VERE DUX, but to the covert anagram that is concealed beneath the apparently innocent surface of a text that is ostensibly heedless of the anagram hidden within it. Ricks points to the distinction between overt and covert anagram in his remarks on Ben Jonson, who affected to despise the open, epigraphic form while adopting the covert, textually embedded variety in his own poetry: Again, this poet who scorned anagrams avails himself of an intricate one, scarcely available to the ear (one would have thought) in The Speeches at Prince Henry’s Barriers (1610): Now when the Iland hath regain’d her fame, Intire, and perfect, in the ancient Name, And that a monarch, æquall good and great, Wise, temperate, iust, and stout, claimes Arthurs seat.

Words

15

In the Conclusion, he who claimes Arthurs seat is Charles James Stuart, James I. 4

Jonson’s text is thus inherently disingenuous. Essentially duplex and in form and ulterior in intent, it gives a quite false impression of taking effect in a single dimension. It is as if this intricate, intricately concealed, and textually embedded anagram has been incorporated in his text by a poet who affects to disclaim all responsibility for it. The practical poet has composed his verses as if he did not intend the revelation that gives “point” to the Conclusion, and indeed, to the verse itself. If we did not know that the open, epigraphic anagram CHARLES IAMES STUART: CLAIMES ARTHURS SEAT is separately cited by William Camden, Jonson’s carefully secreted version would be scarcely available to either ear or eye. If the poet is generically committed to hiding his anagrammatic light under a bushel (and perhaps even of suppressing the slightest suspicion of poetic intent) how is the ever-sceptical post-Enlightenment reader to credit the existence of such hidden figures? The text which incorporates Shakespeare’s covert transposition of the letters of lease in the form of seale is similarly disingenuous. The concealed re-writing of words, while greatly enhancing the expressive power of verse, necessarily implies a linguistic doubling, and the question then arises as to what an inherently duplex language might mean in the context of Shakespeare studies, and indeed in relation to preEnlightenment scholarship generally. It would seem, for example, that Vendler, the most acute of commentators on Shakespeare, does indeed remember seale when she encounters lease. But Shakespeare gives no apparent indication of intent. Fowler and Hazard go further in suggesting that pre-Enlightenment literary culture is in part characterized by the concealed anagrammatic naming of otherwise anonymously cited personages. The non-naming of the dramatis personae of Shakespeare’s sonnets is a well-known example of the draining of specificity from the overt dimension of text. But what, then, are the poetic protocols that might confer certainty of intention in the case of such prospective anagrams as that which might seek to find HENRIE (the name of a revered patron) concealed within the adulatory and self-referential line “HEREIN lives wisdom, beauty, and increase”? If, as here, such gestures were invariably composed in such a way as to appear to arise naturally, and independently with regard to the poet’s intention, how are they to be deemed “authentic” in any given case? It would seem logical to seek to discover the regulatory system that presumably underpinned these concealed, textually embedded anagrams,

16

Chapter One

and enabled them to be read with as much confidence as the overt dimension of the text within which they were concealed. We have long ago been exhorted by William and Elizabeth Friedman to look for system, consistency, and predictability in any potential cryptogram and we shall therefore expect any alleged set of compositional rules to exhibit system and rigour, to be tightly drawn, and to leave no room for ambiguity.5 Thus two recently published authors, Peter Jensen and Roy Winnick, claim to have detected the letters of Henry Wriothesley in selected lines in Shakespeare’s sonnets, but neither has been able to support his case by suggesting a regulatory syntax for concealed anagram.6 Vendler’s (1997) discovery of the Renaissance trope that she calls “wordinside-word” is found to be helpful in this context. She notes, for example, that Shakespeare refers to Sonnet 81 as an everlasting monument which “eyes not yet created shall o’er-read”, and points out that this statement is reinforced by the conceit that finds the word READ concealed and thus perpetuated in the word cREAteD. 7 Vendler detects another instance of the word-within-word device in Sonnet 52, noting that the poet refers to the “ward-robe which the robe doth hide”, where the word robe is “literally hidden inside” the word word-robe. 8 Vendler is apparently unaware that the Classicist Frederick Ahl had in 1985 used a similar epithet to describe the Latin trope that he describes as “word within word”. 9 In a sub-chapter headed ‘Word within Word’, Ahl points to the pervasive use of this device by Classical Latin poets: “In De rerum natura I.641-44, Lucretius comments on people who find things hidden beneath words, who think that linguistic games reveal the truth … There is IGNIS (fire) in lIGNIS (wood) because the word IGNIS is contained within lIGNIS”.10 The evidence adduced by Jonathan Bate in Shakespeare and Ovid, and more recently by Colin Burrow in Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity, would suggest that Shakespeare was tutored from a relatively early age in Latin language and literary practice.11 It is therefore entirely possible that Shakespeare knew of the wide use in Classical Latin of the word-within-word trope, and that he pursued a Classical poetic adapted to vernacular English, a poetic based upon in part upon anagram and the revelatory inter-penetration of word and word. Joseph Addison, writing in 1710, appears to have had both ancient and modern practice in mind when he describes the Business of the Anagrammatist and the pursuit of “False Wit”: When the Anagrammatist takes a Name to work upon, he considers it at first as a Mine not broken up, which will not shew the treasure it contains till he shall have spent many Hours in the search of it: For it is his Business to find out one word that conceals itself in another…12

Words

17

Addison goes on to suggest - quite rightly - that the Anagrammatist bases his poetic not upon perceived affinities between one idea and another, but upon the inter-verbal and other linguistic resemblances that it is his Business to seek out. In this context, both Ahl (1985) and Vendler (1997) appear to owe an ultimate debt to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and to Jean Starobinski’s influential book Les mots sous les mots: les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure (1971).13 Ahl states in a footnote: For Latin anagrams, Ferdinand de Saussure’s work is fundamental, although I take a much narrower view of what constitutes an acceptable anagram.14

Ahl abstains from explaining what he means by “fundamental” or “an acceptable anagram”.

2. The protocols of textually embedded anagram It has in practice proved possible to extrapolate a coherent set of compositional rules for concealed, pre-Enlightenment anagram from Ferdinand de Saussure’s meticulously recorded observations of les mots sous les mots in Classical Latin. When due allowance is made for Saussure’s fundamental error in assuming that Classical Latin anagrammatism is regulated exclusively by reference to phonemic phenomena, it is discovered that the textually embedded anagram is in fact a composite device consisting of the three distinct components. These correspond respectively to Saussure’s mannequin, his locus princeps, and the third manifestation that he describes as “more extended, and consequently more dispersed”.15 Saussure famously insisted that les mots sous les mots in Classical Latin are based exclusively upon les phonèmes, and in particular upon the allegedly irreducible entity that he named le diphone.16 It is discovered, however, that the phenomena he detected were in fact the mere phonetic traces of a pervasive anagrammatism based exclusively upon les signes écrits and envisaged in terms of letters of the alphabet. My comments in this context refer not to the hypothetical relation between speech and writing in language, but simply to the terms in which the regulatory rules are found to be expressed, and which appear to underlie its principles and practice. Having thus become newly literate with regard to concealed anagram, we are further assisted by those pre-Enlightenment texts which describe and illustrate the composite figure. As will become clear, overt reference to the covert dimension of text is subject to a long-standing, Hermetic

18

Chapter One

injunction to silence. It is therefore obligatory for references to les mots sous les mots to be confined to the covert dimension of text, and to be expressed in terms of concealed anagram and covert word-play. As already noted, the poet Horace, for example, describes the overall device (covertly) as anagramma figuratum (or “figured anagram”), and identifies its three mandatory components as (1) forma (“outline model”), (2) figura extensa (“extended figure”), and (3) figura condensa (“condensed figure”). It is to Saussure’s eternal credit that his mannequin, his “more extended” form, and his locus princeps are thus respectively confirmed as the phonetic traces of the alphabetic figures that Horace describes. To reiterate, the rules of anagramma figuratum are elegantly simple. First, the existence and location of any particular concealed anagram must be marked by a forma or outline model, which must comprise a word or phrase beginning and ending with the first and last letters, respectively, of the theme-word. The forma, functioning as a model in outline of the theme-word, takes effect as an easily recognisable textual surrogate for the theme-word. In Sonnet 7, for example, Shakespeare is found to deploy the aptly epideictic word HeavenlY as the mandatory outline model which marks the HenrY anagram which begins in line 5. The forma or outline model comprises a form of re-writing which, in accordance with ancient convention, sets the outline model (HeavenlY) in revelatory apposition to the theme-word (HenrY). The forma is typically capable of notional abstraction from the ambient text and of being reconfigured in quasianagrammatic (and here, adulatory) form. HenrY: HeauenlY

The meta-textual figure thus introduced into the text typically takes the form of a revelatory paradigm, where the word paradigm is used in its simplest and etymologically apt sense of a “side-by-side showing”. The second component of the tripartite anagram (i.e. the figura extensa or extended form) must begin in the first letter or letters of the outline model, be constructed thereafter in the text exclusively from the first and/or last letters of words (or word-stems in the widest sense), and must end in the final letter(s) of a proximately ensuing word. Any deviation from this obligatory norm will render the figure inauthentic. In Sonnet 7, for example, the extended form of the name HENRY is constructed in the apt verbal sequence “HEaveNly … Resembling … his beautY”. In the annotated extract below, the outline model is enclosed within square brackets and the extended figure is emphasised in the text and noted in the

Words

19

margin. The apparently medial letter n of heauen|ly is sanctioned for use in the figura extensa because it is the final letter of the word heauen. In the extract below, and henceforth, the fragmentation of a word for anagrammatic purposes is shown in the form heauen|ly (sic): And hauing climbed the steepe-vp [HEaueN|ly] hill,

HE-N

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

R

Yet mortal eyes adore his beautY still,

Y

Attending on his golden pilgrimage.

Thus far, the figured anagram or anagramma figuratum has been found to be perfectly compliant with the regulatory protocols. The forma or outline model in HeauenlY marks the existence and location of the HenrY anagram, and comprises a word or phrase which begins and ends with the first and last letters respectively of the theme-word. The figura extensa begins in the first letter or letters of the forma, is constructed thereafter in the text exclusively from the first and/or last letters of words, and ends in the final letter(s) of a proximately ensuing word. At least one letter of the extended component must be taken (as in the present example) from each of the consecutive lines which contain the figure. In due accord with the protocols attaching to the construction of a multi-linear figura extensa, there is no intervening “barren” line. It should be noted that in the case of particularly significant anagrams, a plurality of figurae extensae may flow from a single forma. The third and final component of the anagram is the figura condensa or condensed form, which is customarily located in the ambient text at either the beginning or end of the figura extensa, and must consist of a relatively compact textual matrix that is manifestly dedicated to the theme-word and that contains its letters. In Sonnet 7 the condensed component of the HENRY anagram is comprised in line 6: “Resembling strong YoutH iN his middle agE”. Here again, the textual matrix which comprises the condensed component must be capable of yielding the letters of the themeword exclusively from the first and/or last letters of words, and the figure must be self-bounding in that the letters at either extremity must themselves be constituent letters of the theme-word. The condensed component in line 6 is found to comply in every respect with these strictly drawn requirements. It is an apparent characteristic of the condensed form that it should be capable of notional abstraction from the ambient text and of being set in revelatory apposition to the theme-word, rather in the manner of overt, epigraphic anagram:

20

Chapter One HENRY: Resembling strong Youth iN His middle agE

When, as convention requires, the figura condensa is construed in this way, the paradigmatic gesture has the effect of re-contextualizing the textual matrix of the figure (as in “resembling strong youth in his middle”), and of offering an alternative reading in a double syntax. As will become clear in Chapter Four, Shakespeare’s ulterior theme in Sonnet 7 is conventionally sexual in character, the word “middle” in the Latin and Elizabeth sexual vocabularies signifying the sexual regions of either male or female. The “perfection” of the poet’s re-writing of the name in this instance consists not in any wholesale transposition of all of the letters of a word or phrase to form another, but in its witty implementation of the tightly drawn conventions of the Classical “figured anagram” and of its precise compliance with the ancient protocols. The evidence adduced in the present study is based upon the testing of the above-defined rules and customs of concealed anagram in relation to a multitude of specific examples. It is discovered that the great texts in Classical Latin, in the Christian tradition, and in the vernacular literatures of the Renaissance, are composed around and pervasively imbued with tripartite anagrams of the kind described by Horace. These omnipresent anagrams are found (a) to be perfectly compliant with the narrowly drawn compositional rules, (b) to be customarily accompanied and corroborated by duplicitous deixis in the ambient text, and (c) to reveal otherwise unspoken truths which re-contextualize the overt dimension of text, and endow it with specific meaning and point. As will become clear, the mandatory protocols which appear to govern the construction and incorporation such anagrams are rigorously defined, systematically applied, and expressively coherent in relation to the overt dimension of the text. The strict requirements of the Friedmans as to “cryptogram” are met in full. In each prospective case, the three components of the composite anagram must all be present. Each component is governed by a separate set of mandatory protocols, and must comply with them. The disposition of the three components in relation to each other is governed by a further set of rules, which must also be strictly observed. And we shall be suspicious of a potential anagram that is not marked by some duplicitous prompt in the surrounding text, as for example in the self-referential deixis of “HENce youR memorY” in line 3 of Sonnet 81, a gesture which preserves intact the memory of HENRY. It will be apparent from the foregoing that the compositional rules of concealed anagram are based ultimately upon the principles of acrostichis,

Words

21

and rely upon the special privilege attached in ancient times (and hence in the Christian tradition, and in the Renaissance) to the “acrostic” letters at the extremities of words and phrases. The structure of the outline model, for example, speaks to what might be called the acrostic co-identity of such quasi-anagrammatic re-writings as that which sets the word HeavenlY in revelatory apposition to the name HenrY. Similarly, the letters which are sanctioned for use in the figura extensa and figura condensa are restricted to those occurring at acrostic positions within words. The compositional rules also ensure that both the extensa and the condensa are self-bounding insofar as the letters at their acrostic extremities must be constituent letters of the theme-word. And the customary location of the condensa (i.e. in the ambient text at either the end or beginning of the extensa(e) is also dictated by reference to the principles of acrostichis.

3. Acrostic letters and un-spaced text It is possible to relate the acrostichis that thus appears to govern concealed anagrammatism in the Graeco-Roman tradition to the conventional use of un-spaced text in those ancient times when literary customs and protocols were presumably evolving. Whether formulated in speech or writing, text was then conceived as un-spaced, un-punctuated, and un-cased. This is significant, bearing in mind that for the twenty-first century reader words are pre-defined by the spaces which separate them from other similarly defined words. It is perhaps for this reason that we are cognitively biased in our reverence for and reliance upon the pristine indivisibility of lexical entities. The cognitive process involved in the finding of potential words amongst other potential words in an extensive and undifferentiated row of letters is quite alien to us. Our view of unspaced text (as with our view of concealed anagram) is therefore likely to be prejudiced by what psychologists call loss aversion. For us there is more to be lost in an attempt to confront un-spaced text (and the cognitive project of finding “words within words” therein) than is to be gained by subjecting un-spaced text to thoughtful scrutiny. It has for example proved impossible to trace any substantive publication dealing with the relationship between conventionally undifferentiated text and the evolution of literary norms. In a sense, our culture is founded - whether consciously or unconsciously upon the assurance of the pristine word and upon the envisaged inviolability of logos. For the earliest readers, however, words were defined and delimited not by the spaces on either side of them, but by reference to the boundary-marking letters at their extremities. The first and

22

Chapter One

final letters of words were thus the final arbiters in relation to the reader’s active search for a potentially authentic word within an undifferentiated row of letters. In this context, and insofar as a word comprises a row of letters (stichos), an un-spaced word may be said to be demarcated and defined by the letters at its extremity (akros). It is thus that a cognitive bias towards the privileging of the acrostic letters of words enabled the poet and his audience to distinguish between prospectively authentic lexical entities. It was ultimately from these acrostic letters that any particular word gained its authenticity. Words which (for example) began with A and ended in S were thus cognitively affiliated, together forming a sub-set in the mode of ‘A - S’. An anagrammatic reading of Virgil’s Aeneid reveals that the poem is informed throughout by the prior devise that finds a revelatory truth in the acrostic co-identity of AeneaS and AugustuS. And in Satires 2.6, Horace honours MaecenaS by invoking his patron’s acrostic affinity with the god MercuriuS. An instance of the key role played by acrostic letters in un-spaced text may be found in the un-spaced Latin phrase tunicacommaculata (“a dirty tunic”). When the correct verbal boundaries marked by the acrostic letters of words are emphasised, the somewhat recalcitrant letter-row becomes more readily legible in the form of tunica commaculata and the constituent words are thus authenticated: TunicACommaculatA An unfortunate alternative formulation is revealed, however, when the “wrong” acrostic letters are privileged, and the concealed word CACO (“I defecate”) is set in notional and revelatory apposition to the dirty tunic: tuniCacOmmaculata

The concealed, expressive re-writing of words in terms of other words thus becomes a viable possibility, and a source of witty revelation. It is only a short step from the pedagogic humour that discerns rhetorical cacophony in tunicacommaculata to the syncopic anagram that finds the gifted sculptor DAEDALUS concealed in Lucretius’ beautiful epithet DAEDALa tellUS (“the skilfully crafted earth”), and it is but a step from Lucretius’ anagram to the extended syncope of the gesture that re-members HENRY in the self-referential phrase HENce youR memorY. The privilege necessarily accorded to the first and final (acrostic) letters of words in the cognitive process of reading un-spaced text is thus especially suited to the elegantly simple requirements of concealed

Words

23

tripartite anagram. The boundary-marking letters at the beginnings and ends of words are easily recognised by the cognitively biased eye or ear (i.e. an eye or ear sensitive to acrostically bounded words and to acrostic letters generally), and such letters are by definition notionally distinct from the lexical entities that they define. As the rules and protocols of concealed anagram indicate, verifiable words and phrases are thus capable of being created in the covert dimension of text from an assemblage of acrostic letters selected and ordered in accordance with a universally shared reading code. It would seem, therefore, that far from being a vulgar peripheral of ancient language, the acrostic was fundamental to it.

4. Anagramma figuratum It is axiomatic that the anagrams concealed in the covert dimension of pre-Enlightenment text are subject to a strict injunction to silence. This hypothesis is corroborated by the frequent incorporation in Classical and Renaissance texts of concealed anagrams of the ritual phrase favete linguis (“Be silent”). George Puttenham, for example, is quite content to discuss vulgar or overt anagram overtly in The Art of English Poesy, but he refers to figured anagram only through the concealed anagrams which are in fact pervasive in his text.17 His duplicity in this respect is itself an aspect of the intrinsically duplicitous poetic art that he is thus able to illustrate. Similarly, the close analysis of the anagrammatic dimension of representative poetry and prose in the English Enlightenment reveals that the widespread and successful attack on anagram and acrostic in the early years of the eighteenth century was directed overtly against overt or vulgar anagram, and only covertly against concealed anagram.18 To reiterate, we have seen that Saussure’s phono-centrism led him to exclude written signs from the scope of his enquiries into the phenomenon that he called l’hypogramme. It is now clear that the Graeco-Roman tradition had in fact based its anagrammatism and acrosticism exclusively upon les signes écrits, but Saussure insisted – quite perversely, as it now seems - that the anagrams conventionally concealed in Greek and Latin texts were not anagrams in the strict sense at all, but were instead textually dispersed assemblages of les phonèmes. Reducing the building blocks of les mots sous les mots to the supposedly irreducible entity that he called le diphone, he further emphasised that in relation to the hypogram, le monophone n’existe pas. Written signs, individual letters of the alphabet, and anagrammatism in the traditional and etymologically apt sense of a “re-writing” had no part to play. When vulgar anagram made its presence

24

Chapter One

felt, it was epitomized as mere accident, adjunct, or by-product of phonemic hypogram: One cannot repeat too often that for the hypogram the monophone does not exist. This is the central law without which there would be no hypogram and one would be dealing with anagrams, or with nothing at all. 19

It is scarcely surprising that neither Saussure himself nor subsequent readers of his notebooks on what he calls “hypogram” or “logogram” appear to have found his speculations entirely persuasive. Some corrective account of his findings was plainly necessary, but Jacques Derrida’s “deconstruction” of Saussure’s phono-centrism seems to have discouraged Classicists from engaging in any practical analysis of the consequences of Saussure’s privileging of les phonèmes over les signes écrits in relation to concealed anagram.20 It is now clear that Saussure’s refusal to admit the existence of a pervasive anagrammatism based exclusively on les signes écrits was an error. When a detailed survey is undertaken in relation to his specific comments on specific texts, it becomes apparent that he was in fact responding – albeit with great sensitivity - to the mere phonemic traces of concealed quasi-anagrammatic figures regulated by an elegantly simple set of compositional rules, and based exclusively upon traditional concepts of anagrammatism as a “re-writing” in terms of written signs. Nevertheless, Saussure’s contribution to the study of Latin anagram is indeed fundamental. His close analysis of concealed utterance in Latin texts is wide-ranging, and his observations are meticulously recorded. It is thus necessary to return to first principles. Saussure’s remarkable Geneva notebooks must be fore-grounded, and their tendentious exploitation by Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Roman Jakobson and others in the long twentieth-century fin de siècle must (for the time being) be relegated to the background. Acting on the assumption that Saussure’s observations relate to the mere phonemic traces of an anagrammatism based traditionally upon letters of the alphabet, the twenty-first century analyst will find it possible to reconfigure Saussure’s carefully formulated “rules” of hypogram in terms of the newly re-discovered protocols of a pervasive anagrammatism based exclusively upon written signs. The analysis of one or two specific instances will enable us to understand how Saussure’s hypotheses were derived from (and limited by) his observation of the phonetic traces of an underlying anagrammatism based simply on letters of the alphabet. Starobinksi records, for example, that in 1908 one of Saussure’s correspondents drew the attention of his “Master and Friend” to the phonemic signs of the name Pindarus in a passage picked at random from Horace, Odes 4. 2. 1-4: 21

Words

25

Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari, Iulle, ceratis ope Daedalea, Nititur pinnis vitreo daturus, Nomina ponto.

Starobinski does not elaborate upon the matter, but David Armstrong has claimed in an important essay that “There is PINDARUS in the third line”.22 Armstrong marks line 3 of the text accordingly: Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari, Iulle, ceratis ope Daedalea, Nititur PINnis vitreo DAtuRUS, Nomina ponto.23

Armstrong abstains from defining his PINDARUS in terms of either les phonèmes or les signes écrits, but he does appear to interpret the gesture as corresponding to Saussure’s concept of the “hypogram”. We are now in a position to test the passage for the possible incorporation of an authentic PINDARUS anagram in the form of a rule-compliant anagramma figuratum. As already noted, the compositional rules are tightly drawn and they must be observed in full if the anagram is to be viewed as authentic. First, the opening phrase Pindarum quisquiS refers to the theme-word overtly, and is acrostically identical with PindaruS. It is therefore capable of functioning as the forma or outline model of a PINDARUS anagram: PindaruS: Pindarum quisquiS

Secondly, a viable figura extensa or extended component begins in the first letter(s) of the forma, is constructed thereafter exclusively from the first and/or last letter(s) of words, and ends in the final letter(s) of a proximately ensuing word. No line is left barren: [PINdarum quisquis] studet aemulari, Iulle, ceratis ope DaedaleA, NitituR pinnis vitreo daturUS, Nomina ponto.

PIN D-A R-US

As already noted, it is frequently the case that especially significant or honorific anagrams are found to include a plurality of figurae extensae. On this occasion Horace follows ancient precedent in exploiting the angulus

26

Chapter One

extremus of his Ode (i.e. the inaugural “corner” of the text) in order to endow the gesture with particular prominence. In the present instance, the path traced by the extensa is notionally L-shaped: [Pindarum quisquis] studet aemulari, Iulle, ceratis ope Daedalea, Nititur pinnis vitreo DAtuRUS, Nomina ponto.

P I N-DA-RUS

In effect, in this instance the extensa comprises a concealed technopaegnion. The creation of the figura intexta that is thus created has the effect of bracketing the nominatio of Pindarus in lines 1-3 and of setting Nomina ponto in apt apposition to that gesture. Thirdly and finally, the figura condensa is aptly located in the ambient text at the end of the extensa. In this honorific context Horace composes the condensa of the anagram in such a way that the letters of the themeword are presented in due order of spelling and with a particular clarity – its clarity being marked by the word vitreo (in the duplicitously invoked alternative sense of “clear”): PINDARUS: PINnis vitreo DAtuRUS

A somewhat similar example is to be found in Horace’s poem on Maecenas’ gift of the Sabine Farm (Satires 2.6), which is based in part upon the prior word-within-word conceit that finds the word HORTUS (in the covertly invoked sense of “country seat”) concealed within (and lending substance to) the poet whose name is HORaTiUS. Referring covertly to this prior motif, the poet explains (in the manner of a thank-you letter) that HORTUS, in the sense again of country seat, was what the poet had always wanted (Hoc erat in votis): Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons et paulum silvae super his foret auctius atque di melius fecere bene est nil amplius oro Maia nate nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis.

Saussure, typically seeking first a mot-thème or theme-word appropriate to the text, might therefore in this instance look for some phonemic registration, in terms of l’hypogramme, of the name Horatius.24

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27

And indeed, the passage is discovered to contain les diphones of Horatius in abundance. Next, it is Saussure’s practice to search for a mannequin or “outline model” of the word – i.e. a word or phrase which begins and ends respectively with the first and final letters of the theme-word. Horace’s opening phrase Hoc erat in votiS would thus serve as a mannequin for HoratiuS, as indeed would HortuS in the following line. Saussure insists, unconvincingly, that in such a case the letters H and S together comprise un diphone, but we shall elect instead to view them as individual letters of the alphabet and as written signs associated in acrostichis. We shall opt to treat such couplings as HoratiuS and Hoc erat in votiS (and HoratiuS and HortuS) as instances of acrostic co-identity, a mode of potentially expressive linguistic affiliation that is found to comprise a conventional feature of literary culture in the Graeco-Roman tradition. As noted previously, Virgil’s Aeneid, is found for example to be informed throughout by the acrostic co-identity of AeneaS and AugustuS. Similarly, in his account of the Vision of Hector, Virgil finds and exploits a conceptual affinity between the words PriamuS, PriamideS, and PenateS, and the relevant passage (at Aeneid 2. 268-97) is typically imbued with concealed anagrams of these three words. Encouraged by the discovery of two such mannequins, Saussure will typically next seek to identify what he calls the locus princeps of the hypogram. For Saussure this comprises a potentially separable, welldefined, and relatively compact part of the text which he believes to be more or less obviously dedicated to the phonemic rendering of the themeword. He will be gratified to find such a locus princeps in the opening phrase itself, which is capable of standing alone, and in which les phonèmes of the name HO-RAT-I-U-S are obviously present: HOc eRAT In VotiS

Saussure’s rules (based exclusively on le diphone and its licensed extensions) are flexible enough to suggest that this resonant phrase is eminently suited to the role of the locus princeps of a hypogram of the name Horatius. He will not be deterred by the fact the phase contains the poet’s name in the traditional form of written signs, in due order of spelling, and in lapidary form: HORATIVS: HOc eRAT In VotiS

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Saussure will reject the proposal that Horace’s signature-anagram comprises an inscriptive phenomenon. If les signes écrits spell out the name HORATIVS he will insist that this is either an accident of language or a mere by-product of an exclusively phonemic hypogram. But we shall instead elect to take the opposite view, interpreting each of the three components of the tripartite anagram as a readily recognisable assemblage of written signs consisting of individual letters of the alphabet. We shall eventually be able to formulate the narrowly drawn and mandatory protocol which states that the figura condensa (as Horace calls the alphabetic figure that gives rise to les phonèmes of Saussure’s locus princeps) must be capable of yielding the letters of the theme-word exclusively from the first and/or last letters of words, and that the letters at the acrostic extremities of the figura condensa must be constituent letters of the theme-word. We shall become accustomed to recognising the condensed component of the anagram as a potentially separable metatextual entity that exhibits in these particular respects an essential acrosticism. On this occasion, Horace’s gesture is particularly emphatic in that the textual extent of the figura condensa (HOc eRAT In VotiS) is delimited by the first and last letters of the outline model (Hoc erat in votiS). The inherent acrostichis of the figure is immediately obvious to the poet’s original, cognitively biased audience: HOc eRAT In VotiS

Saussure will typically be perceptive enough to identify the phonemic traces of this relatively unusual form of the anagramma figuratum, in which the outline model and the figura condensa are coterminous in the text. He gives to the phonetic traces of this especially compact device the name “paramorph”.25 We shall learn by reference to a multitude of such phenomena that such a conflation of outline model and condensa is comparatively rare and comprises a conventional gesture of emphasis and intensification. We shall also come to find that so far as the condensed component of the anagram is concerned, the letters of the theme-word are presented therein either in due order of spelling or (more usually) in orthographically jumbled form. When Catullus, for example, constructs a concealed anagram of the name LESBIA, he finds an apt figura condensa for his beloved in the self-delimiting phrase BaSIA milLE (“a thousand kisses”). Here again, the perfection of the quasi-anagrammatic gesture lies not in any wholesale transposition of letters (as for example in the turning of EROS to ROSE), but instead in its perfect compliance with longestablished conventional norms and acrostic protocols, and in the skill and

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wit with which the poet has managed to set the condensa in notional and revelatory apposition to the theme-word: LESBIA: BaSIA milLE A thousand kisses

Here again, all of the letters of LESBIA are capable of being provided by acrostic letters or letter-groups situated at the beginning and/or end of words, and the condensa is acrostically self-bounding in that the letters at its extremities are themselves constituent letters of the anagrammatized name. The original audience, which was cognitively biased in relation to the privileging of acrostic letters and letter-groups, will respond with pleasure to the consummately composed co-presence in Catullus’ text of (a) the literal, overt meaning of the phrase basia mille and (b) the covert (and erotically private) gesture that spells out and captures Lesbia within it. Finally, Saussure will typically seek to identify the third manifestation of his hypogram, namely the presence of les diphones and les triphones of Horatius in more extended form, perhaps dispersed through several lines of the text. Here again, the phonemic traces of the inscription will reinforce Saussure’s error, as for example in HOc … eRAT … horTUS … fORet … auctIUS … melIUS … ORO … iTA …niSI UT. We shall again take an opposite view, extrapolating from Saussure’s meticulous observations the concept of the dispersed form of the theme-word that is constructed from individual letters of the alphabet and in accordance with strictly observed rules, again based on acrostic principles. Having established that the existence and location of Horace’s anagramma figuratum must be marked by an outline model consisting of a word or phrase that is acrostically co-identical with the theme-word, we are now in a position to formulate the mandatory rules for the construction of the “more extended” form of the theme word, which (again following Horace) we shall call figura extensa. The close analysis and comparison of many hundreds of isomorphic anagrammata figuratae will confirm the conclusion that the figura extensa must begin in the first letter or letters of the outline model, must be constructed in the ensuing text in due order of spelling and exclusively from the first and/or last (i.e. acrostic) letters of words, and must end in the final letter or letters of a proximately ensuing word. We shall further find that the figura condensa of the anagram is customarily located in the ambient text at either the beginning or end of

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the extensa or extensae – another instance of the privileging of linguistic extremities that is inherent in what might be called the Classical poetic. Thus, once the location of a potential outline model is established, the original audience will expect to find that a figura extensa will flow from its first letter or letters, and that it will spell out the name of the anagrammatized word in accordance with the compositional rules described above. The conventional implementation of the rules and protocols governing the construction and incorporation of anagramma figuratum may be illustrated by reference to Horace’s proem, the overt dimension of which is conventionally innocent of ulterior intent. In the annotated extracts below, the outline model HortuS of the HORATIUS anagram is enclosed in square brackets, and the primary figurae extensae are emphasised in the text. The figura condensa of the anagram is comprised in the opening phrase Hoc erat in votis: Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus [HOrtus] ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons et paulum silvae supeR his fore AucTIUS atque di melius fecere bene est nil amplius oro Maia nate nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis.

HO R-A-TIUS

Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus [HOrtus] ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons et paulum silvae supeR his fore auctius ATque di melIUS fecere bene esT nil amplIUS oro Maia nate nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis.

HO R-AT IUS

Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus [HOrtus] ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons et paulum silvae supeR his fore. auctius ATque di melius fecere bene est nil amplIUS oro Maia nate nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis.

HO R-AT IUS

Horace’s concealed tripartite anagram is thus fully compliant with the mandatory protocols outlined above. Its existence and location are marked by an outline model or forma (i.e. HortuS) which is acrostically coidentical with the theme-word HoratiuS. It possesses at least one figura extensa beginning in the first letter or letters of the outline model, being constructed in the ensuing text in due order of spelling and exclusively from the first and/or last letters of words, and ending in the final letter or letters of a proximately ensuing word. Finally, the figura condensa of the anagram is located in the ambient text at either the beginning or the end of

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the extensae (on this occasion at the beginning). As the protocols require, the condensa of the HORATIUS anagram (in HOc eRAT In VotiS) is capable of being constructed exclusively from the first and/or last letters of words, and it is acrostically self-bounding in that the letters H and S at its respective extremities are themselves constituent letters of the themeword. It is now possible to discern an expressive purpose in the poet’s careful disposition of the component parts of the anagramma. In brief, the sequential dynamic of the extensae suggests that there flows from the fons of the hortus (the country estate known as the Sabine Farm) the sense in which HORATIUS is greatly enriched (auctius), greatly ennobled (melius), and greatly honoured (amplius) by Maecenas’ splendid gift. The combined effect of the figurae extensae is capable of summary description: HORATIUS:

HORtus …AucTIUS

HORATIUS:

HORtus … ATque …melIUS

HORATIUS:

HORtus … ATque … amplIUS

The effect of this meta-textual gesture within the palimpsest of the text is thus to yield the grammatically coherent sequence in Horatius: Hortus auctius, Hortus atque melius, Hortus atque amplius. The overall effect of the composite anagram has been to create a new referential context for words, phrases, and syntactical sequences in the overt dimension of an inherently duplicitous text. The expressive power of the poet’s text is increased exponentially. Horace’s ultimate intent is only revealed when all of the concealed anagrams in the text are brought into play. It then becomes clear that Horace envisages his patron’s gift as both an idyllic hortus and a magnificent hermaion (i.e. an unexpected gift of the god Hermes). The poet’s intention is typically revealed in a proemial HERMAION anagram: [Hoc ERat in votis]: Modus AgrI nON ita magnus hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons et paulum silvae super his foret auctius atque di melius fecere bene est nil amplius oro Maia nate nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis.

H-ER-M-A-I-ON

In the overt dimension of his text the poet’s praise of his place in the country is decorously modest, as in non magnus (“not large”), and the true extent of his gratitude is only registered when the HERMAION anagram is

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substituted for its textual matrix and read in combination with the ambient text: HERMAION: ita magnus … hortus

Typically, the word hortus has the double sense of (1) “orchard or garden” in the overt dimension of the text, and (2) “country seat” in the covert dimension. The country seat now enjoyed by the grateful poet is thus envisaged in truth as a gift, the most substantial of gifts, of the god Hermes-Mercurius, an attribution which has the honorific effect of conferring semi-divine status upon Maecenas. The further presence of HERMES, MAECENAS, and MERCURIUS anagrams in the ambient text (as the poem proceeds) confirms the poet’s intention in this context. A technical point arises in the case of concealed anagrams of names which are already closely associated (as for example in Augustus Caesar Imperator), or which the poet desires to be closely related (as for example in the case of Catullus and Lesbia or Ovid and Corinna). We shall in due course discover that the poet will customarily register any such close affiliation by means of an apt figura condensa that is shared between the respective anagrams. Virgil’s concealed AUGUSTUS CAESAR IMPERATOR anagrams in the Aeneid (for example) are typically found to share an appropriately epideictic condensa. In the present instance, the shared condensa of Horace’s associated HERMES, HERMAION, MAECENAS, and MERCURIUS anagrams is aptly located in the final line of the opening passage, the covert gesture being marked by the poet’s typically periphrastic address to Maia nate in the overt dimension: HERMES; HERMAION; MAECENAS; MERCURIUS: Nil amplius Oro MaIA natE NiSI Ut propriA HaEC MiHI MUneRA faxiS

The rules attaching to a shared figura condensa of this kind are again elegantly simple. All of the letters within the textual matrix of the condensa are deemed to be separately available for the construction of each of the anagrammatized words. This means that occasionally a letter may be shared between anagrammatized words, an apt provision in relation to the conceptual sharing that is involved. Once individually constructed, however, the combined names must be capable of being assembled from the first and/or last letters (or letter-groups) of words, and in addition the condensa must be acrostically self-bounding in the sense described above.

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5. Reading pre-Enlightenment text When one’s cognitive bias against the presence of concealed anagram in an inherently duplicitous text has been overcome, it becomes possible to read the covert dimension of pre-Enlightenment text with relative ease, confidence, and pleasure. We might begin, for example, with Lucretius’ syncopic DAEDALUS anagram in DAEDALa tellUS. A preliminary example from Ovid may also be helpful in this context. Ovid’s invocation to Aphrodite in the proem to Metamorphoses is decorously marked in the overt dimension of the text by the conventionally non-specific word di (“the gods”), but for the original audience Ovid’s covert naming of the goddess of sexual love is both anticipated and enjoyed: In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas) [Adspirate] meis PRimaque ab Origine munDI ad mea perpetuum deduciTE tempora carmen!

A-PR-O-DI TE

The anagramma figuratum is beautifully composed and is wholly compliant with the protocols. The forma or outline model, for example, is set in wittily apt apposition to the invoked name of the goddess who is enjoined to inspire the poet: AproditE: AdspiratE

As noted in the case of Horace’s anagrams, the figura extensa takes the form of a compliantly dispersed figure that is inherently self-enclosing. It is acrostically self-bounding in the sense that it must, as a minimum requirement, begin with the first letter of the outline model (i.e. the first letter of the theme-word), be constructed thereafter from acrostic letters in the text, and end in the final letter of a proximately ensuing word (i.e. the last letter of the theme-word). Occasionally, the terminal letter or letters of the extensa may be located in a word of special significance (as in Horace’s auctius, amplius, and melius). On other occasions, the first and final words of the extensa may themselves by linked in some obvious way, as for example in the case of the imperatives adspirate and deducite in Ovid’s Adspirate meis PRimaque ab Origine munDI / ad mea perpetuum deduciTE. In a variant form of rhetorical inclusio that is frequently used in relation to concealed anagram, the repetition of a word or phrase that resembles another word or phrase in some apt way is conventionally

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deemed to mark the textual extent of the figura extensa. In the present instance, the imperatives adspirate and deducite (both comprising invocatory addresses to the goddess Aphrodite) are deemed to comprise acrostic boundary markers for the extensa of the APHRODITE anagram: Adspirate meis PRimaque ab Origine munDI ad mea perpetuum deduciTE A

PR

O

DI

TE

On this occasion the figura condensa is aptly located in the ambient text at the end of the extensa in DeducITE temPORA. As will become clear, the poet writing in the Graeco-Roman tradition is also obliged by convention to acknowledge the existence of any substantive prior text which might be construed as in some way significantly preceding his own. Thus Ovid, decorously incorporating a concealed invocation to the goddess Aphrodite in the proem of a substantive poem, is found to refer to Lucretius’ concealed invocation to Aphrodite in the proem to De rerum natura. By long-established convention, inter-textual references of this kind must be marked and formally established in accordance with ancient protocols. The due deployment of these formal markers is then deemed to bring the sourcetext (or a key part of it) into revelatory apposition to the poet’s own text, and to authenticate the gesture. It is apparently axiomatic, for example, for the poet’s deemed “re-writing” of the prior text to be marked by the covert quotation, verbatim, of key words from the original text. The resulting transposition of linguistic entities from one text to another is apparently viewed as creating a quasi-anagrammatic relationship between the texts. For the pre-Enlightenment poet, therefore, inter-textuality goes far beyond mere allusion. In the present instance Ovid exploits the word-within-word trope that finds the word TE (“you”) concealed within adspiraTE and deduciTE, thus creating the notional sequence te … te. Ovid is thus able to create a formal inter-textual connection with the beautiful gesture of inclusio that in te, dea … te, diva marks the textual extent of the figura extensa of Lucretius’ APHRODITE anagram in the proem to De rerum natura. In Lucretius’ proem, ostensibly addressed to the Roman goddess Venus, an invocatory AphroditE anagram in the Roman form AfroditE/AproditE is marked by the outline model in AdventumquE in line 7. 26 The figura extensa of this anagram spans six lines, and in accordance with customary practice its textual extent is marked in inclusio by reference to the phrasal repetition in te, dea … te, diva. These textual

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entities are then deemed to serve as the apt boundary-markers for the respective lines between which the extensa begins and ends: Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum 5concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis: te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli [Adventumque] tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus summittit Flores, tibi Rident aequora ponti placatumque nitet diffusO lumine caelum. 10nam simul ac species patefactast verna DIei et reserata vigeT genitabilis aura favoni, aeriae primum volucris tE, diva, tuumque significant initum perculsae corda tua vi.

te, dea

A F-R O DI T E

| | | | | te, diva

The shared figura condensa of the poet’s (invocatory) APHRODITE and (signatory) LUCRETIUS anagrams is comprised in line 12. On this occasion the poet exploits the convention of the shared condensa in order to express the poet’s desire for close association with the goddess in his project. APRODITE; LUCRETIUS: AeriaE PRimum vOLUCRIS TE, DIva, TUumquE

It is thus with considerable virtuosity that Lucretius beseeches Aphrodite to accompany him in his venture. In the palimpsest of Lucretius’ duplicitous text, the phrasal repetition in te dea … te diva is apt in its aesthetic corroboration of the anagrammatic naming of the invoked goddess. Just as Ovid refers overtly to di and covertly to Aphrodite, so Lucretius refers covertly to Aphrodite and overtly to Venus. When the cognitively biased original reader of Metamorphoses perceives that the poet’s figura extensa of an APRODITE anagram is boundary-marked between te and te, he recognises and enjoys the apparently effortless mastery with which Ovid fulfils his conventional obligations. Once we have learnt to read the concealed anagrams upon which preEnlightenment text is found to depend, it becomes possible to answer an important question that appears to have troubled Saussure greatly: I have no further explanation of the fact, so difficult to understand or believe, that not a single Latin author writing a De re metrica or discussing

36

Chapter One poetic composition in a general way should appear to know, or even to wish to know, that the fundamental basis of poetic composition is to take as a framework the logograms [i.e. phonemic anagrams] of a name or phrase.27

A similar difficulty arises for the twenty-first century re-discoverer of Graeco-Roman anagrammatism: if the anagramma figuratum is essential in literary discourse, why is it that Cicero, Quintilian, and Horace (for example) appear to make no mention of concealed anagram or of the notional division of text into its overt and covert dimensions? The simple answer is that poets and rhetoricians in all periods do indeed refer to anagramma figuratum, but (as decorum requires) they customarily do so exclusively in the covert dimension of their text, and only in the form of concealed anagram. Only the meta-text is permitted to speak to the metatext. A strictly observed and apparently quasi-divine injunction, as in favete linguis! (“Be silent”), is found to prohibit overt reference to events in the covert dimension. It is also found to be mandatory for the poet to compose his text in such a way that he may claim responsibility only for the overt (or “poetic”) dimension of his text, and can plausibly disown any voluntary participation in the covert dimension. An anagrammatic reading of Classical and Renaissance poets and rhetoricians reveals that events in the covert dimension of text (including concealed anagram, chronogram, and corroborative word-play) are conventionally deemed to derive from the notional interventions of Hermes-Mercury. As we shall see, in Horace’s detailed (but compliantly covert) account of anagramma figuratum in the Ars poetica, the practical poet is advised that the anagrammatic revelations of Hermes must appear to arise as if naturally from the overt text and that nothing in the overt dimension should give the impression that it is in fact supplemented by the covert. The non-specific and often periphrastic overt dimension of text must be plausibly capable of standing alone. But the practical poet is fully aware that it is only when the covert dimension of his text is composed and read that the potential duplicity of words and phrases in the overt is revealed, and his ultimate meaning disclosed. Horace is found to divide the Ars poetica (or Epistle to the Pisos) covertly into separate chapters, each of which is given a concealed subheading in anagrammatic form.28 His apparent aim is to demonstrate to the young Pisos (who are specified in anagram as the addressees of the epistle) the way in which text in the Graeco-Roman tradition should be composed by the practical poet – that is, in two dimensions simultaneously. Thus lines 86-118 are found to be headed DE TROPIS SILENTIBUS (“Of silent tropes”) in anagram, and the passage is divided

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into two main parts, the first sub-headed DE ANAGRAMMA FIGURATA (“Of figured anagram”) and the second DE APICIBUS NUMERALIBUS (“Of chronogram”), a reference to concealed chronogram based on the notional era ab urbe condita.29 Horace gives the name anagramma figuratum to the archetypal tripartite anagram and illustrates its use in this richly anagrammatic passage in terms of its three mandatory constituent parts, which, as already mentioned, he calls forma, figura condensa, and figura condensa. In the second part of the passage Horace names concealed chronogram as apices numerales and (as will become clear) illustrates the protocols attaching to the construction of the chronogram in terms of incrementio, coruscatio, and iusificatio. Horace’s nomenclature is discussed in Chapter Two. It is thus that texts composed in the Graeco-Roman tradition are indeed found to include covert reference to concealed anagram and to the schismatic nature of text. Poets typically (and always covertly) describe the happy division in text between the overt song of poetry and the covert revelations of concealed anagram in terms of mythical accounts of the relationship between Apollo and Hermes. The quasi-ritualistic imperative in favete linguis! is typically conceived as a specifically Hermetic injunction to silence. As will appear, language is customarily envisaged in terms of the conventional apportionment of responsibility for text between (a) the human poet, inspired by Apollo and his Muses, and (b) HermesMercury (the god inter alia of letters, language, and the communication of divine truths), who is by ancient convention deemed to appropriate letters and letter-groups from the overt song of Apollo and to re-combine them in the form of concealed anagram for his own revelatory purposes. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, these literal appropriations of the god are likened in mythopoeic allegory to the stealing and concealment of Apollo’s cattle. In the conclusion of the Hymn, Hermes gives Apollo his lyre, and in return Apollo grants Hermes exclusive jurisdiction over the herds of cattle/letters which he is permitted to drive, to combine in herded form, and to conceal in hiding in the form of anagram. Ovid describes the Hermetic injunction to silence in similarly mythopoeic terms in his account of Mercury and Battus in Metamorphoses, where Mercury turns Battus to stone as a punishment for having spoken openly of the god’s appropriation of Apollo’s cattle/letters. Virgil marks the densely anagrammatic proem to Eclogue 1 with a concealed reference to Hermes as herder of letters in the context of compulerant greges, a gesture (as will appear) that is cited in Renaissance England. The conventional role of Hermes is found to be perpetuated in the Renaissance, the strict injunction to silence being preserved, for example,

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even in the iconoclastic, anti-anagrammatic satires of the English Enlightenment. A century before Addison’s Spectator essays, for example, the epigrammatist John Owen cites Virgil’s imagery in his own salute to Hermes – specifically associating “Vowels and Letters” with sheep and goats: ANAGRAMMATISTAE Quonam vocales [Huc illuc pellere tandem Vultis] et infantes cogere littER|ulas? Otia ut Augusto faciente, solebat in unuM Cogere Thyrsis ovES rure, capras Corydon. Whither, whither will your wits inforce Vowels and Letters here and there to course? As when Augustus leisure gave, in one Thyrsis his Sheep, his Goats brought Corydon.

H ER M ES

30

It will be observed that the letters forming the figura extensa of Owen’s HERMES anagram are so disposed as to trace a V-shaped rectilinear path (thus >) across the metrical and visual field of the text. As will appear, such customarily inserted V-shaped traces are frequently incorporated in passages incorporating invocatory or thematic HERMES anagrams of this kind. The incorporation of the V-shaped figura intexta is also deployed on occasions when significant honour is due, and also when anagrams in the covert dimension of text comprise indecent invectio or (in erotic elegy) explicit reference to sexual parts and/or practices. Such emblematic Vshaped intextae are also invoked (a) in the context of the flight of birds (i.e. in wedges), (b) in the wedge-shaped letters which Hermes is said to have invented, and (c) in the case of erotic verse, in the traditionally invoked V-form of the female pudenda.

6. Shakespeare’s anagrammatism The Graeco-Roman poetic, with its conventional adherence to a binary text and an inherent anagrammatism, is found to have been perpetuated in later Latin (as in Owen’s epigram) and in Christian texts from earliest times. It is adopted by Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer (for example) in the early Renaissance, and is found to characterize the work of European writers of both poetry and prose in the later Renaissance. It is finally rendered obsolete in the European Enlightenment. The present study concentrates upon Shakespeare’s all-pervasive use of the anagramma

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figuratum. It is found, for example, that Shakespeare’s plays typically begin with the silent tropes that in chronogram specify the date of composition, and in anagram identify the dramatist’s primary sources, indicate the play’s central theme or themes, and give some hint of the integrating motifs (or devises) which are invariably found to inform Shakespearean drama. Thereafter, throughout the play, the moral and motivational implications of speeches and dramatic interactions are revealed in hermeneutic anagrams which act as a kind of self-interpreting chorus in the text. This is not to suggest that the uneducated members of Shakespeare’s audience were intended to hear the concealed MARSYAS anagrams in Twelfth Night, for example, or the informing DAEMONOLOGIE anagrams in Othello, although it does seem likely that the simpler and cruder anagrams were appreciated by the less educated members of the audience.31 Following long-established convention, Shakespeare conceives of text as divided between its overt and covert dimensions, and he is found to compose his poems and plays accordingly. In the historical and literary contexts it would have been impossible for him to write poetry or prose successfully in any another way. To attempt to construe Shakespeare’s poetic (with its reliance upon concealed anagram) in terms of “speech acts”, for example, is thus to miss the point. No other concept of text was available to him than that which reflected the dialectic of Apollonian song and Hermetic revelation. Since the early years of the eighteenth century, editors and commentators have been denied access to the covert dimension of Shakespeare’s texts. It is thus that our readings and interpretations in this context have hitherto proved at best inadequate and at worst wholly defective. Our urgent need for an understanding of the fundamentally anagrammatic nature of Shakespeare’s texts (and, indeed, of all preEnlightenment texts) may be illustrated by reference to the allegorical poem ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’. The “point” of this designedly enigmatic poem has hitherto eluded post-Enlightenment commentators. All agree, however, that the loving relationship between the Phoenix and the Turtle is described in terms of the paradox that their soul-sharing renders them indistinguishable from each other, and that they are thus neither “one” nor “two”. Some commentators have suggested that the Phoenix and Turtle are respectively intended to represent Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, whose erstwhile close relationship was widely conceived as coming to a tragic end with Essex’s rebellion and his subsequent execution. Other commentators have disagreed, claiming for example that the two birds respectively represent the Queen and her subjects, or that the poem comprises an epithalamion on the occasion of an

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important marriage, or that it constitutes a requiem for the Catholic martyrs, or that it represents an allegory on the body and the soul, or that it refers to the death of Marlowe. The state of our knowledge of this designedly cryptic poem is thus sadly deficient. An anagrammatic reading reveals that the poem does indeed contemplate the relationship between Elizabeth R. and R. Essex, and that it does so in terms of the notional true-lovers’ knot that is formed when the respective monograms ER and RE are conjoined in the form of ER&RE. When the lovers’ initials are thus combined in the form of the emblematic true-lovers’ knot (a publicly advertised device that Henry VIII had made widely popular in the period), the lovers’ union in ER&RE reveals in one perspective a neo-Platonic unity in chiastic and palindromic form.32 Each of the lovers is necessarily present, but because each of their emblems (ER and RE) is inherently reversible, neither is distinguishable from the other: So they loued, as loue in twain Had the essence but in one; Two distincts, Diuision none: Number there in loue was slaine.

Here the words “Number there” serve a double purpose, functioning additionally to render the conjoining of ER and RE self-referential: NumbER theRE

in Loue was slaine The conventional application of the rhetorical device of inversio ensures that the chiastic citation of one lover (ER or RE) naturally yields the other (RE or ER, respectively), and thus creates an inherent textual coidentity.33 But the neo-Platonic emblem (with its apparent co-identification of Elizabeth R and E Essex, as they respectively signed themselves) also carries within it the seeds of tragic error or hamartia (a word derived from the Greek “to err” or, in the period, “to erre”). Shakespeare dramatizes the story of Elizabeth and Essex in terms of the “Tragique Scene” in which the overweening aspiration of R. Essex in ER&RE (figuring his pretentious aspiration to parity with his monarch) led him to ERRE. Contemplating the one-in-two of the Phoenix and the Turtle in terms of a tragic hendiadys, Shakespeare first analyses the intrinsically vulnerable hendiadys of Elizabeth-and-Essex in ER&RE in terms of a series of “unnatural” paradoxes which lead inexorably to Essex’s downfall in his tendency to ERRE. The poem is conventionally self-interpreting in its mandatory incorporation of hermeneutic anagrams and in its word-play in

Words

41

relation to the textile basis of the true-lovers’ knot (as for example in the alternative reading in “So they loued, as loue in twine / Had the essence butt(ed) in one”).34 Hendiadys in the strict sense has been defined as “a figure of speech described in traditional rhetoric as the expression of a single idea by means of two nouns joined by the conjunction ‘and’ (e.g. house and home or law and order), rather than by a noun qualified by an adjective”.35 Such a description does not however do justice to the complex nature of the figure, or to the flexibility with which Classical and Renaissance authors have applied it in both poetry and prose. As Brian Vickers points out in his admirable account of rhetorical hendiadys in Shakespeare, theorists of rhetoric have disagreed as to a general definition of hendiadys: 36 Many scholars have attempted to define the peculiar nature of this figure. K F Nägelsbach gave a serviceable definition in his treatise on Latin stylistics (1846): ‘the nature of hendiadys is that two concepts are brought into a co-ordinating relationship with each other, of which one is logically subordinate to the other, inheres in it and to that extent forms a unity with it’.37

Nägelsbach’s definition is well suited to Shakespeare’s evocation of the hendiadys of Elizabeth and Essex in the Phoenix poem. Essex, “logically subordinate” to Elizabeth, claims an illogical parity with her (the parity implicit in the notional true-lover’s knot ER&RE). As a result, “Reason in itselfe confounded, / Saw Diuision grow together, To themselues yet either neither, / Simple were to well compounded”. A brief extract from the heart of the poem will suffice to indicate its strategic theme in the notional one-in-two of ER&RE (the emblematic love-knot of Elizabeth Regina and Robert Essex) in terms of the one-intwo of a potentially tragic hendiadys. These central stanzas are imbued throughout with HENDIADIS (sic) anagrams, which typically act as conventional hermeneutic indicators as to theme, meaning, and poetic strategy: [HerE the Antheme doth commence: LovE aND Constancy Is] dead; Phoenix AND the Turtle fleD In a mutuall flame from hence.

H E ND I |

H-E ND-I A-D I |

42

Chapter One So they loued, AS loue in twain [HaD the Essence but IN one; Two DIstinctS], Diuision none: Number there In loue was slaine.

A D-I S

S H-E-N D I

[Hearts] RemotE, yet Not Asunder; DIstance, And no space waS seen ‘Twixt the Turtle anD hIS QueenE: But in them it were a wonder.

HE-N DI-A D-IS

A DI-S

|

The shared figura condensa of the hermeneutic HENDIADIS anagrams is centrally situated, and is perfectly matched to the sense of the textual matrix in which it is incorporated: HENDIADIS: So they loueD As loue In twain HaD the essence but IN onE

As already noted, the perfection of the figura condensa is deemed to lie not in any vulgar transposition of all of the letters of a word or phrase to form another word or phrase, but in its perfect compliance with ancient protocols – and in particular with the requirements as to acrostichis that are conventionally deemed to derive from the boundary-marking god. Within the potentially separable textual matrix of the condensa, the letters of the word HENDIADIS are capable of being supplied exclusively from the first and/or last letters of words. In addition, the condensa is selfbounding in the manner of Hermes in that the letters at its extremities are themselves constituent letters of the theme-word. When, moreover, the condensa is notionally abstracted from the ambient text and read in counterpoint to the theme-word, the aesthetic programme of the poet is made wittily clear. When the original reader reads and re-reads these stanzas, the word hendiadys flows into his consciousness. Already aware that Elizabeth and Essex are the subject of Shakespeare’s allegory the original reader also notes with pleasure the poet’s apparently effortless incorporation of ESSES and conventionally elevated ELISA anagrams: 38 Here the Antheme doth commence: Love And Con|Stancy Is dead; Phoenix [and the Turtle] fled In a mutuall flame from hence.

A-S-I LE

Words So they loued as loue in twain Had the [ESSEnce but in one Two distinctS], Diuision none: Number there in loue was slaine.

43

ESSE S

In accordance with conventional practice, Shakespeare specifically identifies his theme of hendiadys with the love of Elizabeth and Essex in a poignantly shared figura condensa: ELISA; ESSES; HENDIADIS: So they LoueD AS louE In twain HaD the ESSEnce but IN onE

The informing devise of the true-lovers’ knot is corroborated by means of Shakespeare’s customary word-play, corresponding to Addison’s “Punns and Quibbles”. The lovers’ shared E becomes their E-sense: “So they loued as loue in twine / Had the E-sense butt(ed) in one”. Here again, the word-play is self-interpreting, for the condensa is also shared by Shakespeare’s hermeneutic TWINE and LAINE anagrams. So they loued as loue in [TWain Had the essence but In oNE Two distincts, Diuision none: Number there in loue was slaine.

TW I-NE

Just as “in twain” is also “in twine”, so “was slaine” is also “was laine”, where French laine has the sense of crewel, as in laine à tapisser. At the same time the word laine takes effect as an English participle with the now obsolete sense of “concealed” or “hidden”. Once again, the word-play is self-interpreting, being specifically identified in a corroborative LAINE anagram in syncopic form: So they loued as loue in [TWain Had the] essence but In oNE Two distincts, division none: Number there in [Loue was slAINE.

TW I-NE L-AINE

The condensa is also shared by Shakespeare’s hermeneutic TWINE and LAINE anagrams: ELISA; ESSES; HENDIADIS; TWINE; LAINE: So they LoueD AS louE In twain HaD the ESSEnce but IN onE

Chapter One

44

The lovers’ mutuall flame in ER&RE is also an instance of heraldic flamant (“burning; flaming”), and it is in the context of hierarchical rights and privileges that Essex’s hubris is allegorised and the source of his nemesis identified. He sees his heraldic right to parity with Elizabeth in terms of their mutual flaming in the tragic onomancy of ER&RE. So betweene them Loue did shine, That the Turtle saw his right Flaming in the Phoenix sight; Either was the others mine.

The poet points out that in the one-in-two of ER&RE, either entity has the other’s mine or mien, where mine is a commonly found orthographical variant of the word mien (the latter word signifying “appearance”). 39 It is part of Shakespeare’s strategy so to dispose the letter-groups er and re within the text of his poem as to illustrate the relationship between Elizabeth and Essex (as ER and RE). Further corroboration of this strategy is to be found in Jonson’s two-stanza poem ‘The Phoenix Analysde’, which follows the other poems appended to Love’s Martyr. Jonson’s conventionally elevated ELISA anagram in the first stanza identify the Phoenix with Elizabeth Regina, and the excessively frequent RE-particles in the second stanza associate the Turtle with Robert Essex. As one might expect, concealed ELISABETH (or ELISA) REGINA anagrams are incorporated in a large number of poems of the period. As I have explained elsewhere, such anagrams are invariably cast in reverse in order that the figura extensa may trace an upward or elevated path upon the page: 40 The Phœnix Analysde Now, after all, let no man Receiue it for A Fable, If [A Bird So amI|abLE], Do turne into a Woman. Or (by our Turtles AuguRE) That NatuREs faiREst CREatuRE, Proue of his Mistris FeatuRE, But a baRE Type and FiguRE.

A-S-I-LE

RE RE RE RE RE RE

A I-S-LE

RE RE

Evidently Jonson’s rhyme-scheme and metre are intended to imitate the first and longer part of Shakespeare’s poem, but the clear abba of the first stanza is contrasted with the aaaa of the second in order to intensify a

Words

45

focus upon RE (the textual emblem that represents R. Essex). Covertly exploiting the rhetorical device of homoioteleuton (one of Horace’s “silent tropes” described in Chapter Two), Jonson imitates Shakespeare in isolating the letter-group RE as a potentially separable, signal entity within the palimpsest of his text. Essex (typically adulated in the period in terms precisely similar to the epithet in Jonson’s “Natures fairest Creature”) is thus publicly stigmatized after the events of February 1601 for having proved but “a baRE Type and FiguRE” (in his RE) of “his Mistris FeatuRE” (in her ER reversed as RE). It is thus that Jonson’s explicatory analysis of Shakespeare’s Phoenix poem speaks (for example) to the disposition of the emblematic letter-groups er and re in “Hearts REmote, yet not asundER”. Complexly encapsulating the national and personal issues inherent in the Tragique Scene, the emblematic letter-groups are acrostically distant (“remote”) from each other in the line, yet inseparable (“not asunder”) in a potentially tragic hendiadys: Hearts . . . REmote, yet not asundER

7. Hendiadys and procrastinatio in Hamlet As Frank Kermode has suggested, Shakespeare’s Phoenix poem is of significance also in relation to the nearly contemporaneous Hamlet.41 Both works are characterized by what Kermode calls “a concern with questions of identity, sameness, and the union of separate selves”.42 Kermode’s insight owes much to George T Wright’s speculative and necessarily controversial account of rhetorical hendiadys in Hamlet.43 It is now possible, through an anagrammatic reading of the play, to describe the aesthetic upon which the play is based, and to discern the overall unity of the tragedy. In Shakespeare’s Phoenix poem, the singular-for-plural verb “is” in “Loue and Constancie is dead” is found to be translated from Cicero’s singular est in tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est (literally, “delay and procrastination is hateful”).44 As will become clear, the source is specifically identified in Shakespeare’s CICERO, TARDITAS PROCRASTIONATIO, and HENDIADIS anagrams in Act 5 Scene 2 of the play. Cicero’s dictum is itself a locus classicus of the one-in-two of rhetorical hendiadys, and may well have been offered as an illustrative example in Shakespeare’s grammar school. Cicero exploits the fact that hendiadys is by definition a figure of copulative conjunction, and therefore of “drawing out” and protraction. Its textual dynamic facilitates its expressive use in relation to the enactment delay. In the Sixth Philippic,

46

Chapter One

Cicero’s dictum tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est is conventionally accompanied by hermeneutic HENDIADIS (sic) anagrams, and that inscription is found to provide the devise that informs Hamlet and renders it a coherent whole. In effect, the structure of hendiadys is realized thematically and dramatically in the structure of delay. Conscientious as ever in his attributions, Shakespeare confirms his debt to Cicero in judiciously located hermeneutic anagrams. The dramatic significance of Cicero’s tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est is registered in Act 5 Scene 2 in a richly anagrammatic exchange between Hamlet and Horatio which surveys and summarizes the drama in terms of attributive CICERO, HENDIADES (sic), TARDITAS, and PROCRASTINATIO anagrams. As Wright himself hypothesizes, Hamlet and Horatio are themselves paired in a “true conjunction of spirits”. 45 In the interests of clarity, the relevant anagrams are shown separately in the annotated extracts below: Hor. Why, what a King is this? Ham. Does it not, thinkst thee, stand me now vpon [HE that hath kil’d my King, aND whor’d my Mother, Popt In betweene th’election AnD my hopES], [Throwne out his] Angle foR my proper life, AnD with such coozenage; Is’t not [perfect [Conscience, [To]] quit him with this] arme? And Is’t not to be damn’d To let thiS Canker of our nature come In furthER euill. Hor. It must be shortly knowne tO him from England What is the issue of the businesse there. Hor. Why, what a King is this? Ham. Does it not, thinkst thee, stand me now vpon He that hath kil’d my King, and whor’d my Mother, Popt In betweene th’election and my hopes, Throwne out his angle for my [PROper life, And with such coozenage; is’T not peR|fect conscience, To] quit him with this arme? And is’t not to be damn’d To let this Canker of our naT|ure come In further euill. Hor. It must be shortly knowne tO him from England What is the issue of the businesse there.

HE-ND I-A-D-ES T-A-R C D-I I T-A C S ER O

PRO T-R A C-T I O

Typically, the underlying cause of Hamlet’s delay is reflected in instances of hendiadys in the overt dimension of the text (as in “my King … and my Mother” and “th’election and my hopes”, while at the same time hermeneutic anagrams in the covert dimension interpret (as here) the spoken and enacted drama in specific terms.

Words

47

When Shakespeare the Anagrammatist embarks upon a new poem or play, it is his habitual tendency to seek some thematically relevant prior text and to invoke a conventionally marked, inter-textual affiliation in order to set the referred text in formal, revelatory apposition to his own. That thematic source is then typically related to other prior texts and/or fragments of text in a complex system that is characteristically plural and reticular in structure. As will become clear, in the case of Othello for example) Shakespeare’s primary non-narrative sources comprise James I’s Daemonologie and the anagrammatic fragment DESDEMONA : SED DEMON, and the play is structured accordingly. In the case of Hamlet the pre-existing narrative sources permit the development of the theme of delay, and the locus classicus of culpable delay in the period is Cicero’s Sixth Philippic. Cicero’s text is of particular value to Shakespeare because the quotation from the Sixth Philippic is also an example of rhetorical hendiadys, a potentially powerful dramatic concept, as its usefulness in the Tragique Scene of ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ had shown. In brief, the Ghost’s injunctions to Hamlet are from the outset set in terms of an ultimately tragic hendiadys: Hamlet must kill Claudius (his father’s brother and murderer) but must preserve his mother, the Queen. The copulative conjunction of Claudius and Gertrude in “the Royall Bed of Denmarke” is both grammatical and sexual: Let not the Royall Bed of Denmarke be A Couch for Luxury and damned Incest.

For Hamlet the problematic moral, eschatological, political, social, and mental challenges involved in killing Claudius but preserving Gertrude are burdensome indeed, and are reflected in the poignant complexity of the instances of hendiadys that occur frequently and always appositely in the text. Contaminated by copulative conjunction with Incest (for example), the Ghost’s word “Luxury” evokes inter alia Latin luxuria (“rankness; excess”) and luxus (either “debauchery; sexual excess” or “dislocation”), words which in Latin are commonly conjoined in the hendiadys of luxus et luxuria: Let not the Royall Bed of Denmarke be A Couch for [LUXury and damned Incest. But [Howso|Euer thoU pursuest thiS] act, Taint not thy miND; nor let thy Soule contriue Against thY Mother ought, leaue her to [HEaueN, AnD to those Thornes] that In her bosome lodge, To pricke AnD sting her. Fare thee well at once; The glow-worme showES the Matine to be neere, And gins to pale his vneffectuall fire:

LUX U-S HE-N D-I A-D ES

H-E ND Y A-D-ES

48

Chapter One

In the absence of an anagrammatic reading, such an interpretation would remain merely speculative, and would have no place in the present study. But in due accord with Senecan precedent Hamlet is found to be imbued throughout with hermeneutic anagrams which explain, interpret, corroborate, and poignantly interact with the overt speech and action of the drama, both overall and locally. It is thus that the Ghost’s exhortations to Hamlet to take revenge against the one-in-two of the ‘King and Queen’ are interpreted in terms of the hermeneutic HENDIADES and GERTRUDE anagrams which are incorporated in the text, anagrams that are also associated with DELAYE and MELACOLLY (sic) anagrams. The passage begins in the overt hendiadys of “Crowne, and Queene” a coupling that again speaks specifically to the problematic one-in-two of the task that is given to Hamlet. For the sake of clarity of explication, a selection only of the relevant anagrams is indicated in the annotated extract below: Thus was I, sleeping, by a Brothers hand, Of Life, of Crowne, and Queene at once dispatcht; Cut off euen in the Blossomes of my Sinne, Vnhouzzled, disappointed, vnnaneld, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head; Oh horrible, Oh horrible, most horrible: If thou hast nature in thee beare it not; Let not the Royall Bed of Denmarke be A Couch for Luxury and damned Incest. But [Howsoeuer thou pursuest this] Act, Taint not thy mind; nor let thy SoulE contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to [HEaueN, AND to those Thornes] that In her bosome lodge, To pricke AnD sting her. Fare thee well at once; The [Glow-wormE] showES the Matine to be neere, And gins To pale his vneffectuall fiR|e: Adue, adue, HamleT: Remember mE. Hamlet: Oh all yoU host of [HeaueN! Oh Earth; what els] AnD shall I couplE Hell? Oh fie: hold my heart; AnD you my sinnewES, grow not instant Old; But beare me stiffely vp: Remember thee? I, thou poore [Ghost, while] memory [Holds a seatE IN this] DIstracted Globe: RemembER thee? YeA, from the Table of my [MEmory], Ile wipe away alL triuiall fonD Records, All sawes of Bookes, All formes, all pres|Ures past, That youth anD obseruation COppied therE; And thy Commandment aLL alone shall liue Within the Booke and Volume of mY BrainE, Vnmixt with baser matter; yes, yes, by Heauen: Oh most pernicious woman! Oh Villaine, Villaine, smiling [Damned Villaine]!

H E N D-I A-D ES

H-E N-DI A D ES

D

G-E R T-R U D-E

G ER T R U D-E

HE ND-I A-D ES

H-EN D-I A-D-ES

ME L A CO LL Y-E

Words My Tables, my Tables; meet it is I set it downE, That one may smile, and smile and be a VilL|aine; At least I’m sure it mAY be so in DenmarkE; So Vnckle there you are: now to my word; It is; Adue, Adue, Remember me: I haue sworn’t.

49 E L A-Y-E

Each anagram is precisely compliant with the narrowly drawn rules and protocols of anagramma figuratum. Each is marked by a forma or outline model that is acrostically identical with the relevant theme-word. Each anagram has a figura extensa that begins in the first letter(s) of the forma, is constructed thereafter exclusively from the first and last letters of words, and ends in the final letter(s) of a proximately ensuing word. No line in the textual span of any given extensa is barren. Each anagram has its own revelatory figura condensa, as for example in the condensa of the DELAYE anagram, which is designedly self-referential. The utterance comprised in the line (see below) is itself an example of delay and a provisional cognition that is contaminated by fore-thought and afterthought: DELAYE: At Least I’m sure it maY be so in DenmarkE

Once again the condensa is capable of yielding the letters of the themeword exclusively from the first and last letters of words, and of being bounded at its acrostic extremities by letters (A and E) which are constituent letters of the theme-word. Each anagram exists, moreover, in reciprocal corroboration in relation to the other perfectly rule-compliant anagrams in the ambient text. In addition, the anagrams are closely linked to the tendency of the overt dimension of the text, as for example in the MELACOLLYE anagram which follows immediately after the covert reference to Hamlet’s mental abstraction in “while memory holds a seate / In this distracted Globe” (where the word globe also has the alternative sense of head).46 Typically, also, the coming of the HENDIADES anagrams is heralded by the pivotal conjunction But in “But howsoeuer thou pursuest this”, a marker of the impossibly differentiated challenge which - as Shakespeare’s hermeneutic anagrams explain - lies at the heart of Hamlet’s predicament. The HENDIADES anagrams are found to run in close counterpart to the overt language of the crucial lines, and thus to interpret the potentially tragic “one-in-two” of the Ghost’s injunctions:

50

Chapter One BUT [Howsoeuer thou pursuest this] act, Taint not thy mind; nor let thy SoulE contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to [HEaueN, AND to those Thornes] that In her bosome lodge, To pricke AnD sting her. Fare thee well at once; The [Glow-worme] showES the Matine to be neere,

H E N D-I A-D ES

HE ND-I A-D ES G… /ERTRUDE

The thematically associated HAMLET, GERTRUDE, and HENDIADES anagrams are allocated shared figurae condensae in apt locations: HAMLET; GERTRUDE; HENDIADES: LeauE her to HEaUEN, AnD to Those ThornES that In HeR bosoME loDGE HAMLET; GERTRUDE; HENDIADES: HoLD my hEART; And yoU My sinnewES, Grow Not InstanT olD

Shakespeare incorporates HENDIADES anagrams throughout the play in order to interpret and clarify speech and action, both locally and overall. At the same time, the HENDIADES anagrams are set in close association with instances of overtly stated rhetorical hendiadys (or near-hendiadys) in the text, as here in “Heauen, and … those thornes”, “pricke and sting”, and “my heart; and … my sinnewes”. To reiterate, it is a characteristic of writing in the Graeco-Roman tradition, and therefore of Shakespeare’s dramatic art, that a prior devise or linguistic conceit is found to shape the dramatic scheme of the tragedy. In this instance that devise is founded upon the rhetorical device of hendiadys. The paired characters Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern is/are (for example) designedly presented in terms of the one-in-two of Ciceronian hendiadys, and their appearances on stage are accordingly associated with hermeneutic HENDIADES anagrams in the text. It is thus also that the play’s dénouement is dramatized in terms of hendiadys. In Act 4, as a preliminary to the play’s final hendiadys of sword-and-cup, Claudius and Laertes contemplate the latter’s proposed duel with Hamlet. Laertes declares that he will avenge his father’s death by anointing the tip of his sword with poison. But the calculating Claudius seeks the one-in-two assurance of “a backe or second”, a form of hendiadys (of this and that) which ironically leads to his own death. At this crucial point in the text the dramatic invocation of hendiadys is typically marked by the close clustering of a plurality of HENDIADES anagrams. Shakespeare also incorporates prefatory SINNE and MURDER anagrams in a further

Words

51

hermeneutic gesture that foregrounds the conspiratorial sin and Claudius’s careful plotting in that context: Laertes: I will doo’t, And for that purpose Ile annoint my Sword: I bought an Vnction of a Mountebanke [So mortall, I but dipt a knife] IN it, Where it drawes blood, No Cataplasme so rarE, Collected from all Simples that haue Vertue Vnder the Moone, can saue the thing from death, That is but scratcht withall: Ile touch my point, With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly, It may be death. King: Let’s further thinke of this, Weigh what conuenience both of time and [Meanes May fit vs to oUR] shape, if this should faile; And that our Drift lookE through ouR bad performance, ‘Twere better not assaid; therefore this Proiect Should haue a backe or second, that might [Hold, If this] should blast in proofE: Soft, let me see Wee’l make a solemne wager oN your commings, I ha’t: when in your motion you are [Hot anD drY, As] make your bowts morE violent to the eND, And that [HE calS] for drinke; Ile haue prepar’d him A Challice for the Nonce; whereon but sipping, If he by chance escape your venom’D stuck, Our purposE maY hold there; how sweet Queene. Queen: One woe doth treAD vpon anotherS heele, So fast they’l follow: your Sister’s drown’d LaertES.

S-IN N-E

M UR D-E-R H E N D-Y A-D E-S

H END I A D E S

HE N D Y AD ES

The shared condensa of the HENDIADES anagrams is located at the beginning of the relevant extensae, in close counterpoint to the overt nearhendiadys of “a backe or second”: HENDIADES: A backE or secoND that might Hold, If thiS shoulD blast in proofE

Shakespeare further exploits the concept of an ultimately tragic hendiadys by extending the concept beyond the narrow definition of the rhetorical device. As will become clear, the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Act 3 Scene 1 (for example) is based upon the resonant near-hendiadys of Cicero’s aut esse aut non esse and thus extends the copulative one-intwo in terms of a similarly irresolvable either/or. Typically, this strategy is specifically identified in terms of hermeneutic anagrams. The soliloquy opens with conspicuously located and phonetically marked ONE IN TWO

52

Chapter One

anagrams, which are found to be typical of Shakespeare’s practice elsewhere: [To] be, [Or Not to be], that [Is the Question]: Whether ’tis Nobler iN the minde tO suffer The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune, Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them:

ON E

I N

T W-O

Cicero’s gesture in tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est demonstrates self-referentially that temporal extension (and hence delay) is inherent in the structure of hendiadys. In the soliloquy, this insight is translated in terms of Hamlet’s “x or y” (line 1) and “Whether x or y” (lines 2-4), where or is tantamount to and. Accordingly the speech is imbued (inter alia) with hermeneutic HENDIADES, DELAY, TARDINES(SE), and MELACOLLYE anagrams, a selection (only) of which is indicated below: To be, or not to be, that is the Question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the minde to suffer [The Slings and Arrowes] of outragious Fortune, Or to take ARmes against a Sea of troubles, AnD by oppos|Ing End them: to [Dye], to sleepe No morE; and by a SleepE, to say we end The [HEart-ake, aND the thousand NaturalL shockES] That Flesh IS heyrE too? ‘TiS A consummation Deuoutly to be wish’d. To dYE to SleepE, To sleepe, perchancE to Dreame; I, there’S the rub, For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come, When we haue shufflel’d off this [Mortall coile], [Must giuE vs pawse]. There’s thE respect That makes Calamity of so Long Life: For who would beare the Whips And Scornes of time, The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans COntumely, The pangs of [Dispriz’d LouE], the Lawes delaY, The insoL|ence of OfficE, And the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthY takes, When he himselfE might his Quietus makE With a bare Bodkin?

D E L A YE

M-E L A CO L L Y E

HE-ND I-A D E-S

T AR D-I N ES S-E

M E L A CO L-L-Y D-E-L E A Y E

The central significance of the theme-word DELAY(E) is registered in a conventional device of anagrammatic intensification, borrowed from Classical Latin, in lines 17-19. Here, the figurae extensae of two separate DELAY(E) anagrams are found to end and begin respectively in the word “delay” itself. In tropes of this kind, the theme-word functions as its own forma:

Words For who would beare the Whips And Scornes of time, The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans contumely, The pangs of [Dispriz’d LouE], the Lawes [DELAY] The insolence of Office, And the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthY takes, When he himselfe might his Quietus make With a bare Bodkin?

53

D-E-L-AY DEL A Y

As a consequence, the DELAY(E) anagrams are self-referential as to the rhetorical delay that is inherent in the protracted copulatives (resembling a plural hendiadys) which populate the overt dimension of the text: “The pangs of [Dispriz’d LouE], the Lawes [DELAY], / The insoL|ence of Office, And the Spurnes / That patient merit of the vnworthY takes”. The shared condensa is comprised in lines 2-3 of the speech: ONE IN TWO; HENDIADES; TARDINESSE; DELAIE: WhetheR ’TIs NobLer In thE miNDE tO suffer THE slings AnD ArrowES of Outragious fortuNE

8. Addendum It would seem, therefore, that Saussure’s achievement in relation to Greek and Latin anagrammatism is quite remarkable. In linguistics, his own field of study, he must rank alongside Freud and Einstein as typifying the remarkable intellectual achievements of the early years of the twentieth century. Saussure’s follower, the linguist Roman Jakobson, must also be credited with having recognised the importance of Saussure’s work on anagram, and with having extended the focus of his interest in sub-textual anagrams to include Renaissance anagrammatism. Jakobson’s neglected monograph on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 contains the first postEnlightenment response to anagramma figuratum in Renaissance verse. Jakobson’s brief account of the signatory SHAKESPEARE anagram in Shakespeare’s Verbal Art in “Th’expence of Spirit in a waste of shame” is inchoate and speculative, but in this context it stands alone.47

Notes 1

Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997), 95. 2 Christopher Ricks, “Shakespeare and the Anagram”, in Proceedings of the British Academy: 2002 Lectures, ed. P J Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 111-146. Alastair Fowler, Literary Names (Oxford: Oxford University

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Press), 2012. Mary Hazard, Elizabethan Silent Language (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press), 2000. 3 Fowler, Literary Names, 87. 4 Ricks, “Shakespeare and the Anagram”, 114. 5 William F Friedman and Elizebeth Friedman, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1957. 6 Peter Jensen, Secrets of the Sonnets: Shakespeare’s Code (Eugene, Oregon: Walking Bird Press), 2007. Roy Winnick, ‘“Loe, here in one line is his name twice writ”: Anagrams, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and the Identity of the Fair Friend”, Literary Imagination, 11 (2009): 254-77. 7 Vendler, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 361. 8 Vendler, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 255. 9 Frederick Ahl, Metaformations: Wordplay and Soundplay in Ovid and Other Classical Latin Poets (New York: Cornell University Press), 2007, 41-44. 10 Ahl, Metaformations, 40. 11 Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2014. 12 For Joseph Addison on “False Wit”, see The Spectator (1711): nos. 58-63. 13 Jean Starobinski, Les mots sous les mots: les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure (Paris: Editions Gallimard), 1971. Citations refer to Olivia Emmet’s translation of Starobinski’s book: Words Upon Words (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1979. 14 Ahl, Metaformations, 50n. 15 Emmet, Words Upon Words, 33. 16 Emmet, Words Upon Words, 14, 18, and 29-32. 17 See Chapter Two. 18 Alexander Pope (for example) affects to repudiate the overt anagrams and acrostics of “Shakespeare’s age” whilst simultaneously imitating the covert anagrams of the earlier age, and implying their obsolescence. In the extract below, which is taken from an early version of Pope’s An Essay on Criticism, the outline model of the concealed ANNE anagram is enclosed within square brackets, and the figura extensa is emphasised in the text and notated in the margin: The rhyming clowns that gladded Shakespeare’s age, No more with crambo entertain the stage. Who now in [ANagrams their patroN praisE], AN-N-E Or sing their mistress in acrostic lays? The satirist has thus consciously composed an ANNAgram in contemplation of his own Queen and potential patron, whom he famously calls “great Anna”. The new poetic - described by Joseph Addison as consisting in the resemblance and congruity of ideas as opposed to the resemblance of textual entities - is for example plainly recognisable in Pope’s “Here thou, great Anna! whom three Realms obey, Dost sometimes Counsel take - and sometimes Tea”.

Words

19

55

Emmet, Words Upon Words, 30. Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit), 1967. In the decades following Derrida’s deconstruction of language it is possible to trace a natural disinclination upon the part of literary practitioners to attempt the “vulgar” inversion of Saussure’s privileging of speech over writing that the present study might seem to involve. See also Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak’s influential translation of Derrida’s book: Of Grammatology (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press), 1974. 21 Emmet, Words Upon Words, 127. 22 David Armstrong, “The Impossibility of Metathesis”, in Dirk Obbink (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 210-232, at 230. 23 Armstrong, “The Impossibility of Metathesis”, 229. 24 These remarks are hypothetical and do not refer to any known account of Horace’s proem offered by Saussure. On Horace’s name-play in Satires 2.6 see for example Kenneth J Reckford, “Horatius: the Man and the Hour”, The American Journal of Philology, 118 (1997): 583-612. 25 Emmet, Words Upon Words, 33. 26 The word adventumque is one of several phonemic mannequins of the name Aphrodite detected by Saussure. See Emmet, Words Upon Words, 57-74. 27 Emmet, Words Upon Words, 103. 28 See Chapter Two. 29 For the use of the era ab urbe condita in ancient Roman chronogram, see Chapter Two. 30 John Owen, Epigrammatum, Vol. 1 Lib. 1-3, ed. John R C Martyn (Leiden: E J Brill, 1976), 57. For the English translation, see Thomas Harvey, John Owen’s Latin Epigrams Englished by Thomas Harvey, 1667. 31 For a detailed analysis of Twelfth Night and Othello see Chapters Five and Six respectively. 32 On the true-lovers’ knot see William C Carroll, ‘The Virgin Not: Language and Sexuality in Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Survey, 46 (1994): 110-111. 33 For chiastic citation and/or quotation see see P C Beentjes, “Inverse Quotation in the Bible: a Neglected Stylistic Pattern”, Biblica 63 (1982): 506-523. 34 While it would be anachronistic to describe Shakespeare’s play on twain and twine as a “pun”, it would seem that the words day and die (for example) were homophonous, or nearly so, in the period. See Chapter Four, with particular reference to Sonnets 7 and 18. 35 Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 97. 36 Brian Vickers, “Rhetoric: The Shakespearean ‘Hendiadys’”, in Counter-feiting Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 163. 37 Vickers, “Rhetoric: The Shakespearean ‘Hendiadys’”, 168. 38 The conventionally elevated form of ELISA/ELISABETH REGINA anagrams is described and illustrated in William Bellamy, ‘Jonson’s Art of Anagram’ in Richard S Peterson (ed.) Jonsonian Soundings (New York: AMS Press), 2015. 20

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Edmund Spenser (for example) extends the scope of this conventional usage to his concealed anagrams of ELISABETH BOYLE (his Petrarchan “mistress” and later his wife), and Shakespeare follows established precedent in his ELISA/ELISABETH VERE anagrams. 39 On mine and mien, see John Constable, Notes and Queries, NS 39 (1989): 327 40 See note 37 41 Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (London: Allen Lane), 2000: 69-71, 101. 42 Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language, 101. 43 George T Wright, “Hendiadys and Hamlet”, PMLA (96), 1981: 168-193. Wright’s article is reprinted in George T Wright, Hearing the Measures: Shakespearean and Other Inflections (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press), 2001. 44 The rhetorical force of Cicero’s tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est is apt to Cicero’s central theme in the Sixth Philippic, namely the danger of delay in dealing with the treacherous Antony - “a most ill-omened beast”. 45 Wright, Hearing the Measures, 22. 46 For globe as head see OED on the word “globelike”, citing “1586 … A Globelike head…” 47 Starobinski’s book concludes with an historically important footnote: “Several recent studies by Roman Jakobson, more particularly Shakespeare’s Verbal Art in “Th’Expence of Spirit” (in collaboration with Lawrence C Jones), expressly call on the Saussurian idea of the hypogram” (Emmet, Words, 129).

CHAPTER TWO ORIGINS

Confession of sins hath been authorised in all times and in all nations. The ancients accused themselues in the mysteries of Orpheus, of Isis, of Ceres, of Samothrace. —Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crime and Punishment

1. Orpheus: sacrifices of placation In a richly anagrammatic passage in the opening of The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham reminds his readers that poets “were the first … ministers of the holy misteries”: Poets are of great antiquitie … They were the first that instituted sacrifices of placation, with inuocations and worship to them, as to Gods; and inuented and stablished all the rest of the obseruances and ceremonies of religion, and so were the first Priests and ministers of the holy misteries. 1

As Puttenham himself (covertly) demonstrates, it is customary for the opening lines of pre-Enlightenment texts to incorporate concealed anagrams of quasi-liturgical verba certa (“fixed words”) which contemplate both poetry and prose as partaking of the Orphic Mysteries.2 When Virgil, for example, composes the proem to the Aeneid, he incorporates formulaic anagrams of the fixed words that accompany an apparently mandatory rite of placatory self-accusation, an initiatory rite that would appear to precede and permit the poet’s entry into the mysteria. Invoking ORPEUS (sic) and the MISTERIUM in anagram, Virgil marks the liturgical character of the gesture in conventionally disposed ORO (“I pray”), PECCATUM (“sin”), and SUPERBIA (“pride”) anagrams.3 Evidently the poet, conscious of the sin of pride that characterizes his presumptuous undertaking, is obliged by ancient convention to confess to his superbia before he may proceed to the mysterium poetatis. The

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relevant anagrams are indicated in the annotated extract below, and a selection (only) of the respective figurae extensae is noted in the margin: Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab [ORis] Italiam, fatO Profugus, Laviniaque venit litora, [Multum illE et terrIS] iactatUS eT alto vi supER|um saevae memorem Iunonis ob Iram; multa quoque et bello passus, dUM conderet urbem, inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, quidve dolens, regina deum tot volvere casus insignem [Pietate virum], tot adirE labores impulerit. Tantaene animis Caelestibus irae? Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere Coloni, Karthago, Italiam contrA Tiberinaque longe ostia, dives opUM [Studiisque asperrima] belli; quam Iuno fertur terris magis omnibus Unam Posthabita coluissE Samo; hic illius arma, hic currus fuit; hoc Regnum dea genti|Bus esse, sI qua fatA sinant, iam tum tenditque fovetque.

OR P E-US M-I-ST ER-I UM

P-E C C A-T UM

S U P-E R-B I-A

The importance attached to the confessional ORPEUS, MISTERIUM, ORO, PECCATUM, and SUPERBIA anagrams is registered in the location of the shared figura condensa in the resonant opening line of the poem: ORPEUS; MISTERIUM; ORO; PECATUM; SUPERBIA: ARmA vIRUM|quE CAnO, TroiaE quI PrIMUS aB ORIS

Similarly, when John Milton composes the proem to Paradise Lost, he is obliged by long-standing tradition to incorporate the appropriate fixed words of the Orphic initiation in concealed anagram. As Ovid in his proem is conventionally obliged to quote from Lucretius (see Chapter One), so Milton is also required to refer to the most significant of Classical texts in the epic mode. His initiatory rite translates Virgil’s in the form of ORPHEUS, MYSTERY, PRAYER, SINNE, PRIDE, and PRESUMPTUOUSNESSE anagrams. For the sake of clarity a selection only of the relevant anagrams is shown in the annotated extract below: … I thence Invoke thy aid to [MY] adventurous [Song, That with no middle] flight INtends to Soar Above The AoniaN mount, whilE it [Pur]sues

MY S T

P

Origins Things unattempted yet in prosE or Rhyme And chieflY thou [Oh spirit, that dost prefER Before all temples] the uP|right Heart and purE, Instruct me, for ThoU knowest; thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wingS outspread Dove-like [Satst brooding on the vast abysse] And mad’st it [PRegnant: what IN me] Is DarkE IllumiNE, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men.

59 E-R Y

R O-R A-Y-ER P-H-E

U S PR-I-D-E

S IN NE

As will become clear, Milton’s PRESUMPTUOUSNESSE anagram is noteworthy in that it also follows Classical precedent: … I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous [Song, S That with no middle] flight INtends to Soar IN Above The AoniaN mount, whilE it [PuR|sueE|s N-E ThingS unattempted yet in prose or rhyme] And chiefly thoU oh spirit, that dost prefer Before all teMP|les] the uP|RIght Heart and purE, Instruct me, for ThoU knowest; thOU from the first Wast present, and with [mighty] wingS outspread Dove-like [Satst brooding oN thE vast abySSE] S And mad’st it [PRegnant: What IN me] is DarkE IN IllumiNE, what is low raise and support; NE That to the heighth of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men.

P-R-E S U MP TU-OU S N-ESSE

Here again the shared figura condensa is aptly disposed. Milton is conventionally obliged to confess the presumptuousness of the poet who “pursues / Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”, and that statement is intended to be read in the context of the words that are re-written in the form of concealed anagram within it: ORPHEUS; MYSTERY; SINNE; PRESUMPTUOUSNESSE; PRIDE: It PURSUES thingS UNatteMPTED YeT IN PROse OR RHyME.

Horace’s dedication to Maecenas is similarly imbued with the placatory gesture in which he confesses to the sin of presumptuousness:

60

Chapter Two Maecenas atauis edite regibus, O et [[PRAEsidium] et dulce decuS] meUM, sunt quos Curriculo Puluerem Olympicum Collegisse iuuaT metaque feruidis EuitatA rot|Is palmaque nobilis TerrarUM dominos euehit ad de|Os; hunc, Si mobilium turba Quiritium certat tergeminis tollere honoribUS; illum, si proprio condidit horreo quicquid de Libycis uerritur areis.

PRAE-S-UM P T I O S US

P-E C C A T-UM

In Classical Latin the fixed words ORP(H)EUS, MISTERIUM, and ORO (“I pray”) are also customary: [Maecenas atauIS edite regibus, [O et praesidium] eT dulcE decus meum, sunt quos curR|IculO] Puluer|Em Olympic|Um Collegisse iuuat metaque feruidiS Euitata rotis palmaque nobilis TerrarUM dominos euehit ad de|Os;

M-IS T-E R-I-UM

O R-P-E-U S

The shared condensa is again carefully disposed: ORPEUS; MISTERIUM; ORO; PECCATUM, PRAESUMPTIOSUS: O et PRAEsidium eT dulce decUS meUM, SunT quOS Curriculo PuluEREM OlymPICUM

By way of contrast, Catullus’ elegy Vivamus, mea Lesbia is imbued with formulaic MISTERIUM, PECCATUM, SCELUS (“sin”), and CUPIDITAS (“lust”) anagrams, the sin of cupiditas being deemed appropriate to the erotic theme and aesthetic strategy of the poem: Vivamus [Mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum] severI|orum omnes unius aeST|imemus assis! soles occidere Et Redire possunt: nobis [CUm semel occidit brev|Is] lux, nox est [PErpetua Una dormienda. da mI basia mille, deinde CentuM], dein mille altera, Dein secunda Centum, deI|nde usque Altera mille deinde cenTUM. dein, cum milia mulTA fecerimuS, conturbabimus illa, ne [SCiamus],

M I ST E-R I U M

SC

CU P I D I TA-S

PE C C A-TUM

Origins aut nE quis maLUS invidere possit,

61 E-LUS

On this occasion the shared figura condensa is located in the ambient text at the end of the respective extensae, in the last two lines of the poem: MISTERIUM; PECCATUM; SCELUS; CUPIDITAS: Aut nE quiS MalUS InuiDERE PosSIT / Cum TAntum scIAT esse basiorUM

Petrarch and his English translators are equally conscientious in their compliance with ancient protocols. Thus Petrarch’s ardent sonnet ‘Amor, che nel penser mio vive et regna’ is found to incorporate concealed anagrams of the words MISTERIA, PECATO MORTALE, and CONCUPISCENZA (the letter word translating Catullus’ CUPIDITAS). In the interests of clarity a selection only of the relevant anagrams is indicated below: Amor, [Che nel penser [MIo vive et regna]] e ‘l suo SeggiO maggior Nel mio Cor TEn], TaloR armato ne la fronte Vene; Ivi si locA et ivi Pon sua Insegna. Quella ch’amare e Sofferir ne ‘nsegna, e vol Che’l gran desio, l’accesa spene, ragion, vergogna, e reverENZA affrene, di nostro ardir fra se stessa si sdegna. Onde Amor [Paventoso] fuggE al Core, lasciando ogni sua impreA et piange et trema; ivi s’asconde eT non appar piu fore. Che poss’iO far, temendo il mio signore, se non star seco infin a l’ora es|trema? che bel fin fa chi ben amando more.

MI S-TE R I-A

C O-N-C V P-I S C ENZA

P-E-C A T O

In his English version of Petrarch’s sonnet, Surrey translates the verba certa conscientiously in terms of MISTERYE/IE, MORTALL SINNE, LUST, and CONCUPISCENSE (sic) anagrams: [Loue, that] doth reign and liue Vvithin my thought, And built his [Seate] withIN my captive breaST, Clad iN the arms wherein with [Me] hE fought, Oft in [MY] face he doth his banneR reST. But she that Taught me loue And suffER pain, My doubtfuLL hope and eke mY hot desirE

L-V ST MY-ST ER Y-E

S-IN N-E

62

Chapter Two With shamefast look to shadow and refrain, Her smiling grace [CONuerteth straight to ire] And Coward love, then, to the heart apace Taketh his flight, Vvhere he doth [LUrk and Plaine, HIS purpose loST], and dare not show his faCE. For my lord’s guilt thus faultlesse bidE I paiN, Yet from my lord Shall not my foot remouE: Sweet is the death that taketh end by loue.

CON C V-P IS-CE E-N S-E

LU ST

A little later, John Donne’s sonnets characteristically incorporate a somewhat less elaborate initiatory ritual, being typically imbued with doubled SINNE anagrams, accompanied by plural anagrams of the sin that is relevant to the text. In the case of the love sonnet ‘I wonder by my troth’, the poet deploys SINNE and LUST anagrams: I wonder by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we [Loued? Were we not] Vvean’d till then? L-V But Suck’d on country pleasures, childishly? S Or [SnorT|ed we] IN the SeveN Sleepers den? S-IN-N T Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies bE; E If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For loue all [LoU|e of other [Sight]|s controls, SI L-V And makeS one] little room aN euerywhere. N S LeT sea-discouerers to New worlds haue gonE; N-E T Let maps to other, worlds on worlds haue shown; [Let] US possess one world; each ha(Th) one, and is one. L-US-T

All of Shakespeare’s sonnets are found to incorporate the fixed words of Orphic initiation in the form of MYSTERY/IE and SINNE anagrams accompanied by one or more anagrams specifying the sin or sins which are relevant to the poet’s theme in a particular poem. As will become clear, it is only in the anomalous Sonnet 66 that Shakespeare’s customarily doubled SINNE anagrams are replaced by CRIME anagrams. Elsewhere the word SINNE prevails. In Sonnet 21, for example, Shakespeare confesses to the WRATH and IRE that he feels in the face of Christopher Marlowe’s poetic overtures to Henry Wriothesley. Here and elsewhere in the sequence, Shakespeare epitomizes Marlowe’s verse references to Wriothesley as overblown, insincere, and poetically marred. Shakespeare’s MYSTERY, SINNE, and IRE anagrams (only) are shown in the first of the annotated versions below:

Origins

63

So is it not with me as with that [Muse, M Stird bY] a painted beauty to hiS verse, Y-S Who heauen [IT selfe] foR ornament doth vsE], T And euERY faire with his faire doth reherse, ERY Making a coopelment of proud compare With [Sunne] and Moone, with earth and seas rich gems: With Apr|Ills first borne flowers and all things rare, That heauens ayre [IN this huge RondurE] hems, I-R-E O let me true iN loue but truly writE, And then beleeue me, my loue [Is as faiRE], As any mothers childe, though not [So bright S As those] gould candells fixt [IN heaueN|s ayer: IN-N Let them say morE] that likE of heare-say well, E [I will not prayse] that puR|posE not to sell. I-R-E

I-R-E

S I N N-E

I-R E

Shakespeare’s MARLOE and WRATH anagrams are indicated separately below. The orthographical variant in Marloe is Shakespeare’s customary form of reference to Marlowe in the sonnets: 4 [So Is it Not with me] as with that Muse, S-I-N Stird by a paiN|ted beauty to his versE, N-E [Who heauen it selfe foR ornament doth] vse, And euery faire wiTH his faire doth reherse, Making a coopelment of proud compare With Sunne and [Moone], with earth and seas rich gems: With Aprills first borne flowers and all things rare, That heauens ayre in this huge Rondure hems, O let me true in LOuE but truly [Writ]|e, WR And Then beleeue me, my loue is as faire, A-T As any Mothers childe, thougH not so bright H As those gould candells fixt in heauens AyeR: Let them say more that Like Of heare-say well, I will not praysE that purpose not to sell.

W-R A-TH M A R LO-E M A-R L-O E

Shakespeare’s customary CHRISTOFRE (sic) anagram is marked by the outline model in “[ComparE]”, its figura extensa being constructed in the notional injunction: “Compare … witH … RIch … thingS … This … O … FairE”. The fixed words SINNE, IRE, and WRATH and the associated names CHRISTOFRE and MARLOE are co-present in the shared condensa: MISTERIE; WRATH; IRE; MARLOE: MAking a coopeLmenT Of proud compaRE WITH Sunne and Moone, With Earth And seas RIch gemS

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A skilfully constructed ROSE anagram is contained within the textual matrix of “Compare with rich flowers this O faire”. As will become clear, the floral reference here (and in similar contexts elsewhere in the sonnets) is to the emblematic “beauties RoǕe” of Sonnet 1. The figura extensa is all the more honorific for the virtuosity of its disposition in the decorously concealed, V-shaped trace of Hermes: Making a coopelment of proud compare With Sunne and Moone, with earth and seas rich gems: With Aprills first borne flowers and all things rare, That heauens ayre in this huge [Rondure] hems, O let me true in loue but truly write, And then beleeue me, my loue is aS fairE, As any Mothers childe, though not so bright As those gould candells fixt in heauens ayer:

Rondure O aS fairE

The homosexual references in “rondure”, “O”, and “as / ars” are typical of Classical and Renaissance erotic verse, and in the literary and historical contexts are decorously apt to the effeminacy of the young Wriothesley. Such references speak conventionally to ancient concepts of the relationship between tutor and pupil and between erastes and eromenos, and do not necessarily speak to contemporary sexual actuality.5 The concealed anagrammatic specification of sexual body-parts (including cunnus, landica, clitoris, culus, penis, mentula, and verpa) is a conventional ingredient of Latin elegy. Here, as elsewhere in the sonnets, Shakespeare appears to be comparing the self-demonstrative propriety of his own supremely beautiful poem with the crude indecencies of Marlowe’s openly sensual references to the young earl in Hero and Leander and in ‘Come liue with me and be my loue, / And we will all the pleasures proue’ (see Chapter Four). In Sonnet 22 (to take another example) the poet’s formulaic MYSTERIE and SINNE anagrams are associated with the confessional identification of PRIDE, IELOUSIE and SELF-LOUE: My glasse shall not [PeR|swade] me I am oulD, [So long as youth and thou arE] of one date, But when IN thee times forrowes I behould, TheN look I death [MY] daies should expiatE. For all That beauty that doth couER theE, [Is but thE] seemely Rayment of mY heart, Which in thy brest doth Liue, as thine in me, How can I then be elder then thOU art?

PR-I-D E MY-S T-E R-Y

S IN N-E I-E L OU

Origins O therefore [LOUe] be of thy [SElfe] so wary, As I not for my seLFE, but for theE will, Bearing thy heart which I will keep [So chary As tender nurse] her babe from faring Ill, Presume Not on thy heart when miNE is slain, Thou gau’st me thine not to giue backe againe.

65 SE LOU LFE E

S I-E S I N-NE

As a general rule, works composed in the Graeco-Roman tradition (i.e. pre-Enlightenment Western poetry) are found to contain similarly formulaic, confessional, and placatory gestures. It is accordingly scarcely surprising that Puttenham’s chapters on the nature of poets and poetry are also found to contain hermeneutic and illustrative MYSTERY, SINNE, PRIDE, and PRAESUMPTIOSVS anagrams. Puttenham’s text is typically duplicitous in this context, being found to partake of a pedagogic tradition in which the art of covert anagram is described and illustrated covertly. Puttenham’s anagrams of the fixed words of poetic initiation are thus decorously apt to his programme, and speak customarily to his own potentially immodest assumption of authority in this context. The Arte of English Poesie opens with a veiled salutation to Elizabeth I in the heading to Chapter 1: What a Poet and Poesie is, and who may be worthily sayd the most excellent Poet of our time.

Puttenham begins (inter alia) with a recognisably arcane signatureanagram, which is typical of texts published “anonymously” in the period. As we shall see, John Marston’s signature-anagram in the proem to his otherwise anonymous satire Willobie His Avisa is similarly cryptic. In pursuit of a conventional onomancy, Puttenham finds in the commonly found variant of his surname, Potenhame, a revelatory resemblance to Poetenhame (the diphthong œ being interchangeable with the letter o). Signing himself POTENHAME, he marks his anagram prominently in the duplicitous prompt of “our English name well conformes”: A [POet is as much To say as a maker. And our ENglisH nAME] well conformes …

The boundary-creating interventions of Hermes are deemed to incorporate this potentially separable utterance in the palimpsest of the text, a gesture of enclosure reinforced by the meta-textual logic of “[x] well conformes”. In due accord with ancient protocols, Puttenham composes a well-defined segment of text that the reader is invited,

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precisely, to “take out of context.” In the overt dimension of the text, Puttenham must appear to pursue a quite different course, a course that is also ostensibly self-sufficient: A Poet is as much to say as a maker. And our English name well conformes with the Greeke word: for of poiein to make, they call a maker Poeta. Such as (by way of resemblance and reuerently) we may say of God: who without any trauell to his diuine imagination, made all the world of nought…

But here again the god of anagram is deemed to have intervened, for Puttenham ensures that the requisite fixed words Mystery, Sinne, and Pryde are incorporated in the form of concealed anagrammata. The reader is thus reminded that English poets are also obliged to observe traditional protocols. The relevant anagrams are indicated separately in the extracts below, and in each case a selection only of the respective extensae is emphasised in the text: MYSTERY: A Poet is as [Much to saY] as a maker. And our English name well conformeS with The Greeke word: for of poiein to makE, they call a makeR Poeta. Such as (by way of resemblance and reuerentlY) we may say of God: who without any trauell to his diuine imagination, made all the world of nought… SYNNE: A Poet is as much to [SaY as a maker. And our English Name] well coN|formes with the GreekE word: for of poiein to make, they call a maker Poeta. [Such as (by way of resemblance] and reuerently) we maY say of God: who without any trauell to his diuiN|e imaginatioN, madE all the world of nought… PRYDE: A Poet is as much to say as a maker. And our English name well conformes with the Greeke word: for of [Poiein to make], they call a makeR [Poeta. Such as (by waY of Resemblance] anD reuerentlY) we may saY of God: who without any trauell to his Diuine imagination, madE all the world of nought…

Puttenham describes and illustrates the poetic mysterium in more detail in Chapter 3 of The Arte of English Poesie. This densely anagrammatic chapter is headed “How Poets were the first priests, the first prophets, the first Legislators and politicians in the world”. The first of the annotated

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extracts below begins with obligatory MYSTERY and PRIDE anagrams. The first three extracts contain MYSTERY anagrams, and the final extract is imbued with ANAGRAME anagrams set in expolitio: The [PRofession and vse of Poesie] Is most ancient from the beginning, anD not as [ManiE erroniouslY] Suppose, afTER, but before anY ciuil society was among men. For if it was first that Poesie was th’originall cause and occasion of their first assemblies; when before the people remained in the woods and mountains, vagarant and dipersed like the wild beasts; lawlesse [ANd naked, or verie] ill clad, And of all Good and necessarie prouision for harbouR or sustenance vtterly vnfurnished: so As they litle diffred for their Maner of lifE, from the very brute beasts of the field… [And Orpheus assembled the wilde beasts to come iN heards to harken to his [Musicke And bY] that meanes made] them tame, implyinG theR|e|by, how by hiS discreeTE And wholesoME lessons vtteR|ed in harmonIE and with melodious instruments, he brought the rude [ANd sauage] people to a more ciuill And orderly life, nothinG as it seemeth, more preuailing oR fit to redresse and edifie the cruell And sturdie courage of Man then it. And as thesE two Poets… Poets therfore are of great antiquitie. …they were the first that instituted sacrifices of placation, with inuocations and worship to them, as to Gods; and inuented and stablished all the rest of the obseruances and ceremonies of religion, and so were the first Priests and [Ministers of the holY] misterieS. And because for The bettER execution of that high charge and function, It behoued than to livE chast, and in all holines of life, and in continuall studie and contemplation: they came by instinct divine, and by deepe meditation, and much abstinence (the same assubtiling[ ANd refining their spirits) to be made] Apt to receaue visions, both wakinG and sleeping, which made them vtteR prophesies, And foretell things to coME… [ANd for that they were Aged and GRAue] men, and of much wisedoME and experience in th’affaires of the world, they were the first lawmakers to the people, and the first polititiens, deuising all expedient meanes for th’establishment of Common wealth, to hold [ANd containe] the people in order [ANd duety by force And virtue] of Good and wholesome lawes, made foR the preseruation of the publique peace And tranquillitie. The saME peraduenture not purposely intended, but greatly furthered by the aw of their gods, and such scruple of conscience, as the terrors of their late inuented religion had led them into.

Here again Puttenham locates a shared figura condensa in the opening sentence of the chapter:

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Chapter Two ORPHEUS; MYSTERY; SINNE; PRYDE; ANAGRAME: THe PRofession and VSe of PoesiE is most Ancient froM the beginning anD Not as [ManiE erroniouslY] Suppose, aftER, but befOREanY ciuil SocietY was Among meN.

As will become clear, Puttenham’s final reference in this context to “scruple of conscience” is found in particular to inform Shake-speares Sonnets of 1609. The formal requirements of the Orphic mysterium are also observed in Shakespeare’s plays. In accordance with ancient practice, the plays are typically replete with concealed anagrammata which include: (a) conventional anagrams, such as those in the opening lines of plays which cite literary sources and offer dedicatory and invocatory gestures; (b) thematic and dramatically relevant anagrams; and (c) meta-dramatic anagrams referring for example to topical political and religious issues, or to rival playwrights. The motivational and moral implications of dramatic speech and action - and in particular of “scruple of conscience” - are typically interpreted by hermeneutic SINNE anagrams, coupled with anagrams of thematically relevant sin or sins. The opening of The Two Gentlemen of Verona may perhaps serve as an example. The first line of the play contains the outline model of a MYSTERY anagram in the word “my”, a word that is commonly used for this purpose. Shakespeare typically proceeds to identify his sources, who are here cited in anagram as ELYOT and LILLY. In the opening scene, Valentine (whose role in the play is notably passive) ironically accuses Protheus (sic) of “liuing dully sluggardiz’d at home”, and Valentine’s opening speech is accordingly imbued with SINNE and SLOTH anagrams. Protheus is characterized in the play by his double treachery (envisaged as the breaking of oaths of fidelity), and his opening speech therefore incorporates MYSTERY, SINNE and PERIURIE anagrams. The Two Gentleman of Verona is thus found to be composed as a “Proteus Play” in the sense (as we shall see) that Sonnet 81 is a Proteus Poem.6 The comedy is meta-dramatically concerned to represent Henry Wriothesley’s alleged breaches of faith in terms of Protheus’ PERIURIE. Accordingly, Protheus’ opening speech also contains clear HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams, which are both dedicatory and hermeneutic as to the meta-dramatic context. The non-specific reference in the overt dimension of the text to “a deepe Storie” is to Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, and is typically marked by a MARLOE anagram (Marloe being Shakespeare’s customary variant form of Marlowe):

Origins Val. Cease to perswade, [MY] louing Protheus; MY Home-keeping youth, haue [Euer homeLY witS, S We’t nOT] affection chaines Thy tendER dayes T-ER To the sweet glaunces of thY honour’d Loue, Y I rather would entreat thy company, To see the wonders of the world abroad, Then [LIuing duLLY] [SLuggardiz’d at home) SL Weare Out thy youTH] wiTH shapelesse idlenesse. O-TH But [SINce] thou lou’st; loue still, and thriue] there|In, Euen as I would, wheN I to louE begin. Pro. Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine adew, Thinke on thy Protheus, when thou (hap’ly) seest [Some] rare note-worthy obiect IN thy trauaile. S-IN [Wish me [PartakER] IN thy] [HappinessE], N-E When thoU do’st meet good hap; and in thy dangeR, (If euer danger doE enuiron thee) Commend thy grieuance to my holy prayers, For I will be thy beades-man, Valentine. Val. And on a Loue-booke pray for my successe? Pro. Vpon some booke I loue, I’le pray for thee. Val. That’s on some shallow Storie of deepe loue, How yong Leander crost the Hellespont. Pro. That’s a deepe Storie, of a deeper loue, For he was [More] then ouer-shooes in loue. Val. ‘Tis true; for you ARe ouer-bootes in LOuE, And yet you neuer swom the Hellespont. Pro. Ouer the Bootes? nay giue me not the Boots. Val. No, I will not; for it boots thee not. Pro. What? Val. To be in loue; where [Scorne is bought with] grones: Coy LOoks, wiTH hart-sore [SIghes: one] fad|Ing moments With twenty watchfull, weary, tedious Nights; /mirth If hap’ly won, perhaps a haplesse gaiNE; If lost, why then a grieuous labour won; How euer: but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit, by folly vanquished. Pro. So, by your circumstance, you call me foole. Val. So, by your circumstance, I feare you’ll proue.

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E-LY OT

LI-LLY SIN N-E

P-ER-I U-R I-E

M AR-LO-E

S LO-TH

Shakespeare follows ancient precedent in the customary incorporation in his plays of a meta-dramatic dimension which speaks to some correlative aspect of the contemporary world at large. In King Lear, for

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example, one such aspect is James I’s Oath of Allegiance. In Twelfth Night Shakespeare, in the guise of the supreme Apollo, ridicules the satirist John Marston, who is represented as Malvolio-Marsyas. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare dramatizes Henry Wriothesley’s alleged fickleness in terms of the word-within-word conceit that finds the name of the god Proteus aptly concealed in the name of the character Protheus, and both he and Elizabeth Vere (the poet’s Petrarchan mistress) are identified in concealed anagrams at appropriate moments throughout the play.

2. The Orphic ritual in Shakespeare’s sonnets The verba certa of expiatory self-accusation are of particular assistance to the twenty-first century reader in identifying the underlying thematic proccupations of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the “point” and “meaning” of which cannot be ascertained from a partial reading confined to the overt dimension of the text. Indeed it is frequently found that the sin or sins thus specified by the poet speak to concealed significances that are not apparently mentioned in the overt dimension of the text. A thoroughgoing survey of Shake-speares Sonnets (1609) is conducted in Chapter Four, and at this stage it is proposed simply to examine some further examples in order to illustrate the manner in which the verba certa are deployed. It is customary, although by no means mandatory, for some authorial clue to be given to the sin or sins invoked in any particular case, and for the relevant anagrams to be accompanied and corroborated by the duplicitous incorporation of a key word in the overt dimension. In Sonnet 12, for example, the word “sadly” corroborates Shakespeare’s SINNE, SADNESSE, and double MELACOLLYE/IE anagrams, and the overtly stated words “singleness” and “single” are reflected in a complementary SINGLENESSE anagram. In the annotated version below, the SINNE anagrams are maked in the text but omitted from the marginal notes: Musick to heare, why hear’st thou [Musick [SAdly]], Sweets with sweets warrE not, ioy Delights in ioy: Why Lou’st thou that which thou receaust Not gladly, Or Else receau’st with pleasure thine Annoy? If the true COncord of weLL tuned soundS, By vnionS marr|Ied do offend thine earE, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds In [SINglenesse] the parts that thou should’st beare: [MarkE] how oNE string sweet husband to an other, Strikes each in each by mutualL ordering; Resembling sier, And Child, and happy mother, WhO aLL in one, one pleasing note do sing:

SA D N E S S-E

M E L A CO-LL IE

M-E L A-C O-LL

SI NG L E N

Origins Whose speechlesse song being manY, seeming onE, Sings this to thee thou [SINgle] wilt proue noNE.

71 Y-E

E-SSE

The verba certa in the form of doubled MYSTERYE and SINNE anagrams are associated in the text with the sins of solitariness and sadness: [Musick to heare], whY] hear’st thou [Musick Sadly], Sweets with sweets warre noT, ioy dE|lights in ioY: Why lou’st thou that which thou Receaust not gladlY, Or Else Receau’st with pleasurE thine annoY? If the true concord of well tuned sounds, By vnions married do offend thine eare, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds In [SINgle|NessE] the parts that thou should’st beare: Marke how oNE string sweet husband to an other, Strikes each in each by mutuall ordering; Resembling sier, and child, and happy mother, Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechlesse song being many, seeming one, [SINgs this to thee] thou single wilt proue noNE.

M-Y-S T-E R-Y E

M Y ST E-R-Y

SIN NE

SIN-N-E

SIN-NE

It is clear from the figura condensa of the SINNE anagram in line 8 that this typically self-interpreting sonnet is based in part upon the revelatory word-within-word devise that finds the word SINNE concealed in SINgleNessE, and which identifies the young earl’s stubborn sexual singleness as sinful. This conceit connects with that which finds the word SING in StrING and with the poet’s Ovidian word-play on chorda (which may signify either “string” or “gut”). As will become clear, Sonnets 1-17 are imbued with further anagrams inviting the young Wriothesley to indulge in sexual intercourse. In these seventeen poems, accusations of singleness, slothfulness, and self-abuse (for example) are exploited as an excuse for a conventional invitation to partake in active sexual relations with the poet. In these sonnets the verba certa serve as a screen for the homoerotic anagrams which are associated with duplicitous word-play and innuendo in the overt dimension of the text, as for example in the malemale con-cord in “Marke how one string/chorda sweet husband to an other (husband), / Strikes each in each by mutuall ordering”. In this sonnet Shakespeare also plays on the resonant Latin phrases musica amoris and concordia amoris, and reiterates Classical Latin wordplay in relation to musica amoris and musa amoris. The Ovidian metathesis in musa and musica is of particular importance, and plays a central part in the poet’s aesthetic strategy. The forma of the MYSTERYE

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anagram in “Musicke to heare” has the effect of framing in syncopic simplicity the beautiful MUSE anagram with which the sonnet begins:

M

USick to hearE, why hear’st thou musick sadly,

MUS-E

When, as required by convention, the anagram is substituted for its textual matrix, the resulting address is at the same time conspicuous and privately intimate

M

USE, why hear’st thou musick sadly,

Nowhere in the sequence does Shakespeare directly address Wriothesley as “my Muse”, and it is to silent invocations such as this that the poet refers in Sonnet 79, when he declares “So oft haue I inuok’d thee for my Muse”. The evidence of other similarly formulated anagrams in Shakespeare’s sonnets would suggest that MY MUSE anagrams are closely associated in the text:

M

USick to hearE], whY] hear’st thou musick sadly,

M-Y MUS-E

In effect, the hybrid utterance translates into a more intimate form of address: “MY MUSE, why hear’st thou musick sadly”. A somewhat similar gesture may be found in the opening of Sonnet 128, which is addressed to the poet’s “mistress”, Elizabeth Vere:

H

Ow oft when thou my [MUSikE] musikE playst,

MUS-E

Here again the hybrid formulation “How oft when thou, my Muse, musike playst” is brought into play. In Sonnet 20 the poet – conventionally deferring responsibility to the god Hermes – affects to confess to the sins of luste and buggerie. As to the latter (and as will become clear) Horace’s strictures in relation to unintentional anagrammatic solecism would tend to suggest that Shakespeare’s homoerotic specifications are as intentional as they are merely conventional. The anagrams of the relevant sins are again accompanied by MYSTERY and doubled SINNE anagrams:

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A womans face with Natures owne hand painted, Haste thou the Master Mistris of my passion, A womans gentle hart but not acquainted With [Shift|Ing changE] as is false womens fashioN, AN eyE more [Bright then theirs, lesse false] in Rowling: Gilding the obiect where-Vpon it Gazeth, A man in hew all hews in his controwlinG, Which steales mens Eyes and womens soules amaseth. And foR a woman wert thou first created, Till nature as she wrought thee fell a dot|IngE, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to [MY] purpose nothing. [But [since]] She prickT theE out foT womens pleasure, Mine be thY loue and thy [Loues VSe] Their treasurE.

S-I-N B N-E V-G G E R I-E

SIN NE L-VS-T-E

The condensa in lines 5-6 is also shared with Shakespeare’s customary HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams: MYSTERIE; SINNE; LUSTE; BUGGERIE: An EYe More BrighT then theirS, Lesse false In Rowling: Gilding the obiecT wheRE-Vpon It Gazeth,

In the Latin sexual vocabulary the word oculus (“eye”) is capable of referring to cunnus and/or culus and/or penis). This euphemism would appear to derive ultimately from the resemblance between oculus and culus, the combination of the emblematic O and the word culus in O-culus being also invoked. Ahl’s dictum as to the conventionally Cratylitic basis of ancient poetry is again relevant here: “if two words (or syllables) are phonetically similar, they either are conceptually related or become conceptually related”.7 The Latin euphemism in oculus is found to be customarily translated in the vernacular literatures of the Renaissance, and here the epithet “eye more bright” should be construed accordingly. In context, the “eye more bright” is also anus, and the shared figura condensa (as noted above) is therefore aptly located. Here again the Orphic verba certa are found to reveal the ultimate theme of the sonnet, and to clarify the poet’s aesthetic strategy both overall and locally. For example, the power of gilding that is attributed to an “eye more bright” refers to obscene Classical Latin word-play in relation to anus solis (“the ring of the sun”). Corroborative ANUS and SOLIS anagrams are also incorporated in the text: [A womans] face with Natures owne hand painted, Haste thoU the Master MistriS of my passion,

A-N U-S

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Chapter Two A womans gentle hart but not acquainted With [Shifting change as is] false wO|mens fashion, An eye more bright then theirs, Lesse false in rowling: Gilding the obiect where-vpon It gazeth, [A maN in hevV all HewS] in his controwling, A-N-V-S Which steales mens eyes and womens soules amaseth. And for [a woman wert thou first created, A-N-U Till nature as] she wrought thee fell a dotinge, S And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prickt thee out for womens pleasure, Mine be thy loue [ANd thy loU|eS] vse their treasure. AN-U-S

S-O L I S

The shared condensa is located at the end of the SOLIS anagram and the beginning of the associated ANUS anagram in line 7. Here again, the condensa is shared with the HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams: A man iN hew alL HEws IN hIS con|TRowling, Which steales menS eYES and WOmens SOUles amasetH.

The Orphic verba certa are frequently found to reveal an otherwise unmentioned or unprompted theme. In Sonnet 144, for example, Shakespeare’s MYSTERY, SINNE, and ADULTERYE anagrams point to the poet’s covertly expressed consciousness of his adultery and of the offence it comprises in relation to his wife and his marriage vows: Two loues I haue of comfort [And Dispaire], Vvhich Like two spirits do sugiesT me still, The bettER angell Is [A man right fairE]: The worser [Spirit [A woman collour’D Il. To VviN me] sooNE] to helL my femall euill, Tempteth my betTER angel from mY sight, And would corrupT my saint to bE a diuel: Wooing his purity with hER fowle pride. [AnD Vvhether that mY angel bE] turn’d fiend, Suspect I may, yet not directly telL, BuT being both from mE both to each friend, I gesse one angel in an otheR|s hel. Yet this [Shal I nere] know but liuE IN doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good oNE out.

A-D V-L-T ER-I-E MY S T ER/Y A-D-V L T-E R I-E

A-D V L T ER Y-E

S-I-N NE

The specification of the sin of adultery in the verba certa directs the reader to the ANNE HATHAWAY anagrams with which the sonnet is imbued, and

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which lead naturally on to the ANNE HATHAWAY anagrams in Sonnet 145: Two loues I [HAue] of comforT and dispaire, WhicH like two spirits do sugiest me still, The better [ANgell is A maN right fairE]: The Worser spirit A woman colour’d il. To win me soone to [hell mY] femall euill, Tempteth my better Angel from my sight, And would corrupT my saint to be a diuel: Wooing his purity witH [Her fowle pride]. And Whether that my Angel be turn’d fiend, SuspecT I may, yet not directly tell, But being botH from me both to each friend, I gesse one angel in An others hel. Yet this shal I nere knoW but liue in doubt, Till my bad [ANgel fire mY good oNE] out.

AN-N-E H A T H A-W AY

AN-NE

HA-T H A W-A Y

H A T H A W A-Y

3. Hermes: the patient mules While the poet is thus obliged by long-standing convention to have constant regard to the Orphic mysterium, and to what Puttenham calls “scruple of conscience”, poetry itself is conceived as coming under the joint jurisdiction of Apollo and his Muses (with regard to the overt dimension that may be characterized as “song”), and Hermes-Mercury (as to concealed anagram and covert word-play, envisaged as “words”). As already noted, the apportionment of responsibility for poetry between Apollo and Hermes is described (covertly, and with due deference to the injunction to silence) in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Lines 550-568 of the Hymn refer allegorically to the aetiological myth which describes the conventional division of textual functions between Apollo (who inspires the human poet) and Hermes (who conveys divine truth in revelatory, concealed anagram). The mythopoeic narrative suggests that in order to resolve a long-standing dispute in relation to Hermes’ misappropriation of Apollo’s cattle, Hermes surrenders his lyre to Apollo, along with the music (and the muse) that it symbolises. In return, Apollo grants to Hermes absolute rights over the tending of the “roving, horned oxen and horses and patient mules”. The herded cattle are found to represent the “herded” letters that are conventionally misappropriated, concealed, and re-combined by Hermes in the herded form of concealed anagram. The “point” of the allegorical dimension of the Hymn is revealed in concealed ANAGRAMMATISMOS anagrams, which have a common figura condensa in the concluding lines of the passage (567-568). In a

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beautiful gesture that is entirely characteristic of the Graeco-Roman poetic, the condensa found to explain and encapsulate the allegory when read in revelatory apposition to the anagrammatized words: ANAGRAMMATISMOS: IJĮІIJв σȤİ, MĮȚȐįȠȢ ȣϡȑ, țĮϠ ΦȖȡĮȪȜȠȣȢ ρȜȚțĮȢ ȕȠІȢ ϣʌʌȠȣȢ IJв ΦȝijȚʌȩȜİȣİ țĮϠ ψȝȚȩȞȠȣȢ IJĮȜĮİȡȖȠȪȢ. Take these, Son of Maia, and tend the wild roving, horned oxen and horses and patient mules.

Here again the condensa is capable of providing the letters of the Greek word ANAGRAMMATISMOS from letters at the beginnings and/or ends of words, and the figure is self-bounding in the sense that the letters at its extremities (here t and s) are themselved constituent letters of the theme-word. The dispute that is thus ultimately resolved in the myth appears to relate to a perceived conflict within language itself. Like Apollo’s cattle, the letters of words identified within the abakos of un-spaced text are capable of being misappropriated and of being reassembled in secondary and unintended combinations in the form of concealed “herds”. For example, semantic interference at inter-verbal junctions may lead to cacophony, in the strict sense of that word. As we have seen, if the intended words are not boundary-marked by Hermes (the god inter alia of boundaries and boundary-markers), the letters of tunicacommaculata (in the sense of “dirty underwear”) are capable of recombination at the interverbal junction to form caco (“I defecate”). This ancient perception of language’s intrinsic ability to generate, of its own accord, unintended consequences (as in the indecent cacophony of tuni|CACO|mmaculata) would seem to be related to the conventional absence of word-spacing and punctuation in those ancient times when linguistic and literary practices were first formulated. In effect, the potentially threatening power of language to generate its own meta-language is mediated and regulated under the jurisdiction of Hermes-Mercury. As already mentioned, any row of letters, (including a word, a phrase, and a metrical line) was apparently conceived as a stichos within which an individual lexical entity derived its integrity from the boundary-marking letters at each verbal extremity or akros. It was thus appropriate that Hermes (the overtly worshipped god of letters, words, and language, and the god also of boundaries and boundary-markers) should have conventional responsibility for the assignment of textual boundaries.

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Inevitably, a special privilege appears to have been conferred upon the boundary-forming or “acrostic” letters at the extremities of letter-rows, and this is reflected in the rules which regulate the construction and incorporation of concealed anagram, for example. The rules and conventional protocols attaching to the intentional use of secondary letter-combinations appear to have evolved in such a way as to afford relative certainty with regard to intentional lexical allotropy on the one hand and mere solecism on the other. If the two-word phrase tunica commaculata were comprised in a line of poetry, for example, it would be apprehended as such in the overt or Apollonian dimension of the text. The overt dimension would be deemed the responsibility of the human poet, inspired by Apollo and the Muses. If the practical poet wished for example to invoke some witty word-play on caco, however, that gesture would belong to the covert or anagrammatic dimension of the text, and would fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of Hermes, who would be deemed to have intervened in pursuit of the agreement reached with Apollo. The misappropriation of letters (Apollo’s cattle) involved in the secondary articulation of the word caco would be deemed intentional only if (a) it was marked by mutually corroborative word-play and/or concealed anagram in the ambient text, (b) it was relevant, contextually apt, and decorously related to the ambient text, and (c) it was revelatory in relation to some otherwise un-stated truth or truths. If a poet wished in the pursuit of scatological invective or satire to import caco into his poem, he was thus enabled to do so. When Virgil wishes to exploit the lexical allotropy of caco and cæco (“I conceal”) for expressive purposes in the Aeneid (6.734), he marks his intention by incorporating phonetic cacophony in the overt dimension of the text, and specifically identifies the reference to caco by means of a CACO anagram: Igneus est ollis vigor et caelestis origo seminibus, quantum non noxia corpora tardant, terrenique hebetant artus moribundaque membra. Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, neque auras dispiciunt clausae tenebris et [CArcere cæCO]. CA-CO

The CACO anagram complies perfectly with the mandatory protocols. It is marked by the forma comprised in [Carcare cæcO]. Its figura extensa flows from the first letter of the forma, is constructed in due order of spelling exclusively from acrostic letters in words, and ends in a proximately ensuing word: CArcare CaecO

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The figura condensa is compliantly located on this occasion at the end of the extensa, and is notionally set in revelatory apposition to the word cæco, bringing out the desired conceptual affinity between caco and caeco. The gesture becomes typically and recognisably self-referential. Virgil has in effect invited Hermes to supply the sense in which caeco is capable of meaning “I render it textually obscure”: CACO: CAeCO: I render it obscure

To reiterate: in return for renouncing all rights over music and song in favour of Apollo (to whom he symbolically surrenders his lyre), Hermes is granted sole dominion over the realm of anagrammatic divination. Hermes is specifically enjoined to exercise control over the unwanted wanderings and unintended re-combinations of potentially autonomous cattle/letters. He is given the allegorical task of tending and herding the potentially errant letters of Apollonian utterance, in strictly regulated, truth-revealing, and divinatory combinations. Unintended combinations, such as those embarrassingly produced by cacophony (for example) must be eliminated in order that the authentic interventions of Hermes may be unambiguous. It is the function of Apollo and the Muses to inspire poetic song, as for example in Ovid’s ecce, Corinna venit (“Behold! Corinna comes”). But it is the responsibility of Hermes to reveal the truth (in a gesture of allegoria), that for the practical purposes of the poet, Corinna’s “coming” is also and more fundamentally a sexual coming. It is Hermes, also, who ensures that unintended inter-verbal contamination does not intrude, and that Ovid’s witty interpolation of the adverb nave in CorinNAVEnit (“Corinna comes industriously, zealously, conscientiously”) is framed and presented as an aptly deceptive example of allotropos rather than a ridiculous solecism. The gesture must seem to derive not from the inspired human poet, but to emanate from the sweet eloquence (a traditional epithet) of the god of honey and sweet dried figs.8 And it is thus the god Hermes who, in decorous exercise of the art of anagrammatismos is deemed responsible for gradually revealing Corinna in all her alluring nakedness beneath her flimsy shift - for the underlying truth will out. The figura extensa of Ovid’s CORINNA anagram exhibits his tendency to exploit word-stems and inflective terminations in order to yield the compliantly acrostic letters of lexical entities: Ecce, [CORinna] ven|It tuN|ica velata reciN|ctA

COR-I-N-N-A

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In accordance with convention, the poet is able to disclaim direct responsibility for the god’s indecencies. Indeed, the structure of literary discourse itself depends upon the deemed delegation of the task of metatextual revelation to the god. It is Hermes who is conventionally responsible for the additional word-play in “CORINNA comes” which signals the anagramma which comes thereafter, and for the prompting word-play which finds the deictic word CECO (signalling intentional cacophony) in ecCE COrinna. 9 And the god is also deemed responsible for the happy accident that an anagramma figuratum of the feminized noun CUNNA is also incorporated in the line: Ecce, [Corinna] venit tUN|ica velata reciN|ctA

C-UN-N-A

The significance of the hitherto unexplained statement at the end of the 1598 Quarto of Love’s Labour’s Lost now becomes clear: The vvordes of Mercurie, are harsh after the songes of Apollo.

The mythical representation of letters as herded cattle in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes is cited in reciprocally corroborative texts in later literatures, as for example in Virgil, Ovid, and Horace in Augustan Rome and in John Owen in Renaissance England. In the preamble to Eclogue 7, for example, Virgil associates attributive HIMNOS and HERMES (and Roman MERCURIUS) anagrams with LITTERAE (“letters”) and ANAGRAMMATISMOS anagrams. For the sake of clarity a selection (only) of these anagrams is indicated in the annotated extract below: Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis, compulerantque greges Corydon et Thyrsis in unum, Thyrsis ouis, Corydon distentas [LactE] capellas, L ambo florentes aetat|Ibus, Arcades ambo, I eT cantTare pares Et Repondere parati. T-T-E-R [Huc mihi, dum Teneras] defendo A frigorE myrtos, A-E H uir gregis ipse capER deerrauerat; atque ego Daphnim ER adspicio. Ille ubi Me contra uidet: ocius inquit M [huc adES], o [Meliboee; capER tibi saluos] et haedi, M-ER ES 10et, si quid Cessare potes, requiesce sub UmbR|a. C-U-R Huc Ipsi potum uenient per prata iuuenci; I hic UiridiS tenera praetexit harundine ripas U-S [Mincius], eque sacra resonant examina quercu. M Quid facerem? Neque Ego Alcippen, nec Phyllida habebam, E depulsos a lacte domi quae claudeR|et agnos, R et certamen erat, Corydon CUm ThyR|side, magnum. CU-R

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Chapter Two Posthabui tamen Illorum mea seria ludo. Alternis igitur contendere UersibuS ambo coepere; alternos Musae meminisse uolebant. 20Hos Corydon, illos referebat in ordine Thyrsis.

I U-S

The HERMES and HIMNOS anagrams are closely associated in order to mark the poet’s reference to the Hymn to Hermes: [Huc mihi, dum teneras] defendo a frigore myrtos, uir gregis Ipse capER deerrauerat; atque ego DaphniM adspicio. Ille ubi Me contra uidet: Ocius iN|quit huc adES, o Meliboee; caper tibi saluOS et haedi, 10et, si quid Cessare potes, requiesce sub UmbRa.

H ER M ES

H I-M N OS

The HERMES HIMNOS anagrams are themselves associated with Virgil’s ANAGRAMMATISMOS anagram: Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis, compulerantque greges Corydon et Thyrsis in unum, Thyrsis ouis, Corydon distentas lacte capellas, ambo florentes aetatibus, [Arcades ambo, et caN|tare pares] et repondere parati Huc mihi, dum teneras defendo A frigore myrtos, uir GRegis ipse caper deerrauerat; Atque ego DaphniM adspicio. Ille ubi Me contrA uideT: ocius Iinquit huc adeS, o Meliboee; caper tibi saluOS et haedi, 0et, si quid cessare potes, requiesce sub umbra.

A N A GR-A-M M-A-T-I-S M-OS

Virgil sets GRUES and HERMES anagrammata in close association with each other, and the extensa of each traces the V-shaped mark of Hermes and of the skeins of grues (“cranes”) which are his emblem. The GRUES extensa (noted below) is beautifully crafted: [Huc mihi, dum teneras] defendo a frigore myrtos, uir [GRegis] ipse capER deerrauerat; AtquE ego Daphnim adspicio. Ille Ubi Me contra uidet: ocius inquit huc adES, o Meliboee; caper tibi saluos et haedi, 0et, si quid cessare potes, requiesce sub umbra.

GR U ES

The shared condensa of the key anagrams is located in lines 1-2: HYMNOS; HERMES; MERCURIUS; LITTERAE; ANAGRAMATISMOS; GRUES:

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COM|puLERANT|quE GRegES CorydON et THYRsis IN UnUM, THyrsis OuIS, Corydon diISentAS lactE capellAS

The passage also contains an attributive anagram in honour of Virgil’s source-author THEOCRITOS (sic) the Greek master of pastoral. The textual extent of the THEOCRITOS anagram is marked in inclusio by phrasal repetition in greges … vir gregis, an attractive gesture which has the effect of conferring upon Virgil’s master the status of vir gregis (“head man of the flock”) among poets: Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis compulerantque greges Corydon et [THyrsis] in unum Thyrsis ovis, Corydon distentas lactE capellas ambO florentes aetatibus, arcades ambo et Cantare pares et Respondere paratI. huc mihi, dum Teneras defendo a frigore myrtOS vir gregis ipse deeverat;

greges TH E | O | C-R-I | T-OS | vir gregis

It will be apparent that Lucretius’ deployment of inclusio by phrasal repetition in te, dea … te, diva (q.v.) is comparable (see above). Theocritus was one of seven poets known collectively as the Pleiades, a reference (inter alia) to the seven mythical sisters Alcyone, Celaino, Electra, Maia, Merope, Sterope, and Taygete. In a further complimentary gesture, Virgil also incorporates in lines 1-20 anagrammata figuratae of the respective names of the seven sisters of the Pleiades, their shared condensa being located in unum (i.e. “in one metrical line”) in line 2. When this line is abstracted from the text and set in revelatory apposition to the names that are anagrammatized within it, the line becomes selfreferential as to Hermes’ notional herding together (as in compulerant) of the letters (litterae) of all eight names in unum: HERMES; HYMNOS; MERCURIUS; GRUES; ANAGRAMATISMOS; THEOCRITOS; PLEIADES; ALCYONE; CELAINO; ELECTRA; MAIA; MEROPE; STEROPE; TAYGETE: COMPULERANTquE GREGES CORYDON ET THYRSIS IN UNUM

In Latin anagram and word-play the letter c is frequently represented by qu. If that alternative form is attributed to the shape-changing Merquurius, the line is dedicated in toto to the anagrams, and thus to

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represent the wholesale appropriation of the letters in unum, in herded form. Virgil’s partial re-writing of the mythical allegory of the Hymn to Hermes appears to have become a locus classicus of anagrammatic virtuosity. Shakespeare translates Virgil’s in unum as “in one” in line 14 of Sonnet 105, which serves as the shared figura condensa of WILL SHAKESPERE, HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, and ELISA VERE anagrams:10 Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu’d alone. Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one.

Virgil’s gesture is also invoked in John Owen’s Latin epigram ‘Anagrammatistae’, which is found to be based inter alia on Virgil’s richly anagrammatic reiteration of the myth in Eclogue 7. Citing Virgil’s compulerant greges in the guise of cogere litterulas, Owen also quotes Virgil’s HERMES anagram, as for example in his disposition of the letters of the figura extensa of the HERMES anagram in the form of the V-shaped signum Mercurii: Quonam vocales [Huc illuc pellere tandem Vultis], et infantes cogere littER|ulas? Otia ut Augusto faciente, solebat in unuM Cogere Thrysis ovES rure, capras Corydon.

H ER M ES

The aptly located HERMES condensa is coterminous with the forma: HERMES: Huc illuc pelleRE tandEM VultiS

Thomas Harvey’s translation of Owen’s epigram incorporates attributive IOHN OWEN anagrams. The protocols of Hermetic inter-textuality require that Owen’s V-shaped figura intexta be quoted verbatim. In this instance, the figurae extensae of both forename and surname are V-shaped, and this is particularly apparent in the extensa of the OWEN anagram: OF ANAGRAMMATICISTS Whither, [O Whither will your wits in]force Vowels and Letters herE and there to course? As wheN Augustus leisure gave, [In] One Thyrsis his Sheep, His Goats brought CorydoN.

O-W E N

I-O H-N

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Here once again an absolute distinction is observed between the overt or Apollonian dimension of the text, and the covert or Hermetic dimension. In particular, the poet’s practical exploitation of the notional intervention of Hermes is effected silently. No overt reference is made to the existence of the meta-textual revelations which emanate from the god of anagrammatism. As already noted, it is evident from concealed anagrams in other ancient sources, including Ovid’s account of the contretemps between Mercury and the silence-breaking Battus, that the poet is strictly prohibited from referring overtly to the textual role of Hermes-Mercury or to the Hermetic dimension of text. In Ovid’s version of the story in Metamorphoses (2.676-707), Battus’ betrayal of Mercury’s secret appropriations of Apollonian cattle is interpreted by means of concealed ANAGRAMMA, ANAGRAMMATA, and ANAGRAMMATISMUS anagrams, which translate similarly constituted anagrams in the closing lines of the Hymn to Hermes. Ovid’s covert use of the Latinized noun anagramma may be compared with the universal use in Latin of the neuter noun diagramma. In the first of the annotated extracts below, the Graeco-Roman ANAGRAMMA anagram is marked in inclusio by repetition in hunc tenuit … et dedit. Its forma is comprised in the apt locus of the word ArmentA (“herded cattle”), and its extensa is again constructed in such a way as to create a discernible V-shaped trace in the metrical field of the text. The four-line ANAGRAMMA and ANAGRAMMATA anagrams in lines 692-695 are again associated with Vshaped HERMES and GRUES anagrams in lines 989-692. The episode as a whole is spanned by FAVETE LINGUIS (“Be silent!”) anagrams: dumque amor est curae, dum te tua [Fistula mulcet, incustoditae] Pylios memorantur in Agros 685processisse boves: Videt has Atlantide Maia natus Et arTE sua silvis occultat abactas. senserat hoc furtum nemo nisi notus in illo rure senex; Battum vicinia tota vocabat. divitis hic saltus [HERbos]aque pascua Nelei 690nobiliuM|que [GRegES] custos servabat equarum. hunc tenuit blandaque manU seduxit et illi quisquis es, hospES ait, ‘si forte [Armenta] requiret haec aliquis, vidisse NegA neu Gratia facto nulla Rependatur, nitidAM cape prae|MiA vaccam 695et dedit accepTA voces has reddidit hospes: tutus eas [Lapis Iste prius] tua furta loquetur, et lapidem ostendit. simulat Iove Natus abire; mox redit et versa pariter cum voce fiGU|ra rustice, vidisti sI quaS hoc limite dixit

F A V E-TE

HER GR M-ES U ES A N-A-G R-AM-M-A T-A L I-N GU I-S

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Chapter Two 700ire boves, fer opem furtoque silentia deme iuncta suo pretium dabitur tibi femina tauro.

The V-shaped mark of Hermes is also reflected in the pyramidal structure of the ANAGRAMMA extensa. The three metrical lines 692-694 yield one letter, three letters, and five letters respectively: A N-A-G R - AM - M - A

It is entirely typical of the Classical poetic that the plural ANAGRAMMATA anagram is completed in the word accepTA, thus facilitating the self-referential deixis provided by the hybrid phrase ANAGRAMMA accepta. The textual extent of the ANAGRAMMATISMOS/US anagram is marked in inclusio by extended phrasal repetition in hunc tenuit … et dedit … mox redit: divitis hic saltus herbosaque pascua Nelei 690nobiliumque greges custos servabat equarum. hunc tenuit blandaque manu seduxit et illi quisquis es, hospes ait, si forte [[Armenta] requiret haec aliquis], vidisse NegA neu Gratia facto nulla Rependatur, nitidAM cape prae|MiA vaccam et dedit. acceptA voces has reddidiT hospes tutus eas lapIS iste prius tua furta loquetur, et lapideM Ostendit. simulat Iove natUS abire; mox redit et versa pariter cum voce figura rustice, vidisti si quas hoc limite dixit 700ire boves, fer opem furtoque silentia deme iuncta suo pretium dabitur tibi femina tauro.

A N-A-G R-AM-M-A T /-A IS M-US /M-O-S

When the anagrammatic dimension of Ovid’s text is read in conjunction with the overt dimension, the injunction to silence in relation to armenta (“herded cattle”) is seen to refer also to anagrammata (“anagrams”). The key gesture in this context is comprised in si forte armenta requiret / haec aliquis, vidisse nega (“If anybody asks you about these cattle, deny having seen them”). When, as convention requires, the anagrammatized word anagrammata is substituted for its forma (i.e. armenta), the passage reads: “If anybody asks you about these anagrams, deny having seen them”. The deliberateness of Ovid’s anagrams is corroborated by Arthur Golding’s careful translation of both dimensions of

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this passage. The sufficiently interested reader may care to confirm that Golding incorporates vernacular ANAGRAME and ANAGRAMATISME anagrams that are markedly similar in structure and disposition to those in the ancient original. A sequence of anagrammatic quotation/translation is thus established, beginning in Greek anagramma / anagrammatismos, being absorbed into Latin as anagramma / anagrammatismus, and eventually being translated into Elizabeth English in the form of anagrame / anagramatisme.

4. The art of poetry In the absence of any tract dealing overtly with the principles and practice of anagrammatismus, the chapter covertly headed De tropis silentibus in Horace’s Ars poetica assumes assumes considerable importance insofar as our understanding of anagram, chronogram, and other “silent tropes” (such as homoioteleuton) is concerned. We have seen that the Ars poetica (or Epistle to the Pisos) is covertly divided into a series of distinct chapters which are given anagrammatic sub-headings, as for example in the DE TROPIS SILENTIBUS anagrams which introduce the chapter on silent figures: [Discriptas [SeruarE] uices] operumque colores] cur ego, sI nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor? Cur nescire pudens praue quam discere maL|o? Versibus Exponi [Tragicis] res comica Non uulT; 90indignatuR Item priuatis ac prO|Pe socco dignis carminiBUS narrari cena Thyestae.

D-E

T R-OP IS

S I L E-N-T I BUS

The opening lines of this covertly demarcated chapter within the Ars poetica are also the locus of DIGITO SILENTIA anagrams - a conventional reference to Harpocrates, the Romanized Egyptian god of silence: [Discriptas seruare uices operumque colores cur ego], [SI nequeo IGnoroque, poeta] salutor? Cur nescI|re pudens praue quam discere maL|o? Versibus Exponi Tragicis res comica Non uulT; 90indignatur Item priuatis ac prope soccO dignis carminibus narrari cenA Thyestae.

D IG I T O

SI L E-N-T I A

The Hermetic injunction to silence in digito silentia is traditionally associated with Harpocrates, who was customarily modelled with a finger pressed to his lips.11 Ovid cites the phrase overtly in Metamorphoses

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(9.692), where it is closely associated with Romanized ERPOCRATES (sic) and ERMES (sic) anagrams (my emphasis): Inerant lunaria fronti cornua cum spicis nitido flaventibus auro 690et regale decus; cum qua latrator Anubis, sanctaque Bubastis, variusque coloribus Api, quique premit vocem digitoque silentia suadet; sistraque [[ERant, numquamque satis] quaesitus] Osiris, Plenaque somniferis serpens PeR|egrina venenis. tum velut excussam somnO et Manifesta videntem siC adfata dea Est: paRS o Telethusa mea|Rum, pone graves curas, mandatA|que falle mariti. nec dubita, cum te partu Lucina levariT, tollere quicquid Erit. dea sum auxiliariS opemque 700exorata fero; nec te coluisse quereris ingratum numen.' monuit, thalamoque recessit. laeta toro surgit, purasque ad sidera supplex Cressa manus tollens, rata sint sua visa, precatur.

ER P O C-R A T E-S

E R M E-S

The shared condensa is located within the line quique permit digito silentia suadet (“and the god who enjoins silence with his finger on his lips”). The periphrastic non-naming of Harpocratesin this passage is typical of Ovid’s general practice in Metamophoses, and in this context reflects the silence due to the god: ERPOCRATES; ERMES: PREmit vOCEM digitoquE SilentiA SuadeT

It is thus that Horace’s chapter De tropis silentibus (“Of silent tropes”) is found to be of considerable importance in relation to the reading of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. It is here that Horace describes and illustrates the art of concealed anagram and apices numerales (or chronogram) for his young correspondents, whilst at the same time touching upon other “silent” rhetorical devices, such as homoioteleuton, and also upon the laughable solecisms that may arise from the careless composition of silent tropes. The young Pisos will for example have learnt from Horace’s ridiculus mus (line 139) that Catullus’ use of concealed homoioteleuton in Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus … aestimemus … fecerimus … conturbabimus … sciamus could amount to a gross solecism if not skilfully managed. Horace’s invocation of the indecent termination culus in ridiculus mus has the effect of bringing a typically scatological

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invective to bear upon Catullus’ use of the –mus termination.12 It is presumably with reference to such exemplary sources that Shakespeare and other Renaissance poets learnt the art of writing in the two distinct dimensions of text simultaneously, and of perpetuating (inter alia) ancient obscenity and scatology in ostensibly innocuous sonnets.13 Horace also takes care to demonstrate the art of organising material in the covert dimension, and in effect of writing a concealed treatise on silent tropes, whilst sustaining an entirely different topic in the overt dimension of his text. We have seen, for example, that the chapter is headed DE TROPIS SILENTIBUS in silent anagrammata, and that decorously disposed anagrams of the verba certa (“fixed words”) DIGITO SILENTIA are closely associated with the heading. As will be clear from the annotated extract below, the introduction to the chapter is further marked (at lines 90-97) by double INTROIT anagrams and the conclusion is marked (at 143-152) by double EXEAT TRACTATIO anagrams (where tractatio has the sense in rhetoric of “a handling” or “a treatment”). Between the introit and the exeat, the passage is further sub-divided as between anagram and chronogram. The sub-chapter relating to concealed anagrammatism is headed (at 99-105) by DE ANGRAMMATISMO anagrams. These are followed first, by anagrams of the fixed words FAVETE LINGUIS (109-102), and secondly by closely associated HERMES and MERCURIUS anagrams (117-123). There follows a subchapter on chronogram, which is headed by anagrams of DE APICIBUS NUMERALIBUS (128-139). For the sake of clarity, these formulaic anagrams (only) are indicated below. It will be recalled that DE TROPIS SILENTIBUS anagrams in lines 86-91 serve as a covert heading for what follows: [Discriptas seruarE] uices operumque colores cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor? Cur nescire pudens praue quam discere malo? Versibus exponi tragicis res comica non uult; 90[INdignatur item priuaT]is ac pRO|pe socco dignis carminibus narrarI cena Thyestae. Singula quaeque locum teneanT sortita decentem. Interdum tamen et uocem comoedia tollit, [Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat] ore; et tragicus plerumque dolet sermoN|e pedestri Telephus et Peleus, cum paupeR et exul uterque prO|icIT ampullas et sesquipedalia uerba, si curat cor spectantis tetigisse querella.

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Chapter Two Non satis est pulchra esse poemata; [Dulcia sunto 100et, quocumquE] uolent, [ANimum auditoris] AGunto. Vt Ridentibus Adrident, ita flentibus adsunt humani uoltus; si uis me flere, dolenduM est primum ipsi tibi; tum tua Me infortuniA laedent, Telephe uel Peleu; male sI mandata loqueriS, aut dorM|itabo aut ridebO. Tristia maestum uoltum uerba decent, iratum plena minarum, ludentem lasciua, seuerum seria dictu. Format enim natura prius non intus ad omnem [Fortunarum habitum; iuuat aut impellit ad iram, 110Aut ad humum maerore] graV|i deducit et angit; post Effert animi motus interpreTE [LINGua. Si dicentis er|Unt fortunIS] absona dicta, Romani tollent equites peditesque cachinnum. Intererit multum, diuosne loquatur an heros, maturusne senex an adhuc florente iuuenta feruidus, et matrona potens an sedula nutrix, [MERcatorne uagus] cultorne uirentis agelli, Colchus an Assyrius, Thebis nutritus an Argis. Aut famam sequere aut sibi con|Uenientia finge 120scriptoR. [Honoratum si forte reponis ] Achillem, Impiger, iracundUS, inexorabilis, acER iura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget arM|is. Sit Medea ferox inuictaquE, flebiliS Ino, perfidus Ixion, Io uaga, tristis Orestes. Siquid inexpertum scaenae committis et audes personam formare nouam, seruetur ad imum qualis ab incepto processerit et sibi constet. [Difficile] est propriE communia dicere, tuque rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in [Actus] 130quam si Proferres ignota indictaque primus. Publica materies priuati iuris erit, sI [Non CIrca uilem patulumque moraberis] orbem, nec uerbo uerB|UM curabis reddere fidUS intER|pres nec desilies imitator in artum, unde pedem proferre pudor uetet Aut operis Lex. Nec sic Incipies, ut scriptor cyclicus olim: "Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile Bellum". Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatU?

D E AN-AG R-A M M-A T-IS M-O

F A-V ETE

LING U-IS

MER C U R H I-US ER M E-S

D-E

N UM ER A-L I B U

A P I CI B-US

Origins Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculuS mus. 140Quanto rectius hic, qui nil molitur inepte: "Dic mihi, Musa, uirum, captae post tempora Troiae qui mores hominum multorum uidit et urbes". Non fumum [EX fulgorE, sed eX fumo darE lucem cogitAT], ut] speciosa dehinc miracula promAT, Antiphaten Scyllamque et cum Cyclope Charybdim. Nec reditum Diomedis ab interitu Meleagri, nec gemino bellum [Troianum ordituR ab ouo]; semper Ad euentum festinat et in medias Res non secus AC notas auditorem rapit, et quae 150desperat tractaTA nitescere posse relinquiT, ATque ita mentitur, sic ueris falsa remisceT, primo ne medium, medIO ne discrepet imum.

89 S

EX-E E-X-E AT AT

TR A C T AT IO

T R AC TA T IO

Horace’s covert sub-chapter on anagrammatismus is marked by the poet’s conspicuous differentiation in line 99 between the beauty of the Apollonian dimension of poetry and the sweetness that is associated with the concealed revelations of Hermes-Mercury in the Hymn to Hermes. 14 Horace’s advice is thus clear and unambiguous. It is not enough for poetry to be overtly beautiful (non satis pulchra poemata); it must also be imbued with the sweetness of concealed revelation (dulcia sunto). The subheading in DE ANAGRAMMATISMO has its decorously apt beginning in the forma comprised in [Dulcia sunto / et, quocumquE]: Non satis est pulchra esse poemata; [Dulcia sunto et, quocumquE] uolent, [ANimum auditoris] AGunto. Vt Ridentibus Adrident, ita flentibus adsunt humani uoltus; si uis me flere, dolenduM est primum ipsi tibi; tum tua Me infortuniA laedent, Telephe uel Peleu; male sI mandata loqueriS, aut dorM|itabo aut ridebO. Tristia maestum uoltum uerba decent, iratum plena minarum, ludentem lasciua, seuerum seria dictu.

D E AN-AG R-A M M-A T-I-S M-O

The figura condensa is also aptly located: DE ANAGRAMMATISMO: Non satIS est pulchRA esse poemaTA; Dulcia sunto et, quocuM|quE uolent, AnimuM auditoris AGuntO.

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The chapter as a whole incorporates additional anagrams which describe the device of concealed anagram as ANAGRAMMA FIGURATUM (“figured anagram”). The three mandatory components of the anagramma are also identified in anagram as FORMA (“outline model”), FIGURA EXTENSA (“extended figure”), and FIGURA CONDENSA (“condensed figure”) respectively. These dispositions are accompanied by HERMES, MERCURIUS, and THRIAE anagrams. A selection (only) of the relevant anagrams is shown below: [Discriptas [SeruarE] uices operumque colores] D-E cur ego, sI nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor? Cur nescire pudens praue quam discere maL|o? Versibus Exponi [TRagicis] res comica non uult; TR indignatur item priuaT|is ac prOP|e socco OP dignIS carminIBUS Narrari cena Thyestae. IS Singula quaeque locum teneant sortita decentem. Interdum tamen et uocem comoedia tollit, iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore; et tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedestri Telephus et Peleus, cum pauper et [EXul uterque EX proiciT ampullas] et sesquipedalia uerba], T si curat [COr spectantis tetigissE querella]. E CO Non Satis est pulchra esse poematA; Dulcia sunto N N-D 100et, quocumque uol|ENt, [animum auditoris agunto. S EN Vt ridentibuS adrident, itA] flentibus adsunt A S-A humani uoltus; si uis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi; tum tua me infortunia laedent, [Telephe uel Peleu; male si mandata loqueris], aut dormitabo aut RidebO. Tristia maestum uoltum uerba decent, iratum Plena minarum, ludentem lasciua, seuerum seria dictU. [Format enim natura] priuS non intus ad Omnem FO [fortunarum] habitum; Iuuat aut impellit ad iR|am, R 110aut ad humum Maerore Graui deducit et angit; M post effert animi motus interprete lingU|A. A Si dicentis erunt foR|tunis absona dictA, Romani [tollent equites] peditesque cachinnum. Intererit multum, diuosne loquatur an heros, maturusne senex an adhuc flO|rente iuuenta [Feruidus, et matrona] potens an sedula nutr|Ix, F-I mercatorne uaG|us cultorne Uirentis agelli, G-U Colchus an AssyR|ius, THebis nutR|itus an Argis. R Aut famam sequere aut sibI conuenientiA finge A 120scriptor. [honoratum si forte reponis] Achillem,

S I L E-N T IBUS

AN-AG R-A M M-A

F I G U R-A T-UM

CO N

Origins Impiger, iracundus, in[EXorabilis], acer iura negeT sibi nata], nihil non arrog|Et armis. Sit Medea ferox iN|uictaque, flebiliS Ino, perfidUS Ixion, Io uaga, tristis Orestes. Siquid inexpertum scaenae committis et audes personam formare nouam, seruetur ad imum qualis ab incepto processerit et sibi constet.

91 EX T-E N S-A

D E N-S A

The shared condensa is located in lines 116-117: ANAGRAMMA FIGURATUM; FORMA; FIGURA EXTENSA; FIGURA CONDENSA: FERruidUS Et MatrONA] potens An Sedula NutriX, MercatornE uAGUS CUltornE uiR|entis AGellI

To reiterate,: it is not enough, writes Horace (non satis est), for poems to be beautiful (pulchra esse poemata); they must also be sweet (dulcia sunto). Here the Classical Latin poet reiterates the allegory of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. The songs of Apollo are sugared (as in Francis Meres’ loaded reference to Shakespeare’s “sugared” sonnets) with the eloquent additives of Hermes. For in the Hymn Hermes’ ingestion of sweet honey is said to nourish the divinatory powers of the Thriae, the bee-maidens of the Hymn. As elsewhere in Ancient and Renaissance treatises on poetry and rhetoric, the author must rely on concealed anagram, duplicitous word-play, and poignant illustration in order to describe the tropi silenti. Here, for example, Horace ensures that the forma of his FORMA anagram has its self-referential locus in [Format enim naturA]. This phrase is also the condensa of the FORMA anagram, and when set in revelatory apposition to the theme-word, it expresses the need for the practical poet to compose formae so as to seem to arise “naturally” in the ambient text: FORMA: Format eniM naturRA

Horace also makes a point of dealing in typically witty fashion with the solecisms and vices that can arise in relation to unintentional tropi silenti if insufficient care is taken. Thus SOLOECISMUS anagrams are found to accompany verse which is dominated in parts by the over-use of the termination –um (supplemented with –em, -am, and –im) – an excess that is here associated with a diction described as tumidus. The textual extent of the exemplary solecism is aptly marked in inclusio by repetition and

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homoioteleuton in interdum … intererit multum. As noted above, Horace also refers in particular to the ridiculus mus (“ridiculous mouse”) in Catullus’ elegy Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus, which depends in part for its erotic force upon the poet’s wittily disposed homoioteleuton of the termination –mus (the word mus being a term of amorous endearment). The textual inter-connection is formally marked by quotation (i.e. of mus) and by doubled CATULLUS anagrams: Difficile est proprie communia dicere, tuque rectius Iliacum [Carmen deducis] in actus 130quam si proferres ignotA indictaque primus. Publica materies priuati iuris eriT, si Non circa UiL|em patuL|umque [Moraberis] orbem, nec uerbo uerbum [Curabis] reddere fidUS] interpres nec desilies imitator in ArT|um, Unde pedem proferre pudor uetet aut operis Lex. Nec sic Incipies, ut scriptor cycL|icUS olim: Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile Bellum. Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu? Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

C A T UL-L M US C US A-T U-L L-US

Similarly, VITIUM (“rhetorical vice”) and ANAGRAMMATA anagrams are associated inter alia with notionally accidental MENTULA, VERPA, and LANDICA anagrams in order to illustrate the dangers of negligent composition. The implication for the practical poet is that Hermes may be conventionally blamed for those supposedly accidental indecencies that the poet expressly wishes to invoke, but not for those that arise by genuine accident: Discriptas [Seruare uices] operumque colores S cur egO, si nequeO ignoroquE, poeta [salutor? O-E Cur nescirE pudens] praue quam discere maL|o? L Versibus Exponi tragicis res Comica non uult; E-C 90Indignatur Item priuatIS ac prope socco I digniS carM|inibUS narrari cena Thyestae. S-M-US Singula quaeque locum teneant sortita decentem. Interdum tamen et uocem comoedia tollit, iratusque Chremes [TUMIdo Delitigat ore; TUMI-D et tragicUS] plerumque dolet sermone pedestri US TELephus et Peleus, cum pauper et Exul uterque proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia Uerba, si curaT cor spectantis tetigisse querella. NON satis est pulchra esse poemata; dulcia sunto 100et, quocumque [Uolent, [animum] auditoris agunto].

S-O E-L E-C IS M-US

V

Origins Vt ridentibus adrident, ITa flentibus adsunt humani uoltus; sI [VIs me flere, dolendUM] est primum ipsi tibi; Tum tua [ME infortunia] laedeNT, Telephe uel PeleU; maL|e sI mandatA loqueris, aut dormitabo aut ridebo. Tristia maestUM uoltum [VERba] decent, iratum PlenA minarum, ludentem LAsciuA, seuerum seria dictu. Format enim natura prius Non intus ad omnem fortunarum habitum; iuuat aut impellit aD Iram, 110aut ad humum maerore graui deduC|it et angit; post effert animi motus interprete linguA.

93 IT VI I-UM T ME-NT I T-U-L-A UM VER-P LA A N D-I C A

The corroborative word-play which supports the VERPA anagram, for example, is also offered as an example of unintentional linguistic duplicity and hence as an example of rhetorical vitium (“vice”). The word-sequence which yields the letters of the extensa of the VERPA anagram is found to form the phrase verba plena lasciva (“full wanton words”): VER-P-A VERba... Plena ... lascivA

Here Horace invokes the commonly found word-play on verba and verpa as an example of the vitium of unintentional obscenity. In the trans-textual concatenations of Hermes, the herded letters of the phrase verba plena lasciva (“full wanton words”) could be construed as referring to the verpa (in the sense of penis erectus) which is also the subject of the example of an “unintentional” VERPA anagram at this point in the text. It should perhaps be mentioned at this point that Horace’s wittily covert obscenities in the Ars poetica are not untypical of the concealed humour which is found to lighten ancient treatises on rhetoric and poetics (as for example in Quintilian’s Institutes) and to perform a similar function in the Renaissance (as in Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie). This apparently generic tendency may be related to ancient concepts of the relationship between tutor and pupil and between erastes and eromenos. 15 An example of the intentional deployment of a VERPA anagram in association with word-play on verba and verpa may be found in Tibullus’ Ambarvalia, in lines 27-36 of which the poet plays on the acrostic coidentity of his patron MessalA and his patron’s MentulA. The relevant passage is conventionally marked by an inaugural Nunc (“Now”), and its textual extent is marked in inclusio by apt phrasal repetition in vincla cado (line 28) … rura cano (37). In the annotated extract below, one each

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(only) of the plural extensae of the respective MESSALA and MENTULA anagrams is indicated: Nunc mihi fumosos veteris proferte Falernos consulis et Chio soluite vincla cado. vina diem celebrent: non festa luce madere 30est rubor, errantes et male ferre pedes. sed bene [MEssalam sua] quisque ad pocula dicat, ME ME Nomen eT absentiS Singula VerbA sonent. S-S N-T-V V gentis Aquitanae celebER MessaLA triumPh-is A-LA LA ER-P et magnA intonsis gloria victor avis, A 35huc ades aspiraque mihi, dum carmine nostro redditur agricolis gratia caelitibus. rura cano rurisque deos. Now quaff Falernian; let my Chian wine, Pour’d from the cask, in massy goblets shine! Drink deep, my friends; all, all be madly gay, ‘Twere irreligion not to reel today! Health to Messala; every peasant toast, And not a letter of his name be lost! O come, my friend, whom Gallic triumphs grace! Thou noblest splendour of an ancient race; Thou, whom the arts all emulously crown Sword of the state, homour of the gown; My theme is gratitude, inspire my lays! O be my genius! while I strive to praise The rural deities, the rural plain! (Tr. James Grainger)

The MESSALA anagram begins and ends in the name itself (in Messalam … Messala), and the MENTULA anagram is immediately followed by the word magna (the latter thus creating the hybrid epithet MENTULA magna). The sound-play on verba and verpa is prominently marked by sonent in verba sonent, and the forma of the VERPA anagram is aptly comprised in the word verba itself. In this instance, James Grainger’s (1759) version is acute in its translation of verba as “letters”.16 Tibullus refers inter alia to the letters required to construct Messala and his mentula magna: Health to Messala, every peasant toast, And not a letter of his name be lost! 17

Grainger adds a footnote explaining that “Upon certain Occasions the Romans drank a bumper for every Letter of their Friend or Mistress’s Name”. 18 It is noteworthy that Saussure appears to remember the word

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sonent and presumably the phrase “not a letter of his name be lost” when considering the ancient injunction to silence in relation to les mots sous les mots. It will be recalled that Saussure (all unwitting of the Hermetic injunction to silence) was unable to account for the complete absence of any reference to his logograms in ancient works on rhetoric or poetics. Jean Starobsinki transcribes the inchoate entry from Saussure’s notebook in its original form: Seeming to indicate this point. ________________________ A good end, resting on this line of Tibullus. A stray line of Tibullus or of Pseudo-Tibullus from the Eulogy of Messala is all I could come across as a (possible) sign by a Latin writer of the logogram – the figure they constantly employed and deployed: … sonent. 19

Starobinski typically imposes his own narrative on Saussure’s researches by asking the psychoanalyst’s question: “Why does the line of Tibullus escape Saussure’s memory?” It would seem, however, that Saussure is to be congratulated for having sensed Tibullus’ unusually direct reference to the letters of the anagram (if not for confusing the Ambarvalia with the Eulogy). It is ironic perhaps that in the rustic Ambarvalia (which is covertly obscene throughout) Tibullus is found to deploy both Greek euphemia (in the sense of “sacred silence”) and Latin favete linguis anagrams (accompanied by HERMES MERCURIUS anagrams) to invoke the injunction to silence and to mark and excuse the obscenities that are concealed within the poem. It is noteworthy that the conceit which finds a potential rhetorical vitium or vice in the closeness of verba and verpa is found to underlie a well-known passage in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in which Viola (dressed as Cesario) translates Horace’s phrase verba lascivia (“wanton words”). Viola points out to Feste (the Clown) that “they that dally nicely with words [i.e. with verba/verpa], may quickely make them wanton”. The attributive gestures in HORACE, HORATIVS, and ARS are typical of Shakespeare’s prose anagrams, as is his reiteration of the allotropy of verba and verpa in terms of the single-letter slippage in ARS (as in Ars poetica) and English ARSE:

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Fes. You [Haue] said sir: TO see this age: A sentence is but a cheu’Rill gloue to A good witte, how quickely the wrong side may be turn’d outward. Vio. Nay that’s CertainE: they that dally nicely with words, may quickely make them wanton. Fes. I would therefore my sister had had no name Sir. Vio. Why man? Fes. Why sir, [Her names] a word, and to dallie with that word, might make my sister want|On: But indeede, words [ARe very RAscalS], since bonds disgrac’d them. Vio. Thy reason man? Fes. Troth sir, I can yeeld you none without VvordeS, and wordes [ARe growne So falsE], I am loath to proue reason with them. Vio. I warrant thou art a merry fellow, and car’st for nothing.

H-O R-A | C-E

H O RA T I-V-S

In the exchange between Feste and Viola, the obscene interventions of Hermes-Mercury are decorously concealed and carefully disposed, and are linked by repetitio in the overt dimension of the text. A coherent sequence may be traced (citing Horace’s Ars), in a concatenation which follows the logic of contemptus mundi, and which is capable of summary description: words ARe very rascalS wordes ARe growne So falsE

AR-S AR-S-E

In addition, Shakespeare marks his citation of Tibullus’ word-play on verba and verpa in attributive TIBULLUS, AMBARVALIA, and MENTULA angrams: Fes. You haue said sir: [To see this] age: A sentence Is BUt a cheu’riLL gloue to a good witte, how quickely the Vvrong side may be turn’d outward. Vio. Nay that’S certaine: they that dally nicely with words, may quickely make them wanton. Fes. I would therefore my sister had had no name Sir. Vio. Why [Man? Fes. Why sir, her names [[A]20 word, and to dalliE with that word, Might make my sister wantoN: But indeede, words Are very rascals, since bonds disgrac’d them. Vio. Thy Reason man? Fes. Troth sir, I can yeeld you none Vvithout wordes, And wordes ARe growne so false, I am Loath to proue

T-I BU-LL V S

A M-B A R V AR-L

M E N T | U L

Origins reason with them. Vio. I warrant thou art A merry fellow, and car’st for nothing.

97 | I-A

| A

It is thus that, as we have seen, “Shakespeare’s bawdy” is ultimately neither Shakespeare’s, since it is distinctively Classical in form and origin, nor bawdy, since his obscenities are decorously concealed and composed, and are conventionally framed and distanced in terms of the sometimes unsettling specifications of Hermetic revelation. Viola, for example, follows Classical precedent when she points to the dangers of word-play for women: “they that dally nicely with verba/verpa, may quickely make them wanton/want one”. Ovid, in particular, is frequently found to indulge in such Hermetic shape-changing as that which transforms wanton into want one. One might speculate that Horace’s indecent anagrams and Tibullus’ markedly obscene elegy were familiar to Elizabeth schoolboys.

5. Homer’s cup Horace’s account of the art of poetry would not be complete without some account of the concealed paegnion that is to be found in both oral and written poetry from Homeric (and perhaps pre-Homeric) times. In the context of the duplicitously deployed phrase ut pictura poesis Horace describes and illustrates the art of exploiting metrical variations in order to incorporate shaped picturae within well-defined sections of larger texts. Horace’s exposition is discussed in more detail in Chapter Four, in relation to Shakespeare’s occasional tendency to compose sonnets in the form of concealed, metrically regulated carmina figurata. The text of Sonnet 115, for example, is discovered to be cast in the form of a wedding cup, being based on the concealed wedding cup in the proem to Pindar’s Seventh Olympian Ode. Similarly, Sonnet 77 is metrically fashioned in the notional shape of an hour-glass, a gesture that it is reiterated in the metrically regulated hour-glass shape of the retrospective Sonnet 126. It is Horace’s strategy to refer to Homer’s description in the Iliad of Nestor’s splendidly large, heavy gold drinking cup, and to point to the concealed paegnion of a simple drinking cup that is notionally shaped in Homer’s text by reference to metrical variations in the relevant passage. Even Homer nods, Horace notes, and exhorts his young readers to keep their poetic gestures in due proportion.

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6. Apices numerales The god Hermes-Mercury (who in some traditions is the inventor of both letters and numbers) is also deemed responsible for the covert, quasianagrammatic definition of number in terms of apices numerales or numeral letters. The ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages and numbering systems all offered opportunities for literal enumeration. The poet Horace appears to have conceived of the Hermetic apices numerales in terms of the device now generally known as the chronogram. In a subchapter of the Ars poetica, headed De apicibus numeralibus, he describes and illustrates (but covertly) the ways in which the duplicitous letters M, D, C, L, X, V, I may be used in order to define a specific year of the era ab urbe condita. 21 Horace’s illustrative guide to concealed chronogram is of considerable significance in relation to an understanding of pre-Enlightenment texts, for it is customary for the date of composition of substantive works and the dates of notable events to be registered in this way. Other uses of apices numerales in the Christian tradition include the invocation and/or repudation of apocalyptic prophecy in concealed chronogram. The sufficiently interested reader may, for example, care to trace the concealed THOMAS WYMBLEDON anagrams which reveal the allegorical theme of Chaucer’s The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale. The Tale is now found to comprise a comic satire on Thomas of Wimbledon’s famously scaremongering Sermon in relation to the imminent and allegedly apocalyptic year 1400, and on the concealed MCCCC chronograms with which Thomas salts the text of the Introduction to his harangue. Thomas’ salting is allegorised in the Tale in terms of the Alchemist’s fraudulent salting of his compounds with gold. Chaucer embeds his own parodic MCCCC chronograms in his narrative, and likens the Canon’s false alchemical “multiplying” to Thomas’s multiplied MCCCC figures, comparing Thomas’s somewhat inept attempts to assemble symbolic C’s (in the Introduction to the Sermon) to the deceptions of the alchemist. Perhaps the most amusing passage of all is that which is marked fore-and-aft by a conspicuous close clustering of the letter c – a gesture involving inter alia the rhymed pairings in “CalCinaCioun / albifiCaCioun” and ”CitrinaCioun / fermentaCioun”. The Yeoman describes in hilariously exhaustive detail the expedients to which his master the Canon (representing the C-salting Thomas) is driven: Our fourneys eek of CalCinaCioun, And of watres albifiCaCioun; Unslekked lym, chalk, and gleyre of an ey,

CCC CC

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Oudres diverse, asshes, donge, pisse, and cley, Cered pockets, sal peter, vitriole, And diverse fires maad of wood and cole; Sal tartre, alkaly, and sal preparat, And combust materes and coagulat; Cley maad with hors or mannes heer, and oille Of tartre, alum glas, berme, worte, and argoille, Resalgar, and oure materes enbibyng. And eek of our maneres enCorporying. And of oure silver CitrinaCioun, Oure Cementing and fermentaCioun, Our yngottes, testes, and many mo.

C CC CC

Chaucer’s satire on Thomas’s desperate attempts to compose his amateurish chronograms is all the funnier for its scrupulous and protracted accuracy in relation to the far-fetched expediencies of alchemical practice, as in “Unslekked lym, chalk, and gleyre of an ey, / Oudres diverse, asshes, donge, pisse, and cley”. The eschatological implications of line 666 of the tale are also invoked, for it is in this line that Chaucer inaugurates the deftly crafted MCCCC chronogram which parodies those that Thomas conceals less expertly in the Introduction to his sermon. The inaugural “Thus” (perpetuating the customary deixis of Latin sic) is an apt, conventional, self-referential marker. It is thus, Chaucer implies, by salting his text with MCCCC chronograms (thus, as here) that in the Introduction to his Sermon Canon Thomas brings the doom and destruction of a false apocalypse: 666Thus, Maketh he his introduCCioun,

To brynge folke to hir destruCCoun.

M CC CC

Horace’s account of apices numerales in the Ars poetica is divided into two parts. In the opening lines of De tropis silentibus a concealed chronogram at the angulus extremus (or top left-hand corner of the text) is offered as a prompt for what is to follow, and as an example of rhetorical coruscatio (literally, “the intermittent flashing of bright light”). One incremental component of the chronogram (DCCVI) is comprised in the intermittent radiance or coruscatio of the numeral letters of the external (vertical) acrostic in D ~ C ~ C ~ V ~ I. Horace renders these chronogrammatic letters conspicuous by assigning them in due sequence to the external acrostic, where their effect is deemed to be akin to the intermittent flashing of bright light. The remaining incremental component (conventionally substituting SSSS for XXXX) is formed from the closely clustered acrostic S’s in the opening line. As in English anagram and

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chronogram the letter s is commonly used in substitution for the relatively infrequent letter x: DiscriptaS Seruare uiceS operumque [ColoreS Cur egO], si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor? CuR nescire pudens praue quam discere malo? VersibUS exponi tragicis res ComicA non uulT; Indignatur Item priuatis ac prope soccO

C O R US-C-A-T I-O

The year of composition is thus apparently defined as DCCXXXXVI (746) ab urbe condita.22 As in concealed anagram, the operative numeral letters must be provided by the first and/or last letters of words. As will become clear, this rule is customarily varied in the sole case of the numeral letter i/I, but in the present instance Horace has made the concept of coruscatio clear by including the lower-order letter i/I (the first letter of indignatur) among the acrostic letters DCCVI. The procedure whereby the chronogram is customarily assembled from two or more discrete increments (as in the present instance) is given the name incrementio. Here, the incremental construction of DCCXXXXVI from DCCVI and (D)SSSS is specifically identified as an instance of incrementio by means of the INCREMENTIO anagram which follows immediately thereafter: DiscriptaS Seruare uiceS operumque [ColoreS Cur egO], si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor? CuR nescire pudens praue quam discere malo? VersibUS exponi tragicis res ComicA non uulT; [INdignatur Item priuatis ac prope soccO] dignis Carminibus narR|ari cena Thyestae. Singula quaeque locum teneant sortita decentEM. Interdum tamEN et uocem comoedia Tollit, Iratusque Chremes tumidO delitigat ore;

C O R US-C-A-T I-O IN C-R EM EN-T I-O

In the ancient Roman apices numerales it is permissible for the higher order numeral letter D to appear in each incremental matrix (as above) in order to mark and anchor that increment - just as in the Renaissance the letter M comprises a familiar anchor for the incremental matrices of concealed chronogram. In the present instance, D appears in both the DCCVI-increment and the DSSS-increment. The process of reconciling the resulting duplication of D in such an instance is one function of iustificatio. Horace’s text is composed in the Roman eighth century ab urbe condita in a year beginning DCC. The conventional locus for a chronogram indicating the year of composition is the beginning of a

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specific poem or passage. Accordingly, applying the principles of iustificatio, Horace’s orginal reader will conclude that one (only) of the two D’s should be brought into account. Horace’s second illustration of the rules of apices numerales follows after the account of concealed anagram in the main body of the chapter. In this case the numeral letters are again concealed within the ambient text in such a way as again to require the careful application of coruscatio, incrementio and iustificatio. On this occasion, however, the chronogram is constructed in the more usual form of a cryptographic device. The covert sub-heading De apicibus numeralibus (in lines 128-139) is accompanied by INCREMENTIO, CORUSCATIO, and IUSTIFICATIO anagrams in the ambient text: Sit Medea ferox inuictaque, flebilis Ino, perfidus [IxioN, Io] uaga, tristis Orestes. Siquid inexpertum scaenae Committis et audes personam formaRE nouam, seruetur ad imuM qualis ab [INcepto] processerit Et sibi constet. Siquid iN|expertum scaenae Committis eT audes personam formaRE nouaM, seruetur ad [Imum qualis] ab inceptO processerit Et sibi coN|stet. [Difficile] esT propriE communia dicere, tuque rectius [Iliacum carmen ded|UciS In acT|us quam sI prO]|Ferres ignota indictaque primus. Publica materies priuatI Iuris erit, si Non Circa uilem patulumque moraberis orbem, nec uerbo uerbum curA|bis reddere fidus in|Terpres nec desilies Imitator [In artum, Unde pedem prO]|ferre pudor uetet aut operiS Lex. Nec sic INCipies, uT scriptoR cycl|Icus olim: Fortunam PriamI CAntabo et nobilE bellum. Quid dignuM Tanto feret hic promissor hiatu? ParturiENT montes, nascetur rid|IculuS mus. QuantO rectius hic, qui nil molitur inepte: Dic mihi, Musa, uirum, captae post tempora Troiae qui mores hominum multorum uidit et urbes. Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumO dare lucem cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat, Antiphaten Scyllamque et cum Cyclope Charybdim.

I-N C RE-M IN E C N-T RE-M I E-N O T I I-US-T O I-F I C A I T-I U-S O T-I INC-R F-I-CA E T M I ENT-I O O

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The shared condensa is located in lines 132-134: APICES NUMERALES; INCREMENTIO; CORUSCATIO; IUSTIFICATIO: NEC uerbO uerbUM CUrabis REdderE FidUS INTerPRES NeC desiLIES ImitATOR In ArTUM

The reader having been conventionally apprised of the date of composition in a conspicuous chronogram of the year DCCXXXXVI at the outset, Horace now takes the opportunity of offering a further (but less obvious) version of the chronogram, and of using it to illustrate the principles and practice of incrementum, coruscatio, and iustificatio. The poet’s account of iustificatio (for example) is meticulously crafted. In the annotated extract below, the relevant numeral letters are emphasised in the text, and the accompanying IUSTIFICATIO anagram is noted in the margin: Difficile est proprie Communia dicere, tuque rectius Iliacum Carmen deducis in actus quam si proferreS ignota indictaque primuS. Publica materieS priuati iuriS erit si Non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem, nec verbo verbum curabis reddere fidus Interpres nec desIlIes ImItator In artum, unde pedem pro|ferre pudor vetet aut operis lex.

DC C SS SS

IIIIII

I-US-T I-F I C A T-I O

The disposition of the IUSTIFICATIO anagram suggests that the surrounding text will incorporate examples of chronogrammatic “justification” – that is, the process whereby the several putative incrementa of the chronogram are tested arithemetically against each other, and in combination, against the potential year in question. First, the initial (conspicuously acrostic) letters of the higher-order component DCC are coherently disposed in the potentially separable (and grammatically feasible) motto ‘Difficile Communia Carmen’, and are thus justified in relation to the target date of DCC+XXXXVI. Next, the location and textual extent of the two (middle-order) SS-increments in lines 130 and 131, respectively, are marked in inclusio by the Hermetic, boundarymarking repetition that is comprised in quam si ... erit si. The Hermetic concatenation quam Si ... erit Si is self-referential and conventionally deictic as to the thematic relevance of the numeral letter s:

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quam si proferreS ignota indictaque primuS. Publica materieS priuati iuriS

SS SS

erit si

It is also noteworthy that the four acrostic occurrences of the numeral letter s are the only instances of that lettter in the span of text demarcated by si ... si. Other indicators include the four acrostically identical entities which form a further Hermetic concatenation: ProferreS ... PrimuS ... Publica materieS ... Privati iuriS. The poet’s word-play within this sequence is itself deictic as to the SSSS-increment, as for example in the sense in proferres means “you yielded”, and the sense in which primus may mean “extremity”, a duplicitous reference to the acrostic location of each of the four S’s. In addition, the inherent duplicity of the chronogrammatic matrix is described (decorously, because duplicitously) in the phrase Publica materies privati iuris. Horace has thus far constructed the DCC-increment and the SSSSincrement of his chronogram. He now proceeds in due order to the specification of the number VI. In the present instance, however, Horace is concerned to demonstrate the way in which iustificatio is implemented, and he chooses to represent VI in terms of IIIIII. In an alternative reading of Difficile est proprie communia dicere, he has already intimated to his audience that (in contrast to the rules of anagramma figuratum) the protocols of apices numerales are difficult – difficile est - to explain covertly. He now undertakes to demonstrate the construction of the IIIIIIincrement. The basic rule as to the use of the numeral letter i/I is apparently straightforward, namely that if the letter i is to be counted as a numeral letter it must occur within a textual matrix that is manifestly dedicated to that purpose. All instances of the letter i within that matrix must be taken into account, whether or not located in acrostic positions in words. For the purposes of this rule, a “dedicated” textual matrix is one which is conventionally defined as such by indicators in the ambient text, including for example: (1) rhetorical inclusio involving verbal or phrasal repetition; (2) the close-clustering of the letter i in and near the matrix; (3) duplicitous deixis in accompanying word-play; (4) other authorial clues; and (5) the disposition of attendant anagram(s). Having shown how the Smatrix is defined, Horace now proceeds to repeat the exercise in relation to the I-matrix. We know from the locally dense concentration of IUSTIFICATIO anagrams that iustificatio will be required, but we shall also pay heed to

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the coruscatio exhibited by the close-clustering of the requisite letter. The pre-Enlightenment reader, sensitive to the emblematic value of individual letters and to letter-repetition, letter-disposition, and letter-frequency, finds no difficulty in recognising the close-clustering of the letter i in nec desIlIes ImItator In artum. Seeking in iustificatio some confirmation that the I-matrix is in truth to be found “in” this part of the text, the reader will find corroboration in the conventional self-referential deixis of In artem”: Difficile est proprie Communia dicere, tuque rectius [Iliacum Carmen ded|UciS in acT|us

I-US-T

quam sI pro]FerreS ignota indictaque primuS.

I-F

Publica materieS priuatI IuriS erit, si

I

Non Circa uilem patulumque moraberis orbem,

C

nec uerbo uerbum curA|bis reddere fidus

A

[In|Terpres nec desIlIes ImItator In artum,

I

T-I

Unde pedem prO]ferre pudor uetet aut operiS Lex.

U-S

O

Nec sic [Incipies, UT ScripT|or cycl|Icus olim:

T-I

I-U-S-T-I

Fortunam PriamI CAntabo] et nobile bellum.

F-I-CA

F-I-CA

Quid dignum Tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?

T

T

Parturient montes, nascetur rid|Iculus mus.

I

I

QuantO rectius hic, qui nil molitur inepte:

O

O

The textual fragment desIlIes ImItator In comprises an example of the use of closely clustered letters as a prompt as to the location of the Imatrix. The relative frequency of the letter i in this fragment may be measured for the post-Enlightenment reader in quantitative terms by reference to letter-frequency. There are eighteen letters in the fragment, of which six are i. This represents a frequency of 33.3%, which may be compared with an average frequency in Classical Latin of around 11.4%. When the prompt is read in the context of the I-matrix itself, the frequency remains high at 20%: Interpres nec desIlIes ImItator In artum

IIIIII

The reader is expected to test his identification of a potential I-matrix by reference to the principles of iustificatio, and the poet is expected to

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guide him in this. The number of instances of the letter i within the putative matrix must be fidus (“faithful”) to the requirements of the year in question, namely 746 a.u.c. Having been informed of the compositional year at the outset, the audience will expect to find the surplus six years specified in the form of either VI or IIIIII. The principles of iustificatio require the poet’s audience to undertake an arithmetical testing of potential apices numerales, perhaps involving trial and error, in order to justify the component in question. Here, for example, Horace begins by composing three lines each containing the letter i five times (128-130), followed consecutively by lines respectively containing eight instances (131), three instances (132), and two instances (133), before delivering the requisite six occurrences in line 134. The reader’s task is conventionally eased by means of authorial clues which Horace takes care to deploy by way of illustrative demonstration. First, as already noted, the line which faithfully comprises the I-matrix contains a customary prompt in that the closely clustered constellation of i’s in desIlIes ImItator In is conspicuous in the text. Secondly, line 134 is framed in deictic inclusio by the sequence reddere fidus (“render faithful”) ... unde (“from which place”). Thirdly, the line itself contains compact, syncopic, sequential anagrams in the form of INTERIM PRÆSUM (i.e. “I am present in the interim”):

reddere fidus:

Non circa uilem patulumque moraberis orbem, nec uerbo uerbum curabis reddere fidus

| | |

[INTERpres nec desilies Imitator in artuM],

unde:

unde pedem pro|ferre pudor uetet aut operis lex.

reddere fidus:

Non circa uilem patulumque moraberis orbem, nec uerbo uerbum curabis reddere fidus

| | |

inter|[PREs desilieS imitator in artUM],

unde:

unde pedem pro|ferre pudor uetet aut operis lex.

23

The composite gesture is explicitly corroborative of the locus of the Imatrix, and of the application of iustificatio in operis lex: reddere fidus INTERIM PRÆSUM unde ... operis lex.

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In addition, the I-matrix begins with the letter i of the word interpres, which itself supplies the inaugural I of the IUSTIFICATIO anagram which flows from it. Anagram and chronogram are mutually corroborative. Here again it is noteworthy that Shakespeare’s concealed chronograms tend to follow the pattern laid down by Horace and others. A skilfully crafted example occurs in the first quatrain of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 153, which was apparently composed in contemplation of the publication of Shake-speares Sonnets in 1609. It is customary for textually embedded chronogram to take the form of a cryptographic device, and Shakespeare’s chronograms are found to correspond to this model.24 Following Classical precedent, the Renaissance poet habitually locates a concealed chronogram of the date of composition at the beginning of the poem or play in question. The most usual locus for the chronogram in a sonnet is the first quatrain, although this may vary for expressive purposes. Here Shakespeare follows conventional practice in his incorporation of hermeneutic DATE anagrams set in expolitio in the first quatrain, indicating that a chronogram is present in the ambient text. A selection only of the plural extensae of the DATE anagrams is shown in the extract below:

C

Vpid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, A Maide of [Dyans this AduanT|agE] found, And his loue-kindling firE [Did quickly steepe] In A could Vallie-founT|ainE of that ground:

D-A-T-E D A-T-E

Horace’s exploitation of the angulus extremus or top left-hand corner of his text as the locus of an obvious prompt is replicated in Sonnet 153 in Shakespeare’s use of the versal apparatus for this purpose. Adhering closely to the protocols described and illustrated in the Ars poetica, Shakespeare marks the presence and location of the chronogram by means of a close clustering of the higher-order numeral letters, which (in the year 1609) comprise M, D, and C: CupiD A MaiD|e of Dyans In addition, the word CupiD and the epithet Maide of Dyans (in which the numeral letters are located in acrostic positions in words) are eminently suitable as CD- and MD-matrices, respectively. These matrices are bracketed in the summary below:

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{CupiD} {Maide of Dyans} The experienced reader of concealed chronogram will, moreover, at once recognise in lines 1-2 the close-clustering in coruscatio of the higherorder numeral letters M, D, and C. An impression of the effect of this gesture may be gained when the non-operative letters are typographically subordinated. It is also customary for an acrostically located ADcomponent to be incorporated in the ambient text, as here in the potentially separable prefix AD (Anno Domini) of the word AD|uantage:

C

VpiD laiD by his branD and fell a sleepe, A MaiD|e of Dyans this AD|uantage founD,

The acrostically situated D in CupiD is only one of a number of similarly disposed instances of the letter d in lines 1-2 (and indeed in the quatrain as a whole). Shakespeare further marks the presence of a chronogram in the text by means of a series of CD-segments, in the form of “CupiD”, “Cupid laiD”, “Cupid laid by his branD”, and “Cupid laid by his brand anD” and MD-segments in “MaiD|e”, “Maide of Dyans this AD”, and “Maide of Dyans this aduantage founD” This process, which is perpetuated throughout the quatrain, also has the effect of emphasising the notional severance of the prefix ad from the word ad|uantage to form the abbreviation A.D. and the deictic word vantage. When, therefore, the principle of iustificatio is applied in the manner of Horace, the MDC and A.D. components of the chronogram are now established:

C

Vpid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, A Maide of Dyans this AD|uantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe In a could vallie-fountaine of that ground:

C MD

A.D.

After 1500 A.D. concealed chronograms are customarily marked by closely clustered manifestations of the higher-order letters M and D, such gestures being supplemented by MC and DC. Epithets such as “Maide of Dyans” (which bring M and D together within a single, separable entity) are abundant in the apices numerales of the period. It would be wrong to conclude, however, that Shakespeare selects the title “Maide of Dyans” merely for the sake of its acrostically located numeral letters. On the contrary, the poet’s citation here of a Maide of Dyans is significant in that (as we shall see) it refers to the poet’s Petrarchan mistress Elizabeth Vere,

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who was a “Maide of Honor” to Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen (and hence, here, the virgin goddess Diana). In the present instance a number of other conventional prompts are typically provided by the poet. Here, for example the emphatic versal C in Cupid is additionally marked by duplicitous deixis in “Cupid laid by his brand”, where brand has the sense of “sign” – i.e. the numeral sign in C that has just been “laid by” in the text. The gesture becomes selfreferential when (in the manner of Hermes-Mercury) it is abstracted from the ambient text and read in isolation:

C

VpiD laid by his brand

Shakespeare’s use of the connective “and” is typical of the way in which the separate textual matrices of the chronogram are defined as increments. In his unobtrusive linking of the C-matrix in Cupid with the MD-matrix in A Maide of Dyans, Shakespeare is thus implementing the principle of incrementio: CupiD …and… Maide of Dyans The word and is naturally apt as a connective, but its widespread use in concealed chronogram in the period is also customarily associated with its acrostic rendering (in AnD) of the initials A.D. of Anno Domini. A Hermetic reading of lines 1-2 thus yields the incremental sequence “Cupid … AnD … Maide of Dyans”, which has the effect of supplying cumulatively the MDC-component of the chronogram, and at the same time establishes a precedent for the connective use of the prominent word “AnD” at the beginning of line three, where it raises the expectation of the next incremental matrix of the chronogram. Thus far, therefore, the poet’s authorial guidance takes the form: “Cupid and Maide of Dyans and …”. The expectant original reader is then immediately directed to the potentially separable epithet “hIs loue-kIndlIng fIre”, which offers to the alert Renaissance reader a distinct close-clustering of the letter I (with the unusually high frequency of 20%). This epithet, which is also grammatically and metrically close-clustered and self-enclosing, comprises the I-matrix. It is, moreover, “his loue-kindling fire” that Cupid “did … steepe” in the fountain, where to steepe has the sense (OED, 1.a) of “to soak in water … for the purpose of … extracting some constituent”. Here, the contextually relevant constituent which is to be extracted from “his loue-kindling fire” is the letter i. The Renaissance reader finds no ambiguity in the presence of two additional instances of the letter i in “did

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quickly steepe”, which occur outside the carefully defined I-matrix in “hIs loue-kIndlIng fIre”. The i’s in “did” and “quickly” are however helpful in that they serve as additional prompts which emphasise the closeclustering of i’s in the operative matrix. The operative matrix having been defined, the past tense of “did” (as in the inscriptive use of Latin fecit) serves to corroborate the prior completion of the matrix. The reader, tutored from an early age in the concealed notation of the year, must learn to distinguish - difficile est proprie communia dicere - between the operative numeral letters of the chronogram and those which merely serve as prompts to the operative letters. The emphatically fourfold phallic i’s in “his loue-kindling fire” are then wittily conjoined with the acrostic, vaginal V in “a could Valliefountaine” to form the notational entity VIIII. Overall, the authorial guidance offered by the poet is thus capable of summary description: {C} and {MD} and {IIIII + V} = MDCVIIII = 1609

The covert dimension of the sonnet is thus composed in witty counterpoint to the ostensible tendency of the overt dimension of the text. As in Tibullus’s covertly obscene verse, the sexual dimension of the sonnet is also deemed to be confined to the covert dimension. While the post-Enlightenment reader commentator will tend to speculate, with usual embarrassment, that the phrase “could vallie-fountaine” might comprise a reference to the female genitals, the Renaissance reader recognises at once Shakespeare’s customary use of the emblematic V in the hermeneutic CVNT anagram that is conventionally attributable to Hermes-Mercury:

C

Vpid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, A Maide of Dyans this aduantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe In a [Could Vallie-fountaiN|e of thaT] ground:

C-V-N-T

To reiterate, concealed chronograms, as Horace’s examples indicate, are traditionally characterized by their cryptographic quality. Covertly invoked apices numerales are frequently composed in the form of a selfanswering riddle. Shakespeare’s MDCI chronogram in the opening line of Sonnet 146, for example, is scarcely visible to the newly apprised twentyfirst century reader:

P

Oore soule the center of my sinfull earth,

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The opening of a poem is, however, the conventional locus of concealed chronogram, and the acrostic C and M in “the Center of My sinfull earth” suggest a decorously understated prompt. PreEnlightenment English verse must always be read bilingually (for Hermes is also the god of translation), and the Latin invoked by “my sinfull earth” in meus malus mundus is strikingly characterized by closely clustered, acrostic instances of the higher-order numeral letter m/M. In Shakespeare’s lifetime, a rule-compliant chronogram requires at least an acrostic M and an acrostic D (as for example in “A Maide of Dyans”), and in this context Latin mund|us presents itself as a potential matrix. An anagrammatic reading reveals that the sonnet is heavily imbued with ESSEX angrams and that it refers inter alia to Essex’s soul in purgatory. Essex was executed on 25 February 1600 (old style). The old-style year began on 25 March, which would suggest 1601 (old style) as the likely date of composition, and the poet’s somewhat unusual reference to “the center of … earth” suggests the contemporary topos of centrum mundi. When the principle of iustificatio is applied, the single phrase CentruM MunDI is revealed as a wittily succinct chronogram of the year MDCI. In this, and in many other instances, the year cited will already be known – precisely or approximately – by the exscriber and re-reader of the poem, and the application of iusificatio will assist and heighten the pleasure of the reader in ascertaining the poet’s intention.

Notes 1

George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589) was published anonymously. The author is conventionally identified by signatory anagrams in the opening lines of the book. 2 On the Orphic Mysteries, see Harold R Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration (Chicago: Chicago University Press), 1929; W K C Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1993. 3 In Latin anagrammatism, Greek ph is customarily rendered as such, or as either p or f. Thus ORPHEUS anagrams may take any of the forms Orpheus, Orpeus, and Orfeus. A similar dispensation is adopted in English anagrammata figuratum. 4 See Chapter Four. 5 On the tutor-pupil and erastes-eremenos relationship, see William A Percy, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece (Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press), 1996. See also Aleardo Zanghellini, The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2015), 25-43. 6 Sonnet 81 is analysed in Chapter Four. 7 Frederick Ahl, Metaformations: Wordplay and Soundplay in Ovid and Other Classical Latin Poets (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 19.

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111

For the association of sweetness and eloquence with Hermes-Mercury, see Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare by Hilliard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 137-41. 9 In Latin anagrammatism and word-play the diphthong ae may be represented by either of its constituent letters a and e. Similar dispensations arise in relation to the diphthongs au and oe. For these and other licences in Latin word-play, see also Frederick Ahl, Metaformations: Wordplay and Soundplay in Ovid and Other Classical Latin Poets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 54-60. 10 See Chapter Four. 11 For Hermes and Harpocrates, see Antoine Faivre, Eternal Hermes, tr. Joscelyn Godwin (Grand Rapids, Michegan, Phanes Press, 1995), 133-135; Carla Mazzio, The Inarticulate Renaissance (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 3-5. 12 Throughout the poem ‘Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus’, Catullus exploits the rhetorical device of silent homoioteleuton in order to utter the word mus (“mouse”, a term of endearment) in amorous privacy. The covertly articulated word mus is derived from the terminations of potentially sexual verbs in the first person plural, as for example in vivamus, amemus, and fecerimus. The pronunciation of the word mus involves an osculatory process of the lips, and Catullus’ repeated utterances of mus … mus … mus … mus … mus are found to add considerably to the designedly titillating effect of the elegy. 13 On ancient forms of invectio, see Richlin, Amy. The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1992. The extreme duplicity of the text of Shakespeare’s sonnets in this context is described in Chapter Four. 14 See note 8. 15 See Percy, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece. 16 James Grainger, The Works of Tibullus (London, 1812), vol. 2, 8. 17 Grainger, Tibullus, 8. 18 Grainger, Tibullus, 8. 19 References are to Olivia Emmet, Words Upon Words (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1979, (tr.) Jean Starobinski, Les mots sous les mots: les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure (Paris: Editions Gallimard), 1971. 20 The single-letter word “A” is deemed to supply both the first and last letters (A…A) of AmbarvaliA and is thus qualified to serve as a rul-compliant outline model for that word. Such minor licences are typical of English anagrammatism of the period, the letter a being only infrequently terminal in English. 21 Historians have hitherto questioned the use of the era ab urbe condita in ancient Roman chronography. The existence of competing dates for the foundation of the city is often cited in this context. See for example Denis Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginning of History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 131-166. Concealed chronograms calibrated by reference to the era are, however, found to be pervasive in Classical Latin texts, being customarily incorporated in the opening lines of works of both poetry and prose,

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where they are typically accompanied by signatory, dedicatory, and invocatory anagrammata. 22 My assumption, based upon the reading of many examples, is that the concealed chronograms which are conventionally located in the opening lines of preEnlightenment texts are intended to register the date of composition of the work in any particular case. 23 For the substitution of a or It would seem, however, that the problems hitherto associated with establishing the date of composition of any given work (or of any part or parts thereof) may well be increased rather than reduced by the re-discovery of authorial chronograms of this kind. e for ae in Latin anagram, see note 7 above. 24 On the cryptographic nature of concealed chronogram, see A G Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature: 1066-1422 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 267, 300-1, 328, 388.

CHAPTER THREE SHAKESPEARE

1. Venus and Adonis Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593) was composed for Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, to whom it is dedicated. The dedication is well-known and its overt content has been closely scrutinised. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, title pages, frontispieces, dedications, congratulatory verses, and other usual prefatory items were the customary locus of concealed anagrams and word-play. The reader is typically prompted as to the hidden meaning of such items by authorial clues in the overt dimension of the text, and by reciprocally corroborative concealed anagrams in the covert dimension. In Shakespeare’s dedication of 1593, for example, an authorial clue is afforded by its open display of a plurality of words deriving ultimately from Latin honor (emphasis added): TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE Henry Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield. Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my vnpolisht lines to your Lordship, nor how the worlde vvill censure mee for choosing so strong a proppe to support so weake a burthen, onlye if your Honour seeme but pleased, I account my selfe highly praised, and vowe to take advantage of all idle houres, till I haue honoured you vvith some grauer labour. But if the first heire of my inuention proue deformed, I shall be sorie it had so noble a god-father: and neuer after eare so barren a land, for feare it yeeld me still so bad a harvest, I leave it to your Honourable survey, and your Honour to your hearts content, vvhich I wish may alvvaies ansvvere your own vvish, and the vvorlds hopefull expectation. Your Honors in all dutie William Shakespeare.

As is customary, concealed meaning is also marked for the Renaissance reader by means of unobtrusive anomaly in the overt dimension of the

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text.1 Here, Shakespeare’s verba honoris are excessively (though not inappropriately) frequent, and are incorporated within text which is already imbued with an unusually high frequency of words beginning with the letter h: “Right Honorable / Henry … Right Honourable … how I … how the …your Honour … highly praised … houres … I haue honoured you …first heire … it had … a harvest … your Honourable … your Honour … your hearts content … hopefull expectation … Your Honours”. It is Helen Vendler who has taught us to be alert to such concatenations, and to be open to the compositional motivation which has prompted them. When a back-bearing is taken from this preponderance of verba honoris, it becomes clear that the prior devise which informs the dedication is that which finds in the notional phrase “homage to Henrie” a conceptual affinity based upon the acrostic co-identity of HenriE and HomagE. Virgil’s exploitation of the acrostic affinity of PenateS and PriamideS is comparable.2 In the period, and as in Sonnet 7, the word homage is capable of carrying the innuendo of both homo-erotic adulation and homo-erotic service.3 In Classical Latin and in Renaissance English, such gestures are customarily confined to the covert dimension of text, and are typically expressed in concealed anagrammata and word-play. In pursuit of a conventional onomancy Shakespeare has found WORTH of rank and person in WRiOTH|esley, and in HenriE a man worthy of HomagE or male service in its various senses. Here again the acrostic coidentity of two words is invoked in order to evoke a “natural” conceptual affinity between them. The showy non-showing of the poet’s homage to Henrie is typically accompanied by a plurality of HOMAGE (variously HOMEGE) anagrams set in expolitio. Shakespeare’s linking of honour and homage is specifically confirmed in the HONOUR anagram which follows the HOMAGE anagrammata and which embellishes the concluding gesture: Right [HOnourable], I know not how I shall offend in dedicating My vnpolisht lines to your Lordship, nor [HOw the] worldE vvill censure MeE for choosinG so strong a proppE to support so weakE a burthen, onlye if your [HOnour seeme] but pleased, I account My selfe highly praised, And vowe to take advantAGE of all idle [HOures, till I haue] honoured you vvith soME Grauer labour. But if the first [HeirE] Of My inuention proue deformed, I shall be sorie it had so noble A God-father: and neuer after earE so barren a land, for feare it yeeld me still so bad a harvest, I leave it to your Honourable survey, and your [HONour] to yOUR hearts coN|tent, vvhich I wish may alvvaies ansvvere yOUR own vvish, and the vvorlds hopefull expectation.

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The special affiliation between HenriE and HomagE is conventionally corroborated by the HENRIE / HENRYE anagrams which are also incorporated in the text. These are also set in expolitio, being interwoven with the HOMAGE anagrams, as illustrated in the extract below: … if your [HOnour seeme] but pleased, I account My selfe highly praised, And vowe to take advantaGE of all idle [Houres, till I hauE] hoN|oured you vvith some graueR labour. But If the first [HeirE] Of my inuentioN proue deforM|ed, , I shall be soRIE it had so noble A God-father: and neuer after earE …

HO M A-GE

H-E-N RIE

H-E-N R I-E H-O M A-G E

In addition, the prior onomastic devise that connects HenriE with HomagE is implicitly inter-linked with that which underlies the dedicator’s honouring of Henry WROTHesley’s (sic) innate WORTH (in the word-within-word anagram).4 Here Shakespeare invokes the sense (OED 3.a) in which the word worth is capable of denoting both “honour” and “honourable rank”. The readiness with which “worth and honor” were conflated is relected in OED’s citation from Shakespeare’s Richard II: “By the worth and honor of himselfe ...” The shared figura condensa of the HOMAGE and HENRIE anagrams is typical of prose anagrams of the period: HOMAGE; HENRIE: If the first Heire Of My inuention prouE deformed, I shall bE sorie it Had so NoblE A God-fatheR

Shakespeare’s overt honouring of the young Henry Wriothesley is thus apt to the social context, and his covert assurance of concealed erotic obeisance is decorously appropriate to the genre. Concealed sexual themes are customary in the dedicatory poems and prefatory epistles of the period. In his dedication to a strikingly effeminate youth, an Ovidian puer formosus, Shakespeare is thus constrained to pay homage to him in the homoerotic sense. The noun homage is thus well suited to the social and literary conventions of the day, as for example in its extended sense (OED, 3.a), which embraces the honouring of a range of apt attributes: In extended use: acknowledgement of superiority in respect of rank, worth, beauty, or some other quality; reverence, dutiful respect, or

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honour shown to someone or something; an instance or expression of this. Freq. in to pay homage.

OED cites (inter alia) Shakespeare’s own use of homage in a sexual context: 1616 Comedy of Errors (1623) Your weeping sister is no wife of mine, Nor to her bed no homage doe I owe.

The shared condensa of the HOMAGE anagrams is comprised in a potentially separable part of the text at the beginning of the extensae. The device thus notionally formed becomes the focus of further (and entirely conventional) sexual innuendo in the word proppe: HOMAGE: How the worlde vvill censure Mee for choosinG

sO strong A proppE In composing a substantive poem for a potential patron, it was Shakespeare’s challenging obligation to analyse his patron’s name and title and to find therein some aptly expressive basis for his project. The name and titles of Henry Wriothesley Earle of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield are capable of forming a shared figura condensa, but otherwise relatively barren of obvious linguistic affiliations. The character of the young earl (who is still a minor) also presents difficulties in that he is conventionally beautiful and virginal, and in actuality markedly effeminate – the traditional puer formosus or Ganymede of Classical Latin poetry. Shakespeare’s Hermetic poetic requires his poem to be based upon some prior onomastic devise or conceit, some “nicking” of the subject name.5 It is thus that the poet encapsulates Wriothesley’s name and titles in the single word Lord, the English title that translates the ancient epithet Adon (i.e. Lord God), and thus creates a natural affinity between Wriothesley (who is Lord and hence Adon) and the god Adonis (the Greek epitome of male beauty). In Stanza 130 it is “Adon” (sic) who, Godlike, identifies Venus with Eve and the fallen woman: Nay then (quoth Adon) you will fall againe, Into your idle ouer-handled theame, The kisse I gaue you is bestow’d in vaine, And all in vaine you striue against the streame,

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A complex system of inter-connecting reticulations (based on the “nicking” of Adonis by Adon) is thus established. A typically Hermetic inter-textual network is created, involving Henry Wriothesley in a variety of personae, including: (1) the Lord who is a Peer of the Realm; (2) Adon, “the Lord”; (3) the beautiful Adonis, the namesake of Adon; (4) the Lord God; and (5) the Lord of Heaven. In the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary the epithet heavenly love is used to refer to the realm of homo-eroticism, being conventionally contrasted with its earthly counterpart in heteroeroticism (the latter being viewed in this context as a merely reproductive activity appealing to the lower appetites).6 Accordingly, the Wriothesley of 1593 is epitomized as a heavenly divinity, worthy of worship (and homage) in every relevant respect. It is important to note that the divine or “Godlike” attributes of Adonis/Henry are both registered in the covert dimension of the text of Venus and Adonis and given due weight in the overt dimension. It is thus that in Sonnet 108 Shakespeare refers retrospectively to the devise which connects the reticulation of (1) Your Lordship, (2) Adon, and (3) Adonis with the poet’s “first conceit of loue”. It is here also that he recalls having “first hallowed” Wriothesley’s name in Venus and Adonis. The phrase “Euen as” marks the onset of doubled, parallel ADON and ADONIS anagrams: [What’s in the braine] that Inck may characteR, Which hath not figur’d tO THee my truE spirit, What’s new to Speak, what now to register, That may expresse my LouE, or thY deare merit? Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers diuine, I must each day say ore the very same, Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Euen [[As] when] first I halloweD thy faire name. SO that eternall loue iN loues fresh case, Waighes not the dust and Iniury of age, Nor giueS to necessary wrinckles place, But makes antiquitie for aye his page, Finding the first conceit of loue there bred, Where time and outward forme would shew it dead.

W-R O-TH-E S L-E-Y

A-D O-N I S

A-D O-N

The compositional strategy and aesthetic basis of Venus and Adonis are thus succinctly described in the sonnet. The poet’s reference to the time “when first I hallowed thy faire name” is a reference (inter alia) to the heavenly address that is implied in the Ovidian poem. The opening words of Venus and Adonis (“Euen as”) are quoted verbatim and unobtrusively

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in accordance with the protocols of Hermetic inter-textuality (my emphasis): 7 Euen as the sunne with purple-colourd face, Had tane his last leaue of the weeping morne, Rose-cheekt Adonis hied him to the chase,

A-D O NIS

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Euen as when first I hallowed thy faire name. So that eternall loue in loues fresh case,

A-D O-N-I-S

A-D O-N

The inter-textual, word-within-word rhyme on case and chase is typical and apparently intentional; it has the effect of strengthening the apparently effortless gesture in which Venus and Adonis is deemed to be set in formal apposition to the sonnet. It is thus that Shakespeare himself refers to Venus and Adonis as comprising a foundational act in relation to the sonnets of the 1609 Quarto. The relatively early Sonnet 7, for example, invokes the poem of 1593 in terms of closely associated ADONIS and ADON anagrams. As will appear in Chapter Four, an anagrammatic reading of Sonnet 7 reveals that is based upon Ovid’s solus cur fricas? (“Why masturbate alone?”). In the covert dimension of the text Shakespeare follows Ovid in comparing the rising, the “high-most pich”, and the setting of the sun to the less honorific cycle of the tumescence, ejaculation, and de-tumescence of the act of masturbation (the latter being figured ignominiously in the wordplay of “he reeleth from the die”). For this reason, the poem also carries conventionally incorporated FAVETE LINGUIS (“Be silent!”) anagrams: [Loe In the Orient wheN the Gracious] light Lifts Vp his burning head, each vnder eye Doth homage to his new appearing sight, Seruing with lookes his sacred maiesty, [ANd] hauing climb’D the steepe vp heauenly hill, Resembling strong youth in his middle age, Yet mortall lookes [ADOre his] beauty still, [AttenD|ing ON] hIS] goulden pilgrimage: But when from high-most pich with wery car, Like [Feeble Age] he reeleth from the day, The eyes (fore dutious) now con|Uerted arE From his low Tract and lookE an other way: So thou, thy selfe out-going in thy noon: Vnlok’d on diest vnlesse thou get a sonne.

L-IN-G V-IS

ADO N-IS F-A V-E T-E

AD ON

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It is in Venus and Adonis, also, that Elizabeth Vere (the “dark lady” of the sonnets) makes her first appearance in known Shakespearean texts. Conventionally epitomized as partaking of the linguistic affinity between VerE and VhorE, Elizabeth Vere is identified with Venus in her capacity as the goddess of sexual love. This is not to say that Venus and Adonis is “about” Henry Wriothesley and Elizabeth Vere. Following Classical convention, substantive Renaissance poems and plays customarily refer meta-poetically and/or meta-dramatically to contemporary persons and events. In this context Shakespeare’s aesthetic strategy in Venus and Adonis may be illustrated by reference to the well-known and easily accessible passage (Stanzas 7-14) that is transcribed in annotated form below. Elaborating upon the Ovidian association of the art of love with warfare, the poet describes Venus’ amorous assault upon Adonis in terms of armed combat, culminating indecisively in a truce upon agreed terms. The textual extent of this drama-in-miniature is marked in inclusio by verbal resemblance in “content … contending”, and the drama of warfare unfolds in the text between these two interpenetrative words in coherent sequence: “forst to content … armes … resistance … [per]force … force … [in]treats … [in]treats … truce with her contending”. The passage as a whole is imbued (inter alia) with HENRY WRIOTHESLEY and ELISA VERE anagrams, of which a selection (only) is indicated in the annotated extract below. The ELISA anagrams are set in elevated (i.e. reversed form), following contemporary practice in relation to ELISA / ELISABETH anagrams: 8 7The studded bridle on [a ragged bough Nimbly she fastens: O, [(How quick is loue]]! The steed is stalled up, and euEN now, To tie the RIder she begins to proUE: Backward she pusht him, as she would be thrust, And gouernd him in strength though not in lust.

H EN RI-E

A S-I-L-E

8So soone [[Vvas] shE] along, as he was downe, Each leaning oN theiR elbovV|eS and their hips: Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown, And ginS to chide, but soone she stops his lips, [And kiss|Ing speaks, with Lustful languagE] broken, If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall neuer open.

V-E V N-VS E-R E A-S I-L-E

9[HE] burns with bashfull shame, she with her teares Doth quench the maidEN burning of his cheekes; Then with heR windIE sighs and golden heares, To fan, and blow them drIE again she seeks:

HE N R IE

H EN R-IE

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Chapter Three He saith, she is immodest, blames her misse; What follows more she murthers with A kisse.

A

| 10Euen [aS an empt|Ie Eagle], sharpe by fast, Tires with her beake on feathers, flesh and bone, Shaking her wings, de|Uouring [all in hast, Till eithER gorgE] be stuft, or pray be gone: Euen so she kist his brow, [His cheeke], his chin, And [Where] she ENds she doth aneW begin.

S-I-LE

11Forst to content, but neueR to obey, Panting he lies, and breatheth In her face. She feedeth On THe streame as on a pray, And calls it heauenly moisture, aire of gracE, Wishing her cheeks were gardens fuL of flowers, So thEY were dew’d with such distilling showers.

R-Y

12Looke how [A bird lyes] tangleD in a net, SO fastN|ed In her armeS Adonis lyes, Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret, [VVhich bred more] beautie in his Angrie eyeS: Raine added to [a river that Is ranke, Perforce will force it ouerflow the bankE].

A-D O-N-IS

13Still she intreats, and prettily intreats, For to a prettie eare she tunes her tale. Still is he sullein, still [he] lowres and frets, Twixt crimson shame, and Anger ashie-pale, Being red, She loues him best, and being white, Her best Is betterd with a more delight.

A S-I L-E H EN

V-E R-E

W R I O-TH E L EY

A-S I L-E A-S I-LE

HE N-R-IE A S I | 14Looke how he can, she cannot chuse but Loue, L [And by her fairE] immortall hand she sweares, A E From his Soft bosome neuer to remoue, S Till he take truce [Vvith her contend|Ing teares, I V Which long haue] raind, mak|Ing hER cheeks aL wet, L ER [And one sweet kissE] shal pay this comptlesse debt. E E

The little drama in the overt dimension of the text is amplified and clarified by hermeneutic anagram in the covert dimension. The effect of the contemporary references is to intensify what might be called the “represencing” of the myth. Typically, Shakespeare’s ADONIS anagrams are associated with HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams, and his VENUS anagrams with ELISA VERE. As will become clear in relation to Shakespeare’s sonnets, covert gestures of Classical invective are found to

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accompany the concealed naming of Elisabeth Vere, who is here and elsewhere epitomized as a “whore”. Thus in Stanza 12, in the four lines that are aptly inaugurated by “Pure shame”, the VERE anagram (beginning in the initial letter of the word “Vvhich”) shares its forma with the closely associated WHORE anagram that (with its emphatic plural extensae) is coterminous with it. The respective anagrams are shown separately below. In the second extract, the letters of the several extensae of the WHORE anagram are set in capitals in the text: Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret, [VVhich bred morE] beautie in his Angrie eyeS: Raine added to [a Riuer that Is rankE, Perforce wilL forcE] it ouerflow the banke. Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret, [VVhicH bred mORE] beautiE in his angriE eyes: Raine added tO a Riuer that is RankE, PeR|forcE will forcE it ouerflow the bankE.

V-E R-E

A-S I L-E

WH-ORE

The implicit co-presence of Vere, Venus, and Vvhore in the text is reciprocally corroborative in relation to Shakespeare’s sound-play on Which bred and Witch bred. In the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary, to “breed” is to indulge in sexual intercourse. The simultaneity of the gestures in anagram and word-play is of the essence of the Graeco-Roman poetic, and is capable of summary description: 9 WhicH bred mORE - WHORE

| | Witch As will become clear, the association of witchcraft with sexual seduction is a commonly invoked topos of the period, as for example in the motto non puella sed demona (“not a young girl but a demon”) - the prior devise that is found to inform the drama of Othello. 10 It is axiomatic that the primary source for Venus and Adonis is Ovidian, but commentators have found difficulty in relating specific passages in the poem to specific passages in the Latin texts. 11 With the re-discovery of the protocols attaching to pre-Enlightenment inter-textuality, however, we are now in a position to define with relative confidence the extent and nature of Shakespeare’s invocation of Ovidian precedent. It can be demonstrated, for example, that Stanzas 12-13 of Venus and Adonis are

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intended to be read in the light of Ovid’s Ars amatoria (1.43-52). Shakespeare marks that intention by invoking the customary protocols of quasi-anagrammatic inter-textuality, protocols involving the translation and verbatim quotation of key words and anagrams from the referent text.12 It is thus that, by long-established convention, Ovid’s text is deemed to be inter-connected through concealed verbal transposition and set in revelatory apposition to Shakespeare’s. The Ars amatoria is founded in part upon the prior devise that finds an apt motto in the injunction venare venam (“hunt the vein”). In the Latin sexual vocabulary the feminine noun vena (“vein”) may refer either to mentula or to cunnus or to both.13 Thus Ovid’s covertly uttered motto is translated (covertly) by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the sonnet ‘Whoso list to hunt’ in terms of its English vernacular equivalent, “hunt the cunt”.14 Ovid’s text is conventionally imbued with VENARE VENAM anagrams which are incorporated at regular intervals as the verse proceeds. In accordance with conventional practice, concealed word-play and anagrammata involving (a) Venus and (b) contextually relevant words beginning in ven- are frequently invoked in Latin erotic verse, as for example in relation to venator (“hunter”), venatrix (“huntress”), vena (“vein”), venor (“to hunt”), venerarius (“of sexual intercourse”), veneo (“to be sold”), and venustas (“lovely”). Word-play of this kind, which is pervasive in Classical Latin poetry (and in Ovid in particular), typically involves verbal analysis and syllabic transposition, is invariably found to be associated (as here) with thematically relevant, concealed anagrams. In effect, the anagrams supply the organising principle for the corroborative word-play. Of those Classicists who have acknowledged the existence of this kind of word-play in poetry composed in the Graeco-Roman tradition, Frederick Ahl interprets it as Varronian and etymological, while David Armstrong would prefer to associate it with a Lucretian atomism.15 While neither of these views is irrelevant, it is enlightening to view transpositional word-play (as it might be termed) as quasi-anagrammatic, and as reciprocally corroborative in relation to anagramma figuratum. Shakespeare’s adoption of dispersed, transpositional word-play is found to account for the sequential phenomena that Helen Vendler describes as anagrammatic “concatenations”, and by Christopher Ricks as “anagrammatic filaments”.16 Lines 1-52 of the Ars amatoria (below) are typical of Classical Latin practice insofar as the regular incorporation of a prior devise or thematic motif is concerned. The motif on this occasion is the injunction in venare venam:

Shakespeare Siquis in hoc artem populo non novit amandi, Hoc legat et lecto carmine doctus amet. Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur, Arte leves currus: arte regendus amor. 5Curribus Automedon lentisque erat aptus habenis, Tiphys in Haemonia puppe magister erat: Me [VENus artificem] tenero prae]|fecit AmoRI; Tiphys et AutomedoN dicAR Amoris ego. Ille quideM ferus est et qui mihi saepE repugnet: 10Sed puer est, aetas mollis et apta regi. Phillyrides puerum cithara perfecit Achillem, Atque animos placida contudit arte feros. Qui totiens socios, totiens exterruit hostes, Creditur annosum pertimuisse senem. 15Quas Hector sensurus erat, poscente magistro [[VErberibus iussas prae|]buit ille maN|us. Aeacidae ChiroN, ego suM] praeceptor Amoris: Saevus uterque pueR, natus uterquE dea. Sed tamen et tauri cervix oneratur aratro, 20Frenaque magnanimi dente teruntur equi; Et mihi cedet Amor, quamvis mea vulneret arcu Pectora, iactatas excutiatque faces. Quo me fixit Amor, quo me violentius ussit, Hoc melior facti vulneris ultor ero: 26Non ego, Phoebe, datas a te mihi mentiar artes, Nec nos aeriae voce monemur avis, Nec mihi sunt visae Clio Cliusque sorores Servanti pecudes vallibus, Ascra, tuis: Usus opus movet hoc: [Vati paretE] perito; 30[Vera caN|am]: coeptis, mater Amoris, ades! Este procul, vittae tenues, insignE pudoR|is, QuaequE tegis medios, iN|stita longA, pedes. Nos [venerem tutaM concessaque furta canemus, Inque meo nullum carmine crimen erit. 35Principio, quod amare [VElis, reperire] labora, Qui Nova nunc primum] miles iN arma venis. Proximus huic labor est placitam exorARE puellAM: Tertius, ut longo tempore duret amor. Hic modus, haec nostro signabitur area curru: 40Haec erit admissa meta terenda rota. Dum licet, et loris passim potes ire solutis, Elige cui dicas tu mihi sola places. Haec tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras: Quaerenda est oculis apta puella tuis. 45Scit bene; venator, cervis ubi retia tendat, Scit bene, qua frendens [VallE] moretur aper;

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VEN AR E

VE N-A M

VE N-A R-E

VE-N A-M

V-E N-A R E M

V E N-A

VE N ARE

VE N AM

V-E

V

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Aucupibus Noti frutic|Es; qui sustinet ham]|os, Novit quae multo pisce Natentur Aquae: Tu quoque, materiAM longo qui quaeris amoR|i, 50AntE frequens quo sit disce puella loco. Non ego quaerentem vento dare vela iubebo, Nec tibi, ut invenias, longa terenda via est.

N A R E

E N AM

In addition, lines 43-51 are also traversed by a tightly interwoven anagrammatic network which is aesthetically corroborative in relation to the theme of hunting and in relation to the prior devise of venare venam in particular. This richly anagrammatic section of the text is conventionally marked in inclusio by phrasal repetition in Haec tibi … Nec tibi. Within these textual boundary-markers, Ovid’s anagrams include: DECIPULA (“snare; trap”), LAQUEUS (“noose; snare; trap”), CASSES (“net; trap; snare), UNCUS (“hook; barb”), HARPAGO (“hook; grapple”), TRANSENNA (“trap; noose; snare; lattice-work; netting; net”), and PLAGA (“hunting net; snare”). In the interest of clarity of presentation, a selection only of these anagrams is indicated in the annotated extract below. The phrases which are involved in the gesture of inclusio (haec tibi … nec tibi) are emphasised in the text: Dum licet, et loris passim potes ire solutis, Elige cui dicas tu mihi sola places. Haec tibi non tenues veniet [DE|Lapsa] per Auras: QUaerenda] [est ocul|Is] apta [PUelLA] tuis. Scit benE venator, [Cervis] [Ubi retiA tendat, Scit beN|e, qua frendenS] valle moretur aper; Au|CUpibuS noti fruticES; qui sustinet [Hamos, Novit quae multo] pisce natentur Aquae: [Tu quoque, materiam longo qui quaeris amoR|i, ANte frequenS quo sit disce Puell|A] Loco. Non eGO quaerentem vento darE velA iubebo, Nec tibi, ut iN|venias, lonGA terendA via est.

DE QU-I-PU-LA U N H CU-S A R P-A P-L GO A GA

L-A QU E-U S

T-R AN-S E N-N-A

In Stanzas 12-13 of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare translates Ovid’s inclusio in haec tibi … nec tibi in terms of the phrasal repetition in “Looke how a bird … Looke how he can”, and Ovid’s anagrams are translated verbatim. The injunction in Looke how” is thus equivalent to Ovid’s ecce! (in Amores 1.5), both gestures being used as a prompt for significant anagrammatic activity Shakespeare’s correlative text is imbued with BAITE, SNARE, BARBE, HOOKE, ANGELLE, TRAPPE, and WEBBE anagrams, of which a selection (only) is shown below: Looke how a [[bird lyes tangled in a net], [So faǕtned in her armes Adonis lyes,

B-A I

B S-N-A A

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Pure] Ǖhame and aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhich bred more beautie in [his [ANGrie]] eyes: RainE added to a riuer [That is RAnke], Perforce wiLL forcE it ouerflow the banke.

T-E H O O-KE

Still Ǖhe in|TReats, And Prettily intreats, For [to a Prettie earE] Ǖhe tunes her tale. [Still is he] sullein, still he lowres and frets, Twixt crimson shame, and anger ashie-pale: Being red, she loues him [best]; and being [WhitE], Her Best is Betterd with a morE delight.

TR-A-P P-E

R E

R B-E T-RA P | P-E

S-N-A R-E B-A-ITE B-A R-B-E

Looke how he can, she cannot chuse but loue, [And by her faire] immortall hand she sweares …

It is enlightening also to compare Ovid’s figurae condensae with Shakespeare’s corresponding figure. The shared condensa of Ovid’s VENARE VENAM anagrams is aptly located: VENARE VENAM; ScIt benE VENAtor, cervis Ubi retiA tenDAt, Scit beNE, QUA frendens VaLLe Moretur aPER The hunter knows where to lay nets for the deer, He knows the valley where the wild boar runs.

In Venus and Adonis (which concerns venery in both senses), Shakespeare adapts Ovid’s gesture to his own requirements. The condensa of his BAITE and BATE anagrams is deftly incorporated in the text: BAITE; BATE: A Bird lyes Tangled In A nET

It is in lines 67-68 that Shakespeare’s primary coup de théâtre is found to occur. In a beautifully executed gesture the poet depicts Adonis “tangled” anagrammatically in the net of his textile text. The gesture is framed in the self-referential deixis of Looke how … Adonis lyes, where Hermes is deemed to use the word lyes in the sense of lyes in the text: Looke how A birD lyes tangled in a net, SO fastNed In her armeS Adonis lyes

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The erotic expressiveness of the overt dimension of the text is here exponentially enhanced by the titillating entanglement of the letters of the name A-D-O-N-I-S, “tangled … in her armes”. The word tangled is especially apposite in this context because it conceals and reveals the cause of Adonis’ entanglement, namely the fact that at this point in the text he has been angled, where to angle has the now obsolete sense (OED, 2.a) of “to ensnare, entrap, beguile; to obtain by a contrivance or stratagem; to lure, tempt”. The first citations in OED are relevant: “1538: to angle men”; 1590: he angled the peoples harts”. The word-within-word conceit that finds the word ANGLED concealed within tANGLED is reciprocally corroborative in relation to the syncopic ANGLED anagram in the ambient text: 17 Looke how A bird lies taNGLED in a net

In this part of Shakespeare’s poem the gender-reversal in Venus’ attempted “rape” of Adonis is informed by Ovid’s Amores 1.5, in which Ovid (playing on the word rapta) boasts of ravishing the ravishing Corinna. Shakespeare’s verbatim translation and quotation of the word ecce (“Looke how”) has the effect of setting the elegy and its anagrams in revelatory apposition to Shakespeare’s text. In Ovid’s elegy the coming of Corinna is marked in indecent deixis by the word ecce, which carries within it the letter-group cc (an emblem of the testicles in the Latin sexual vocabulary).18 Shakespeare, who uses the word looke with similar intent in Sonnet 7, is thus wittily accurate in his choice of “Looke how” in his verbatim translation of ecce.19 As Marlowe’s translation indicates, Ovid’s enjoyment of Corinna is described in terms of equivocally consensual rape. In the annotated version below, a selection of the plural extensae (only) of Ovid’s RAPTA (“raped” or “a raped woman”) anagrams is noted in the margin, and the word ecce is emphasised in the text. The decorously concealed MENTULA and VERPA anagrams in the proem are usual and conventional in Latin elegy: Aestus erat, mediamque dies exegerat horam; adposui medio [Membra] levanda toro. pars adaperta fuit, pars altera clausa fenestraE; quale fere silvae lumen habere soleNT, qualia sublucent fugiente crepuscULA Phoebo, aut ubi nox abiit, nec tamen orta dies.

M E NT ULA

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illa [VERecundis lux est PraebendA] puellis, VER qua timidus latebras speret habere pudor. P ecce, Corinna venit, tunica velata recincta A candida dividua colla tegente coma qualiter in thalamos famosa Semiramis isse dicitur, et multis Lais amata viris. Deripui tunicam nec multum [RArA] nocebat; RA PugnabaT TunicA sed tamen illA tegi. P-T-A quae cum iTA PugnareT, tamquam quae vincere nollet, victA est non aegre proditione suA. ut stetit ante oculos posito velamine nostros, in toto nusquam corpore menda fuit. quos umeros, quales vidi tetigique lacertos! forma papilla|[Rum quam fuit APTA] premi! R-APTA quam castigato Planus sub Pectore venter! quantum eT quale latus! quam iuvenale femur! SingulA quid referam? nil non laudabile vidi et nudam pressi corpus ad usque meum. Cetera quis nescit? lassi requievimus ambo. proveniant medii sic mihi saepe dies!

R-A P-T A

R-A P T A

It is found to be customary for covert references to mentula and/or verpa to be accompanied, where appropriate, by closely associated CUNNUS and CULUS anagrams. Ovid typically invokes the physiological closeness of the respective body-parts in terms of the linguistic affinity between CUnnUS and CUlUS: Aestus erat, mediamque dies exegerat horam; adposui medio membra levanda toro. pars adaperta fuit, pars altera clausa fenestrae; quale fere silvae lumen habere solent, qualia sublucent fugiente crepuscula Phoebo, aut ubi nox abiit, nec tamen orta dies. illa vere|CUNdis LUx est praebeN|da] puellaS, qua timidUS latebras speret habere pudor. ecce, Corinna venit, tunica velata recincta

CUN-N CU-LU-S US

Marlowe fulfils his obligations as a translator of Ovid’s RAPTA anagrams by incorporating Latin MENTULA, RAVISHING and RAVISHED anagrams in his text: In summers heate, and [MidtimE of the day, To rest my limbes, uppoN a] bedde I lay, One window shuT, the other open stood, Vvhich gave such Light, as twincles in A wood,

M-E N T V-L-A

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Like twilight glimps at setting of the sunne, Or night being past, and yet not day begunne. Such light to shamefaste maidens must be showne, Where they may sport, and seeme to be vnknowne. Then came Corinna in a long loose gowne, Her white necke hid with tresses hanging downe, [Resembling] faire Semiramis going to bed], R Or Layis of A thousand loV|ers sped. A-V I snatcht her gowne: being thin, the harme was small, I Yet strivde SHe to be covered therewithall, SH-ED And strivING thus as one that would be cast, Betrayde her selfe, and yeelded at the last. Starke naked as she stood before mine eie, Not one wen in her bodie could I spie, What armes and shoulders did I touch and see, How apt her breasts were to be prest by me, How smoothe a bellie, under her waste sawe I, How large a legge, and what a lustie thigh? To leave the rest, all likt me passing well, I clinged her naked bodie, downe she fell, Judge you the rest, being tyrde she bad me kisse. Jove send me more such afternoones as this.

R A-V I SH ING

The verbal analysis of papilla|Rum… APTA] in line 20 of the elegy is typically Ovidian (and hence typically Shakespearean) in that while it notionally accommodates the hybrid utterance papilla RAPTA (“ravished bosom”) it also invokes the sense in which the word-within-word apta may also signify “taken” or “reached after with a view to seizure”). In accordance with conventional practice, the reader is expected to bring the Classical text into mind as the later poem is read, re-read, and read again when it is carefully “exscribed”, as Jonson puts it.20 To reiterate, the transposition of ecce in the form of Looke how and of the doubled RAPTA anagrams in the form of doubled RAPE anagrams is deemed to create a quasi-anagrammatic relationship between the two texts: Looke how [A bird lyes] tangleD in a net, SO fastned iN her armeS Adonis lyes, Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret, VVhich bred more beautie in his angrie eyes: [RAine] Added to A river that is [RAnke], PerforcE will forcE it ouerflow the bankE.

A-D O-N-I-S

RA P-E

RA

P-E

As if effortlessly, Ovid’s ecce, Corinna venit (“Look, Corinna comes”) is thus reversed in the quasi-anagrammatic transposition “Looke how …

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Adonis lyes”. Shakespeare’s RAPE anagram is marked by the (again Ovidian) word-within-word conceit that finds force concealed within per|force in “perforce will force”. As always in such cases, the gesture is aesthetically corroborated by the FORCE anagram in “Per|[FORce] will forCE”. When notionally abstracted from the text and re-contextualized, the figura condensa is conventionally specific: RAPE: RAnke, PerforcE

The virtuosity of Shakespeare’s anagrammatism does not stop there, however, for in another intricate and inter-connecting reticulation, Stanzas 12-13 also contain references to Stephen Gosson’s (then) well-known diatribe upon the mythological dramatis personae (and upon Venus in particular) in The School of Abuse (1579): Venus a notorious strumpet, that lay with Mars, with Mercurie, with Iupiter, with Anchises, with Butes, with Adones … and that made erself as common as a Barbars chayre, by Poets is placed for a goddesse in heauen.

In context, the meaning of the phrase “as common as a Barbars chayre” (which may have been proverbial) is clear: as soon as one man has vacated it, another man occupies his place. The source is specifically identified in the preceding Stanzas 10-11: Euen as an emptie Eagle, sharpe by fast, Tires with her beake on feathers, flesh and bone, Shaking her wings, deuouring all in hast, Till either gorge be stuft, or pray be [GOne: Euen] SO She kist his brow, his cheeke, his chin, And where She ends She dO|th anew begiN. Forst tO content, but neuer to obey, Panting he lies, and breatheth iN her face. She feedeth on the [STeamE as on] a Pray, And calls it HeauEN|ly moisture, aire of grace, Wishing her cheeks were gardens ful of flowers, So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.

GO S-S O-N

G O S-S | O N

ST-E-P H-EN

The gesture of inclusio in “Looke how … Looke how” also serves the additional function of marking the textual extent of Shakespeare’s BARBARS CHAIRE anagrams:

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Looke how a bird lyes tangled in a net, So faǕtned in her armes Adonis lyes, Pure Ǖhame and aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhich bred more [Beautie in his Angrie eyes]: Raine added to a riuer that is [ranke], Perforce will force it ouerflow the Banke.

B-A R B |

Still Ǖhe intreats, And prettily intreats, FoR to a prettie eare Ǖhe tuneS her tale. Still is he sullein, still he lowres and frets, Twixt Crimson shame] and anger ashie pale, Being red she loues Him best, And being white, Her best Is betterd with a moRE delight.

A R-S C H-A I-RE

Looke how he can, she cannot chuse but loue;

C H-A I-R | E

The shared condensa of the BARBARS CHAIRE anagrams is aptly disposed in the textual locus of the “witch-whore”: BARBARS CHAIRE: Aw’d ReǕiǕtanCE made Him fret, Which BRed more Beautie In his Angrie eyeS

The reciprocally corroborative WHORE anagram (described above) is incorporated within this condensa in the form “WhicH bred mORE beautie”. In Stanza 12, Gosson’s complete list of Venus’ sexual partners is represented by inter-mingled anagrams: Looke how a bird lyes tangled in a net, So faǕtned in her armes Adonis lyes, Pure Ǖhame and aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhich bred [More beautie in his] Angrie eyes: Raine added to a River that iS ranke, Perforce will force it ouerflow the banke. Looke how a bird lyes tangled in a net, So faǕtned in her armes Adonis lyes, Pure Ǖhame and aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhich bred more beautie [In his angrie eyes: Raine added to a riU|er] that is ranke, Perforce will force IT ouERr|flow the banke.

M-A R-S

I V P-IT-ER

Shakespeare Looke how a bird lyes tangled [in a net, So faǕtned in [HER armes] Adonis lyes, Pure ǕhaME and aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhich bred more beautie in hiS angrie eyes: Raine added to a riuer that is ranke, Perforce will force it ouerflow the banke. Looke how a bird lyes tangled in a net, So faǕtned in her armes Adonis lyes, Pure Ǖhame [ANd aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhiCH bred more beautie in hIS] angrie eyES: Raine added to a riuer that is ranke, Perforce will force it ouerflow the banke. Looke how a bird lyes tangled in a net, So faǕtned in her armes Adonis lyes, Pure Ǖhame and aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhich bred more [BeaUT|ie in his] angrie eyes: RainE added to a riuer that iS ranke, Perforce will force it ouerflow the banke. Looke how [A bird lyes tangleD in a net, SO faǕtned In her armES Adonis lyes, Pure Ǖhame and aw’d reǕiǕtance made him fret, VVhich bred more beautie in his angrie eyes: Raine added to a riuer that is ranke, Perforce will force it ouerflow the Banke.

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HER ME S

AN CH-I-S-ES

B-UT E-S

A-D O-N-I-S

The shared figura condensa of the MARS, IUPITER, HERMES, ANCHISES, BUTES, and ADONIS anagrams is also the condensa of the STEPHEN GOSSON anagrams. Shakespeare’s virtuosity is such that the prompt in Looke how is apt in yet another context: Looke how A BIrd lyeS TANGleD In a NET, SO fastned In HER ARMeS AdONIS lyeS, PUre SHaME and aw’d REsistanCE made him fret

In a further conventional gesture Shakespeare marks the completion of his showpiece condensa in the past tense of “made him fret”, where made him (in the sense of “he made”) invokes the customary inscription of the Roman constructor in fecit, where fret has the sense (OED, 1) of

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ornamental interlaced work, or net. In Classical Latin the framing of the condensa might typically be marked by ecce … transenna fecit for example. Densely anagrammatic passages in Latin are frequently marked by references to lattice-work or netting (as in transenna), and in terms of reticulation in general. The ANGLED anagram is typical: Looke how A bird lies taNGLED in a net

An anagrammatic reading of contemporary texts reveals that the original readers of Venus and Adonis were quick to recognise Shakespeare’s virtuosity in the art of concealed anagramma figuratum, and that they associated it with Ovid’s particular renown as anagrammatist. Shakespeare’s fame as an anagrammatist was thus in part founded upon his persona (in part self-cultivated) as Ovidius revividus. Frederick Ahl’s remarks on Ovid’s anagrammatism are suggestive in this context: Ovid seems the right poet to choose in testing for the presence of language used in the manner of Varro and of Plato’s Cratylus. For the Metamorphoses is a poem about MUTAtas … formas, “mutated forms”, as the poet himself announces in his opening line. …the term mutationes covers everything from anagrams to metamorphoses. My hypothesis is simply that Ovid probably accompanies his descriptions of change in physical shape with changes in the shape of the words with which he describes those changes. 21

A fully anagrammatic reading of Ovid’s poetry (i.e. in terms of his pervasive use of anagrammata figuratae) confirms Ahl’s hypothesis, and dispenses with the need for his word “probably”. In relation to mutatas … formas, Ahl points out that “Latin forma applies both to physical shape … and to grammatical “form” in word inflection, as … in Varro”. He continues: “Similarly, the various changes of grammatical forms or Varronian ‘declensions’ are called mutationes, ‘mutations’, in Latin grammatical parlance”. 22 In particular, Ovid is found to make inordinate use of word-division in order to obtain the mandatory acrostic letters required for concealed anagram, as for example when Ovid’s CUNNUS and CULUS anagrams are so constructed as to require the analysis of vere|cundis (sic), and as a result the true (vere) tendency of the poet’s mind is revealed. It seems likely that the etymological conceit that seeks to

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derive Ovidius from Ovum dividens is a typically covert reference to Ovid’s idiosyncratic tendency to word-division, as in the medieval gloss: “Pour manifester clerement, / Et pour donner entendement, / Coment vait li ordenemens, / Et l’assise les elements, / A ce veoir nous avisa, / Ovides, qui l’oeuf devisa”, which Ann Pairet translates as “To make manifest and convey a sense of the order and foundations of the elements, Ovid cracked open the egg so that we may see the truth”.23 In its fourteenth-century French context the acrostic requirements of the OVIDES anagram in OVum diviDE|nS has the effect of “dividing” dividens so as to yield Latin divide in the sense of divide or force asunder – a prime example of cracking open the egg so that we may see the truth.

2. Shakespeare’s sixteenth-century critics In order to understand the contemporary critical response to Venus and Adonis and to Shakespeare’s early sonnets, it is important to recognise and to keep in mind the inherently duplicitous character of pre-Enlightenment text. Taken in isolation, the overt dimension of such text cannot be relied upon to convey point or meaning; long-standing and universally observed convention required that ultimate truths be expressed in anagram and word-play in the covert dimension. Post-Enlightenment commentators have, for example, misconstrued Francis Mere’s reference to Shakespeare’s “sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends, etc”, which (as will become clear) has the effect of damning Shakespeare with faint praise. An anagrammatic reading of the relevant texts reveals that during the 1590’s Shakespeare came under concealed and often sustained attack from a wide variety of sources, including John Marston, Sir John Davies, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Nashe, William Scott, Francis Meres, and Michael Drayton.24 As was apparently customary, these attacks were for the most part carried out by means of word-play and anagram in the covert dimension of text. In each instance Shakespeare is found to have responded vigorously, decorously, and consummately in concealed meta-dramatic and/or meta-poetic gestures which reveal or imply his own deeply held standards of excellence in poetic and dramatic art. Because such exchanges between poets were restricted by longstanding convention to the covert dimension of text, we have hitherto been largely oblivious of either the existence of such criticisms, and of Shakespeare’s replies to them. Even where an attack on Shakespeare has been suspected, as in the case of Robert Greene’s epitomization of an unnamed rival as “an vpstart Crow”, we have hitherto been unable to identify the object of the attack definitively. Such anonymous gestures are

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now discovered to be customarily accompanied by anagrams which specifically identify the individual who is the critic’s target. In his attack upon the vpstart Crow, for example, Greene begins with a preliminary SHACESPERE anagram which is so disposed as to follow immediately after the overt insult, and is thus conventionally associated with it. Yes, trust them not: for there is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, [Supposes He] is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse As the best of you: and being an absolute Iohannes fAC totum, is in his ownE conceit the onely [SHakescene] in A Countrey. O that I might intreatE your raRE witS to be imploied in more Profitable courses: & let those Apes imitatE your Past excellence, and neuER morE acquaint them with your admired inuentions. I know the best husband of you all [WIll] neuer proue an Usurer, and the kindest of them aLL wiLL neuer seeke you a kind nurse:

The forma of Greene’s first ShacesperE anagram is comprised in “Supposes hE”, where Supposes is conventionally and duplicitously deictic, being derived from and thus associated with Latin supponere (“to place under”). This customary authorial clue indicates that it is precisely at this point that the overtly unnamed “he” is placed under the surface of the text in the form of a concealed anagram of his name. The second such anagram is marked by the aptly poignant outline model in “Shake-scenE”, in such a way that convention invites the reader to set that term in revelatory apposition to the theme-word: Shace-scenE: ShacesperE

The second SHACESPERE anagram and the accompanying WILL anagram are also typical of prose anagrammatism in that each exhibits a plurality of over-lapping extensae. The shared figura condensa of the SHACESPERE anagrams is carefully disposed, being framed in terms of the formula “there is …x … supposes he”, where in etymological wordplay, supposes refers to Latin supponere (“to place under”) and speaks to the “placing under” of the name of the Crow: there is SHACESPERE: An vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathERS, that with hiS Tygers Hart

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wrapt in a Players hydE supposes he

The condensa of the separate WILL anagram (in “Is as WeLL”) is typically capable of combination with the condensa of the SHACESPERE anagram in order to form a shared condensa appropriate to the associated names: WILL SHACESPERE: An vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathERS, that with hiS Tygers Hart wrapt in a Players hyde supposes he Is as WeLL ablE

When interpreting literary discourse of the period it is also necessary to keep in mind Horace’s dictum to the effect that the covert or anagrammatic dimension of text is as essential as the overt: Non satis est pulchra esse poemata; dulcia sunto. As already mentioned, the anagrammatic interventions of Hermes are customarily referred to in terms of sweetness and sweet things, including honey and sugar - as for example in Horace’s dulcia sunto. Francis Meres’ much misunderstood appraisal of Shakespeare’s achievements should be construed with this in mind. Meres’ remarks in Palladis Tamia, Witts Treasury (1598) are themselves typical of traditional practice in that they are plausibly (but in fact quite duplicitously) framed in terms of generalization and periphrasis: As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to liue in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid liues in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, and his sugred Sonnets among his private friends etc.

Meres’ emphasis on the dulcis of Shakespeare’s art of concealed anagram is thus both concealed and expressed in his close-clustering of the significant words sweete, mellifluous, hony-tongued, and sugred. These words speak to the sense in which Shakespeare’s anagrammatic poetic follows Ovid’s particular example in relation to his substantial investment in concealed anagram, and indeed in linguistic transmutation generally. In the period, the word mellifluous had the now nearly obsolete sense (OED, 1) of “Flowing with, exuding, or containing honey or a honey-like substance; of the nature of or resembling honey; sweetened with or as with honey”. As already noted, overt reference to concealed anagram is prohibited under the injunction in favete linguis (“Be silent”). Accordingly the “point” of Meres’ comments is revealed in the

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hermeneutic ANAGRAME anagram that has its aptly located forma in “And hony-tongued ShakespearE” (a phrase which itself suggests the duplicity of Hermes-Mercury, and the duplicity of the poet who hides obscenities in concealed anagram for his “private” friends: As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to liue in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid liues in mellifluous [ANd hony-tongued Shakespeare], witnes his Venus And Adonis, his Lucrece, and his suGR|ed Sonnets AMong his privatE friends etc.

AN A GR AM-E

The figura condensa of the ANAGRAME anagram is located on this occasion at the beginning of the extensa. As a consequence the word ANAGRAME is deemed to be set in notional, revelatory apposition to the epithet “mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare: ANAGRAME: Mellifluous ANd hony-tonG|ued ShakespeARE

The narrow focus of Meres’ “praise” of Shakespeare is thus defined in terms of Ovid’s (then) notoriously large investment in the art of anagram, and in the light of Ovid’s virtuosity in that context. Typically, the generalized commentary in the overt dimension of Meres’ text is misleading when read in isolation from the poignant word-play and anagrammatic revelation afforded by the covert dimension. In his comments on Shakespeare elsewhere in Witts Treasury, Meres is found to elaborate piously upon the allegedly lewd subject-matter of Shakespeare’s anagrammatism, and by implication his apparent licentiousness. A full anagrammatic reading of the text reveals that Meres’ ostensibly innocent reference to Shakespeare’s “private friends etc” carries with it an accusation of sexual impropriety in this respect. Much of the criticism levelled against Shakespeare in the 1590’s is found to follow this line. Here, for example, the epithet private friend carried (in the period) the sense of “illicit sexual partner” and in such a context the concluding “etc.” is additionally suggestive of unnamed and perhaps unspeakable sin.25 In order to put these remarks into context, it is necessary to understand the central strategy of Witts Treasury, which is found to comprise the nomination of Meres’ friend and fellow-cleric Michael Drayton as “Poet Laureate”. Mere’s purported lauriation of Drayton in 1598,

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which would seem to be reflected in the latter’s Laureate Portrait of 1599, is in large part based upon Drayton’s moral standing and personal uprightness, which Meres compares with that of Persius.26 In contrast, Meres undermines Shakespeare’s clearer claim to the laureateship, and damns him with the faint praise implicit in the term “sugred sonnets”. In a remarkable passage on “Sinne”, Meres condemns Shakespeare covertly as “a soule that is corrupted”. Whereas Drayton is to be compared with the allegedly upright Persius, Meres identifies Shakespeare’s life and art with the low characters of the comedies of Plautus. In order fully to understand Shakespeare’s anagrammatic poetic, it is thus necessary to look in more detail at the attacks made on Shakespeare by Meres and by others. In Palladis Tamia, Witts Treasury Meres mentions Michael Drayton overtly by name and praises him seven times before he purports to nominate his friend and fellow cleric in concealed anagram as Poet Laureate. Immediately before this decorously covert lauriation, Meres takes care to lay down key markers: As Virgil … so Michael Drayton As Sophocles … so Drayton

Drayton is thus the portrayed as the contemporary counterpart of Sophocles (supposedly the greatest or laureate of the Greek poets) and Virgil (the greatest or laureate of the Roman poets), and thus by implication as the greatest of contemporary poets in the new Elizabethan golden age of English literary accomplishment. At the same time, and most significantly for Meres’ strategic aim, Drayton is also described as replicating the “vertuous disposition” of Persius: As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported among al writers to be of an honest life and vpright conversation: so Michael Drayton (quem toties honoris & amoris causa nomino) among schollers, souldiours, poets, and all sorts of people, is helde for a man of vertuous disposition, honest conversation, and wel gouerned cariage, which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit and soundest wisedome.

A cumulative trinity of cumulatively persuasive gestures is thus created: “As Virgil … so Michael Drayton”

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The act of nomination is as carefully managed, with like attention to modesty and decorum. By long-standing convention, Meres’ clear LAURIATION anagram, followed by the words “so Michael Drayton” is to be construed as emanating from the god Hermes and thus as constituting the revelation of divine truth and blessing: As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported among al writers to be of an honest [Life And Vp|RIght conversATION]: so Michael Drayton (quem toties honoris & amoris causa nomino) among schollers, souldiours, poets, and all sorts of people, is helde for a man of vertuous disposition, honest conversation, and wel governed cariage, which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit and soundest wisedome.

When the anagram is substituted for its textual matrix, the logic of the ceremony of nomination is clearly exposed. Whether spoken aloud or silently, the epideictic phrase an honest life and vpright conuersation is followed naturally, and as if inevitably by the hidden word lauriation, and lauriation is followed as naturally by Michael Drayton: As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported among al writers to be of an honest life and upright conversation … LAURIATION … so Michael Drayton (quem toties honoris & amoris causa nomino).

The word nomino is used in the strict sense of “I name”, and does not imply mere nomination in the modern sense of “put up for election”. Such laureate nominations are not infrequent in Renaissance literary culture, as for example in Boccaccio’s customary address of Petrarch as poeta laureatus. Typically, however, Meres’ unofficial nomination of 1598 appears to have influenced Drayton’s subsequent self-presentation as laureate poet. The somewhat presumptuous laureate portrait of 1599 appears to have been painted as a direct consequence of the publication of Palladis Tamia in 1598. This tendency is reflected also in the laureate frontispiece from Poems of Michael Drayton Esquire (London, 1619), in which Drayton is depicted as an unforgiving satirist, in the manner of Persius. Similarly, Abraham Holland’s Holland post huma (London,

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1626) contains a prefatory poem by Drayton headed “Michael Drayton Esquire, and Poett Lawreat, in Commendation of the Author”. The prior conceit or devise that is found to inform Witts Treasury is that which finds a revelatory difference in the acrostically identical PersiUS and PlautUS, and which associates Drayton with Persius and Shakespeare with Plautus. Whereas Drayton is associated with the laureate poets Sophocles and Virgil, Meres’ praise of Shakespeare’s comedy and tragedy is framed in terms of the lesser lights, Plautus and Seneca. Meres goes on to suggest that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare’s “fine filed phrase, if they would speake Englishe”, but Shakespeare is again related to Plautus in this context, and the effect is to distance Shakespeare from the tendency in the period to associate laureateship with the Classical tradition. The implication of Meres’ “if they would” is that the Muses would not in fact wish to speak Shakespeare’s English. The comedies of Plautus having been thus associated with Shakespeare, it is then open to Meres in his ensuing sub-chapter on Sinne to invoke the comedies of Plautus and Terence in order to focus his invective upon Shakespeare the man. The passage is imbued throughout with SHACESPERE anagrams, the first being typically marked by the forma in “So hE”, which invokes the customary word-play on so and sew. The implied imperative sew has the force of knot, which translates Latin word-play on ne (“not”) and the imperative ne in the sense of “interweave anagrammatically”. Sinne. AS he runneth far that neuer returneth: [So he] sinnetH deadly that neuer repenteth. Porters and Cariers when they arE called to carry a burden on their [Shoulders, first they looke] diligently vpon it, & then they PEise and lift it vp, & trie whetheR they arE able to vndergo it, & whether they caN cary it: so before we sin, we [SHould consider whether we] be Able to Cary the burthen of it, that is, thE punishment, which iS hel fire. Lodouic. Granat. lib. 1. Ducis peccat. As the Palate, that is corrupted and distempered by ill humours, cannot tastE the sweetnesse of meate, foR that which is [SweetE] seemetH bitter, and that which is bitter sweete: so A [Soule] corrupted with the Humours of viCES and inordinate affections, and Accustom|Ed to the fleSh Pots of Aegypt, cannot tast Manna, nor thE bread of Angels. Ibidem. Euen as in a countrey, wheRE all are borne Aethiopians, it is not an vgly thing to be blacke, and as where all are drunke, it is no ignominy nor slander to be drunke: so the monstrous seruitude and slauerie of sinne, because it is so familiar and common to the worlde, scarsly is knowen or noted in any man. Ibidem.

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As [Swine] are a certaine Heard of beasts, that delighte in myre and durte, And are nourished with the basest and most vn|Cleane meates: so the filthy soulES of sinners are delighted with no other thing, except with the most filthy durte of carnall PleasurE|s. Ibidem. As wine is marred by vineger; and fruites aRE spoiled of wormes; and euery contrary is corrupted of his contrarie: so also all the powers of our [Soule] are distur|bed and infected througH sinne, which is an especiall enimie, And most contrarie to our soules. Ibidem Euen as adultery is the most Contrary thing to mariage: [So that whicH is most contrary to a godly And vertuous lifE] is sin. ibidem. Euen as the rootes of treeS beeing Cut vP, the boughes and braunches, which re|ceiue lifE from the rootES, doe forthwith witheR and PERish: so thosE seauen capitall sinnes, which are wonte to be termed the [Seauen deadly sinnes, whicH are] the generall and vniuersall rootes of all other vices being hewen in sunder, And vtterly eradicated out of our soules, [Sodainly al the viCES will die], whicH Are deriued from them. Idem. lib. 2. ducis peccat. As the ComediES of Plautus and TerencE, aRE at this day the very [Same] Comedies, whicH they weRE a thousand yeares agoe, albeit the persons, that then ACted them be chaunged: [So thE same] viceS, whicH in times Past wERE in the men of this And that Condition, arE now al|So, although PERhaps the names bE somewhat changed. Ibidem As deadly poyson [Speedily pearceth the Hearte], killeth the spirites, And bringeth death: so sinne Killeth the soulE, and SPeedily bringeth it to destruction. Ibidem. It is saidE that thundeR bruseth the treE, but breaketh not thebarke, and pearceth the blade and neuer hurteth the scabberd: euen so doth sin wound the heart, but neuer hurte the eies, and infect the soule, though outwardlie it nothing afflict the body.

Evidently Meres’ SHACESPERE anagrams are most densely clustered in his eighth paragraph, beginning “As the Comedies of Plautus and Terence” - an allusion which speaks inter alia to the prior association in Witts Treasury of Shakespeare with the concealed obscenities in the covert dimension of Plautus’s plays.27 The figurae condensae of the SHACESPERE anagrams in the eighth paragraph are conventionally corroborative in this respect. Here once again Shakespeare is associated with “vices”: SHACESPERE: As tHE ComedieS of PlautuS and TerencE, aRE SHACESPERE:

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So thE same viceS, whicH in times Past wERE

Meres’ sustained attack on Shakespeare culminates in the cruellest cut of all, when Shakespeare is identified with the deadly poyson of the sinne that “pearceth the hearte, killeth the spirites, and bringeth death … killeth the soule, and speedily bringeth it to destruction”. The concluding three paragraphs of the sub-chapter end with a repetition of this accusation: so doth sinne kill the soule: A young man in a tauerne seeing Diogenes, fled through shame further into it, nay, sayes Diogenes, the further thou flyest into it, the more thou art in the tauerne: so sinfull men, the more they hide themselues within themselues, the more they are that they are; but they must come out of themselues, if they desire to auoid them selues. Plutarchus in Moralibus. The fish Ephimera is bred without engendering, of the putrifaction of the earth, and within three houres after it is bredde it dieth: so sinne is bred beyond the course and order of nature of the corruption of the appetite, and is extinguished by the three parts of repentance, contrition, confession and satisfaction. F. Ioannes a S. Geminiano lib. 4. de natalibus et volatil. c. 62. Drinke doeth kill a mouse, as Aristotle saith: so doth sinne kill the soule. Idem, lib. 5. de animalibus terrestribus. cap. 35.

Drayton appears to have been sufficiently encouraged by Meres’ nomination to raise the courage to publish his own covert invective against Shakespeare, in the form of the duplicitous sonnet ‘Thou leaden braine’.28 Affecting to address his own mental apparatus, Drayton adopts the satirical persona of Persius and the vocabulary of Classical invectio, and reiterates Meres’ assertion that Shakespeare’s soul is in jeopardy: 29 Thou leaden braine, [Which censur’st what I write, And say’st my Lines be duLL] and doe not moue, I meruaile not thou feelst not my delight, vvhich neuer feltst my fiery touch of loue. But thou whose pen hath like a Pack-horse seru’d, vvhose [Stomack vnto gaule] HAth turn’d thy foode, vvhose senCES like poore prisoners, hunger-staru’d, vvhose griefe hath Parch’d thy body, dry’d thy blood. Thou which hast [Scorned lifE], and Hated death, And in a moment, mad, sobeR, glad, and sorry, Thou which hast band thy thoughts and Curst thy birth vvith thousand plaguES more then in Purgatory. Thou thus whose spirit LouE in his fire refines, Come thou And ReadE, admire, applaud my lines.

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In the covert dimension of the couplet, the word “spirit” refers more particularly to Shakespeare’s soul, a soul that “Loue” (for God is Love) will refine in purgatorial and perhaps infernal fire. As already mentioned, it is Shakespeare’s habit to respond to his critics in contextually apt meta-poetic and/or meta-dramatic gestures in his poems and plays. On this occasion he finds a dramatic starting point in Meres’ tavern scene. The reference to Diogenes (a traditional masturbator) is especially insulting in its indecent implication: 30 A young man in a tauerne seeing Diogenes, fled through shame further into it, nay, sayes Diogenes, the further thou flyest into it, the more thou art in the tauerne: so sinfull men, the more they hide themselues within themselues, the more they are that they are; but they must come out of themselues, if they desire to auoid them selues.

The scene now shifts to 1Henry IV (2.4), where Shakespeare has transposed Meres’ taverne to the Boar’s Head Tavern in Cheapside. The meta-dramatic role of Drayton (whom Shakespeare envisages in terms of the rebus in Draw-Tun) is played by the barrel-shaped Falstaff. The Prince of Wales plays Shakespeare, who has been damned with faint praise and given what the Prince calls a “peniworth of sugar” by the “vnder Skinker” Francis (who is one and the same as Francis Meres). In accordance with conventional protocols, Shakespeare incorporates attributive WITS TREASURIE anagrams in the opening lines of the scene. In the interests of clarity a selection only of the relevant anagrams is show in the annotated extract below: Enter Prince and Poines. Pri. Ned, prethee come out of that fat roome, & lend me thy hand to laugh a little. Poi. Where hast bene Hall? Pri. [WITh [Three or fouRE] Logger-headS], Amongst three W-I-T T-RE-A or fourescore HogsheadS. I haue sounded the VeRIE base S S-V-RIE string of humility. Sirra, I am sworn brother to a leash of Drawers, and can call them by their names, as Tom, Dicke, and Francis. They take it already vpon their confidence, that though I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the King of Curtesie: telling me flatly I am no proud Iack like Falstaffe, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, and when I am King of England, I shall command al the good Laddes in East-cheape

Similarly conventional thematic POETE LAUREATE anagrams are marked by the formae comprised respectively in the apt sequence “prethee come … laugh a little” The allegorical identification of the off-stage

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Drawer with Drayton is also established by closely associated DRAYTON and DRAW-TUN anagrams: Pri. Ned, [Prethee come] Out of that fat roome, & lend me thy hand to [LAUgh a littlE]. Poi. Where hasT benE Hall? Pri. With three or fouRE] Logger-headS], Amongst ThreE or fourescore Hogsheads. I haue sounded the verie base string of humility. Sirra, I am sworn brother to a leash of [Drawers, and can] call them by their names, as Tom, Dicke, and Francis. They take it already vpon their confidence, that though I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the King of Curtesie: telling me flatly I am no proud Iack like Falstaffe, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, and when I am King of England, I shall command al the good Laddes in East-cheape. They call drinking deepe, dying Scarlet; and when you breath in your watering, then they cry hem, and bid you play it off.

P-O E T-E

LAU | RE-A-T-E

DR-A-Y T-ON

To reiterate, the prior devise that informs the scene is that which, in the context of Drayton’s “young man in a taverne”, finds a Draw-Tun (a tapster, a drawer of ale from the barrel) in Dray-ton. Drayton is one of “three or foure” critics with whom Shakespeare is at “Logger-heads”. By virtue of his Tun (a large cask), Michael Draw-Tun is a “Hogshead” (a large cask), and by virtue of his Draw he is one of “a leash of Drawers”. Meres, who retains his own name in Francis, is an under-skinker or underdrawer to Michael Dray-Tun. The whole of the Prince’s speech may be read as apt to the attacks made upon him by Meres, Drayton, and Scott in relation (inter alia) to the obscenity of his anagrammata. The Prince, speaking aloud and in public as Shakespeare, complains that they call “drinking deepe” (i.e. concealed anagrammatism) “dying Scarlet” (imbuing text with lewd anagrams).31 At the same time these pious puritans associate Shakespeare’s “drinking deepe” of life with the suggestion that he will die with a corrupted soul (“dying Scarlet”). As the scene proceeds, Francis the under-skinker (a term that also implies a conventionally alleged pederasty in the relationship between Drayton and Meres) is identified with Meres in a series of regularly incorporated MERES anagrams. These are complemented in the overt dimension of the text by the incessant repetition of the name Francis. The repetition of Francis is (a) comedic with regard to the meta-dramatic references throughout to Francis Meres, and (b) satirically parodic in relation to the idiosyncratic repetitiveness of Meres’ literary style. In the annotated extract below, the utterances of the name Francis are

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emphasised in the text, and Shakespeare’s references to Meres’ phrase “sugred Sonnets” are typographically fenestrated, thus: Pri. Ned, prethee come out of that fat roome, & lend me thy hand to laugh a little. Poi. Where hast bene Hall? Pri. [WITh [Three or fouRE] Logger-headS], Amongst three WI-T T-RE-A or fourescore HogsheadS. I haue sounded the VeRIE base S S-V-RIE string of humility. Sirra, I am sworn brother to a leash of Drawers, and can call them by their names, as Tom, Dicke, and Francis. They take it already vpon their confidence, that though I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the King of Curtesie: telling me flatly I am no proud Iack like Falstaffe, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, and when I am King of England, I shall command al the good Laddes in East-cheape. They call drinking deepe, dying Scarlet; and when you breath in your watering, then they cry hem, and bid you play it off. To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an houre, that I can drinke with any Tinker in his owne Language during my life. I tell thee Ned, thou hast lost much honor, that thou wer’t not with me in this action: but sweet Ned, to sweeten which name of Ned, I giue thee this peniworth of Sugar, clapt euen now into [my hand by an vnder Skinker, ME-R one that neuer spake other English in his] life, then Eight E-S shillings and six pence, and, You are welcome: with this shril addition, Anon, Anon sir, Score a Pint of Bastard in the Halfe Moone, or so. But Ned, to driue away time till Falstaffe come, I prythee doe thou stand in some by-roome, while I question my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue [me the Sugar, and do neuer leaue calling Francis], that his ME-R-E-S Tale to me may be nothing but, Anon: step aside, and Ile shew thee a President. Poi. Francis. Pri. Thou art perfect. Poi. Francis. Enter Drawer. Fra. Anon, anon sir; looke downe into the Pomgarnet, Ralfe. Pri. Come hither Francis. Fra. [My Lord. M Pri. How long hast thou to seruE, Francis]? E Fra. Forsooth fiue yeaRES, and as [Much as] to RES M Poi. Francis. | Fra. Anon, anon sir. | Pri. FiuE yeaRES: Berlady a long Lease for the clinE-RES king of Pewter. But Francis, darest thou be so valiant, as to play the coward with thy Indenture, & shew it a faire paire of heeles, and run from it? Fra.. O Lord sir, Ile be sworne vpon all the Books in

Shakespeare England, I could finde in my heart. Poi. Francis]. Fra. Anon, anon sir. Pri. How old art thou, Francis? Fra. Let me see, about [Michaelmas next I shalbe Poi. Francis]. Fra. Anon sir, pray you stay A littlE, my Lord. Pri. Nay but harke you Francis, for the SugaR thou gauest mE, ‘twaS a penyworth, was’t not? Fra. O Lord sir, I would it had bene two. Pri.. I will giue thee for it a thousand pound: Aske me when thou wilt, and thou shalt haue it. Poi. Francis. Fra. Anon, anon. Pri. Anon Francis? No Francis, but to morrow Francis: or Francis, on thursday: or indeed Francis when thou wilt. But Francis. Fra My Lord. Pri. Wilt thou rob this Leatherne Ierkin, Christall button, Not-pated, Agat ring, Puke stocking, Caddice garter, Smooth tonguE, Spanish pouch. Fra. O Lord sir, who do you [MEane? Pri. Why then youR brownE Bastard iS] your onely drinke: for looke you Francis, your white Canuas doublet will sulley. In Barbary sir, it cannot come to so much. Fra. What sir? Poi. Francis. Pri. Away you Rogue, dost thou heare them call?

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ME R-E-S

Heere they both call him, the Drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go.

Shakespeare’s citations of the word “sugred” in Meres’ “witnes his … sugred Sonnets among his private friends etc” suggest that he is aware of having been damned with “a penyworth” of faint praise: Pri. But Ned, to driue away time till Falstaffe come, I prythee doe thou stand in some by-roome, while I question my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue [ME the SugaR, and do neuer leauE calling FranciS], ...

Pr. Nay but harke you Francis, for the SugaR thou gauest mE, ‘twaS a penyworth, was’t not?

ME-R-E-S M E R E-S

To reiterate, Shakespeare’s response to Meres’ attempt at Drayton’s lauriation is dramatized in terms of “Drawers” and “Hogsheads” precisely because of the notional rebus of the name Drayton that figures a drawer in DRAW and a hogshead in TUN or TUNNE. In the language of

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Meres’ own taverne, Meres is a mere vnder Skinker or puny Drawer in relation to his master the Drawer who is DRAY+TUNNE. In the context of the drama, it is Falstaff who is figured as reviving the soul of Drayton, as when the Prince (who is similarly co-extant with the soul of Shakespeare) admonishes his fat companion with “there is a Deuill haunts thee, in the likenesse of a fat old Man, a Tunne of Man is they Companion”. That this “Boulting-Hutch of Beastlinesse” should have been nominated POETE LAUREATE is purportedly beyond Shakespeare’s comprehension. The Prince’s invective against Drayton, the Draw-Tunne, the so-called Poete Laureate, is gratifyingly robust: Pri. The com|[Plaints I heare] Of thee, are grieuous. Fal. Yfaith, my [Lord, they are] falsE: nay, Ile TicklE ye for A young Prince. Pri. Swearest [ThoU, vngracious Boy? Hence]|forth ne’RE looke oN me: thou ArT violently carryed away from GracE: there is a Deuill haunts thee, in the likenesse of an fat old Man; a [TUnne] of MaN is thy CompanioN: Why do’st thou conuersE with that Trunke of Humors, that Boulting-Hutch of Beastlinesse, that swolne Parcell of [DRopsies, that huge] Bomb|Ard of Sacke, that stuft Cloakebagge of Guts, that rosted Manning Tree Oxe With the Pudding in his Belly, That reuerend Vice, that grey Iniquitie, that Father RuffiaN, that Vanitie iN yeeres? wherEin is he good, but to taste Sacke, and [DRinke] it? Wherein neat And cleanly, but to carue a Capon, and eat it? Wherein Cunning, buT in Craft? wherein Craftie, but in Villanie? whereiN Villanous, but iN all things? wherE|in worthy, but in nothing?

P-O L E-T-E A U T-U RE-AT N-N E E TU-N-N E DR-A W T-V N-N-E DR A-W T-V N-N-E

By assuming the role of the Prince in a dramatic masterpiece, Shakespeare is thus able to admonish his literary inferiors directly and publicly, and thus to demolish them. His assumption of the notional role of Apollo in Twelfth Night is comparable, for he is there (in another masterpiece) able to ridicule Marston in the role of Malvolio-Marsyas. At the same time Shakespeare’s responses are always good-humoured, as for example in his parallel answer to Meres and Drayton in Sonnet 121: Tis better to be vile then vile esteemed, [When not [to be, receiues] reproach of be|Ing, And the iusT pleasure losT, which iS so deemed, Not by oUR feeling, but bY others seeing.

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For why should others false adulterat eyes Giue saluation to my sportiue blood? Or on my [FRailties] why Are frailer spies; FR-A Which iN their wils Count bad what I think good? N-C Noe, I am that I am, and they that leuell I At [My abusE|S], Reckon vp their ownE, S M-E-R I may be straight though they them-selues be beuel E-S By their rancke thoughtes, my deedes must not be shown Vnlesse this general euill they maintaine, All men are bad and in their badnesse raigne.

The shared figura condensa is located on this occasion at the beginning of the correlative extensae: FRANCIS MERES; MICAELL DRAYTON; WITTS TREASURY: OR oN MY FRAIltieS whY ARe frailER SpiES; Which In Their wilS CoUNT bad what I Think gooD?

In his anagrammatic references to Drayton’s Sonet 48, Shakespeare adopts the commonly found orthographical variant MICAELL, and cites Drayton’s England’s Heroicall Epistles, Newly Enlarged, with Idea in terms (inter alia) of an EPISTLES anagram: Tis better to be vile then vile [esteemed, When not to be, receiues] reproach of being, And the iust pleasure lost, which is so deemed, Not by our feeling, but by others seeing. For why should others false a|[DulteR|At eyes D-RA Giue saluation] to mY sporT|iue blood? Y-T Or ON [My frail]|ties why are frailer spies; ON Which In their wils Count bad what I think good? Noe, I Am that I am, and they that leuELL At my abuses, reckon vp their owne, I may be straight though they them-selues be beuel By their rancke thoughtes, my deedes must not be shown Vnlesse this general euill they maintaine, All men are bad and in their badnesse raigne.

E P-I ST-L E S M I-C A-ELL

The shared figura condensa is comprised in lines 9-10, at the end of the repective extensae: MICAELL DRAYTON; HEROICALL EPISTLES; IDEA:

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Meres’ and Drayton’s allegations to the effect that Shakespeare’s soul is corrupt (and ripe for refinement in hellfire) is met in lines 5-6 of the sonnet in the rhetorical question “why should others False adulterat eyes / Giue saluation to my sportiue blood?” A somewhat similarly framed response to the eschatological dimension of Meres’ and Drayton’s officious commentary is to be found in the Prince’s “Henceforth ne’re looke on me: thou art violently carryed away from Grace: there is a Deuill haunts thee”. Shakespeare turns the tables by administering the Roman Catholic process of anatheme: Pri. Swearest thou, vngracious Boy? Henceforth ne’re looke on me: thou [Art violently carryed away from Grace: there is a] Deuill haunts thee, iN the likenesse of [a fat old Man; A] Tunne of Man is THy Companion: why do’st thou conuersE with that Trunke of HuM|ors, that Boulting-Hutch of BeastlinessE, that swolnE Parcell of dropsies, that huge Bombard of Sacke, that stuft Cloakebagge of Guts, that rosted Manning Tree Oxe With the Pudding in his Belly, That reuerend Vice, that grey Iniquitie, that Father Ruffian, that Vanitie in yeeres? …

A AN A-TH E-M E

AN A-TH E-M E

Once again the figura condensa is so disposed as to render Shakespeare’s meaning clear: ANATHEME: THou Art violeN|tly carried Away froM Grace: there is A Deuill haunts theE

The condensa is shared with Meres and Drayton, who are thus specifically identified as the object of Shakespeare’s anatheme: ANATHEME; FRANCIS MERES; MICAELL DRAYTON: THOu Art violeNTLY carried Away FRoM GraCE: theRE IS A DeuilL hauntS theE

The offending clerics are admonished in apt terms of address: “Thou reuerend Vice, that grey Iniquitie, that Father Ruffian”. Meres’ stigmatization of Shakespeare as a killer of souls, and in particular of his own soul, is found to be echoed in Scott’s then unpublished treatise The Model of Poesy (1599), which appears to have

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been widely circulated in manuscript form. In Scott’s work, which is now readily accessible in Gavin Alexander’s superb edition of 2013, Shakespeare is attacked both for his covert defence of the Roman Catholic church, and for the alleged immorality of his (undeniably) obscene anagrammatism. In the following extract, the plural “they” is typically periphrastic in the overt dimension of Scott’s text, but as will become apparent, his poignant SHAKESPEARE anagrams serve to identify Shakespeare as the object of his vilification: …and soe they that vnder these flowers of Poetrye, hyde snaky wantonnesse, villanye, bringe poyson in a golden goblet, and are to be enterteyned, as sowle murderers, … soe they hauinge the pith corrupt and the harte adulterate (which disgraceth all other graces whatsoeuer) are to be banished the societye of the honest; and beinge now but burnisht drosse not able to indure the touchstone of vertue, it were good they might passe the tryall of the fyer till they were purified.

It is thus that the Puritan Scott joins with the puritanical Meres and Drayton in epitomizing Shakespeare as a “sowle murderer”. The relevant passage in The Model of Poesy is introduced by the customary prompt in “Then by that”, and its eschatological theme is corroborated by the SOWLE (sic) anagrams with which the passage is imbued: Then by that musicall connection and composition of words, that beate vpon and affect onely the outwarde sense, [SOe] as that sawce of sweetenes and eloquence, Which the Poet vseth, doth but [Sharpen the stomack and awaken the appetite], tO receyue that WhoLE|some foode, which euermore breads our groweth and progresse in good, and [SOe] they that vnder these flowers of Poetrye, hyde snaky Wantonnesse, and vilL|anyE, bringe poyson in a golden goblet, and are to be enterteyned, as [SOwle] murderers, whil’st these their Poems are (When they are best accomplisht) one|Ly of the [Same] valuE and æstimation that Sabina Poppæa was; whO beinge (as Tacitus sayth) graced With alL thinges but with an honest myndE; for want of this onely inwarde vertue (the kinge of all Graces) her name is raced out of the check rowle of worthie woman, and shee is nowe famous onely for beinge an exquisite strumpett; [SOe] they hauinge the pith corrupt and the harte adulterate (Which disgraceth alL other graces whatsoeuer) arE to be banished the [SOcietye] of the honest; and beinge noW but burnisht drosse not abLE to indure the touchstone of vertue, it were good they might passe the tryall of the fyer till they were purified.

S O-W-LE

SO W LE

SO W L-E

S O-W L-E

SO W-LE

SO W L-E

SO W-L E

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The specific identification of Shakespeare as Scott’s target is effected by means of interwoven SHAKESPERE and ANAGRAME anagrams. The textual extent of these closely associated anagrams is marked in inclusio by phrasal repetition in “soe as … soe they … soe they”, where Scott’s word-play on soe and sew is again a customary prompt as to the presence of concealed anagrams of especial significance. In this instance, the prompt in soe/sew also speaks to Shakespeare’s alleged habit of concealing under the “flowers of poetrye” the “snaky wantonnesse and villanye” of Roman Catholicism and lewdness: Then by that musicall connection and composition of words, that beate vpon and affect onely the outwarde sense, soe as that [Sawce] of sweetenes and eloquence, whicH the Poet vseth, doth but sharpen the stomack And awaKE|n the appetite, to receyue that whole|[Some] foode, whicH euermore breadS our groweth and Progresse in good, And soe they that vndER these flowers of PoetryE, hyde snaK|y wanton|ESse, ANd villanye, bringe Poyson in a golden goblet, and arE to be enterteyned, as sowle murdereR|s, whil’st thesE theiR Poems Are (when they are best accomplisht) onely of the saME value and æstimation that Sabina Poppæa was; who beinge (as Tacitus sayth) graced with All thinges but with [AN honest mynde]; for want of this onely inwarde vertue (the kinge of All GRaces) her nAME is Raced out of the check rowle of worthie woman, and shee is nowe famous onely foR beinge An exquisite strum|pett; soe they hauinge the pith corrupt and the hartE adulterate (which disgraceth all other graces whatsoeuer) are to be banished the societye of the honest; and beinge now but burnisht drosse not able to indure the touchstone of vertue, it were good they might passe the triall of the fyer till they were purified.

S H A-KE S P-ER E

AN A-GR AME

S H A K-ES P-E R-E

AN A-G R A M-E

Scott’s POPE and WHORE anagrams are typical of the covert expression of anti-Catholic sentiment in the period. The “whore” in question is the Roman Catholic Church which was widely epitomized as the Whore of Babylon. In the person of Poppea, she is here a feminized representative of the Pope, an “exquisite strumpet”: Then by that musicall connection and composition of words, that beate vpon and affect onely the outwarde sense, soe as that sawce of sweetenes and eloquence, which the Poet vseth, doth but sharpen the stomack And awaken the appetite, to receyue that wholesome foode, which euermore breads our groweth and [Progresse] in good, and soe they that vnder these flowers Of [PoetryE], hydE snaky wantonessE, and

P O-P-E PO

Shakespeare villanye, bringe [Poyson in a golden goblet, and are] tO be enterteyned, as sowlE murderers, whil’st these their [Poems arE] (when they arE best accomplisht) onely Of the same value and æstimation that Sabina POPpæa was; who beingE (as Tacitus sayth) graced with All thinges but with an honest mynde; for want of this onely inwarde vertue (the kinge of all Graces) her name is raced out of the check rowle of [WortH|ie] woman, and shee is nowe famous Onely foR beingE An exquisite strumpett; soe they hauinge the pith corrupt and the harte adulterate (which disgraceth all other graces [WHatsoeuer) are] to be banished the societye of the honest; and beinge now but burnisht drosse not able tO induRE the touchstone of vertue, it were good they might passe the triall of the fyer till they were purified.

151 P O P-E

P-E

P O POP-E P-E

W-H O-R-E

WH O-RE

In Reformation England the compulsory erasure or obliteration of written references to the Pope or to Roman Catholicism had become a commonplace. It is to this procedure that Scott refers when he claims of Sabina Poppea that “her name is raced [i.e. erased] out of the check rowle of worthie woman, and shee is nowe famous onely for beinge an exquisite strumpet”. The combination of SHAKESPERE, SOULE, POPE, WHORE, and ANAGRAME anagrams in the passage is directed at Shakespeare’s alleged habit of concealing his Catholic sympathies in the covert dimension of his poems and plays. Sonnet 124, which is described in detail in Chapter Four, is a typical example. As John Klause has noted, this highly duplicitous sonnet incorporates key words from Robert Southwell’s An Humble Supplication to Her Majestie.32 A clear MDLXXXXV chronogram in the first quatrain, conventionally marked by TIME and DATE anagrams, would tend to suggest that the date of composition is 1595 (old style). The relevant numeral letters are emphasised in the text and noted in the margin below: 33 Yf my [Deare] Loue were but [The childe] of stATE, D-ATE It Might for fortunes basterd bE VnfathereD, subiect to [TIMes louE], or to [TIMes hatE], TIM-E WeedS among weedS, or flowerS with flowerS gatherd.

DL MDV

As

SSSS

The sonnet appears to have been composed in covert response to Southwell’s hanging, drawing, and quartering on 21 February 1595. Anagrams of SOUTHWELL and HUMBLE SUPPLICATION are associated with WHITE anagrams, the latter presumably invoking the memory of the Catholic Martyr Eustace White, who was hung, drawn, and quartered on 10 Deecember 1591. The DATE and TIME anagrams and the SOUTHWELL anagrams are shown in the first of the annotated versions of the sonnet below. The close association of the SOUTHWELL and

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HUMBLE SUPPLICATION anagrams with each other, and with the overt dimension of the ambient text, is noteworthy: Yf my [Deare] loue were but [The] childe of stATE, It Might for fortunes basterd bE vnfathered, As subiect to[ TIMes louE], or to [TIMes hatE], Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gatherd. No it was buylded far from accident, It [SUffers not in] [smilinge PomP, nor fall]|s Vnder the blOvV of THralL|ed discontent, Whereto th’Inuiting time our fashion calls: It feares not poli|Cy thAT [Herit|IckE], Which workes ON Leases of short numbred howers, But alL alonE stands hugely pollitick, That it nor growes with heat, nor drownes with showres. To this I witnes call the foles of time, Which die for goodnes, who haue liu’d for crime.

D-ATE

T I-ME

TIM-E

S OV-TH W E H L UMB L L-E

SU-P-P L I C-AT-I ON

The couplet, which has been much discussed, is found to refer to John Donne’s Satire 3, in which the poet specifically identifies his thematic interest in martyrdom in doubled WHITE anagrams: Foole and wretch, [Wilt thou let thy soule] be ty’d To mans lawes, by [WHIcH she shall not be] try’d At the lasT day? Will IT then boot theE To say a Philip, or a Gregory, A Harry or a Martin taught thee this?

W H WHI I-T-E T-E

In the annotated version of Sonnet 124 below, a selection (only) of Shakespeare’s attributive DONNE and thematic WHITE anagrams is indicated as before: Yf my [Deare] loue were but the childe of state, It might for fortuN|es basterd be vN|fathered, As subiect to times louE, or to times hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gatherd. No it was buylded far from accident, It suffers not in smilinge pomp, nor falls Vnder the blow of thralled discontent, [WHere]|to th’Inuiting TimE our fashion calls: IT feares not policy that HeritickE], [WHIch workes on leases of short numbred howers, BuT all alonE] stands hugely pollitick, That T nor growes with heat, nor [Drownes with showres. TO this I wit|Nes call the foles of time], Which die for good|Nes, who haue liu’d for crimE.

D-O N-N E

WH I-T-E WHI T-E D O-N N-E

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In accordance with conventional protocols, Shakespeare again establishes a formal inter-connection between Southwell’s text and his own by quoting key words from it, verbatim. Klause cites a number of instances, including for example, Southwell’s “pollitique”, “suffer”, “accidents”, “witnes”, and “crimes”. As Klause rightly points out, “It is not the words by themselves, of course, that demonstrate influence, but the contexts in which they are used”.34 Similarly, a formal inter-connection is deemed to be created by virtue of Shakespeare’s verbatim quotation of Donne’s “Foole” in “foles of time”. Donne’s foole is singular (pointing to White), but Shakespeare’s foles are plural, invoking both White and Southwell. There is thus little that is surprising in the forceful invective which Meres, Drayton, and Scott are found to level against Shakespeare. For those who opposed Catholicism, the supremely authoritative verse of Sonnet 124 (for example) did indeed hide theological “snaky … villanye” under “these flowers of Poetrye”. And the surface of his love-poems, following Classical precedent, did indeed conceal a “snaky wantonesse”. It is noteworthy that these particular critics of Shakespeare are found to focus their attention upon the state of his soul. For Scott, Shakespeare is a “sowle murderer”, a murderer of his own soul. For Meres, Shakespeare is a killer of souls, and in particular of his own soul. For Drayton, Shakespeare’s soul is implicitly so corrupt as to require refinement in the fires of hell. Against this background, Shakespeare’s response to Meres, Drayton, and Scott in Sonnet 146 is wittily ironic. The “point” of the poet’s potentially plaintive address to his Poore soule is now revealed. Having been allegedly murdered, killed, and wholly corrupted, and having been assailed from all sides by virulent abuse, the poet’s soule is indeed (to adopt Stephen Booth’s phrase) a “poor creature”: 35 Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth, My sinfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array, Why dost thou pine …

An anagrammatic reading of Sonnet 146 and its referent texts reveals that the redundant repetition in my sinfull earth / My sinfull earth at the beginning of line 2 is not a compositor’s error, but a deliberate gesture of ironical self-censorship (i.e. of erasure or obliteration) in response to Scott’s claim that the name of Poppea “is raced out of the check rowle of worthie woman, and shee is nowe famous onely for beinge an exquisite strumpet”. When the notionally “original” words Prince of are reinstated in the text – i.e. when Shakespeare’s self and soul are reinstated – the first

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quatrain is found to be imbued with a plurality of POPE anagrams. A selection (only) of the respective extensae is shown below: [[POore] soule] the center Of my sinfull earth, PO [Prince] Of these rebbell [POwres that thee] array, P-E P-O-P-E PO Why dost thou PinE within and suffer dearth, P Painting thy outward wallS so costliE gay? E

The Prince is said to pine within because the word PINE is concealed within PrINcE in revelatory neo-Platonic symmetry. If the Prince were to cease pining within (as in the notional erasure of pine within xRxxCx) he would be true to R.C. (an abbreviated form, then as now, of Roman Catholic). That concealed implication is typical of poetry composed in the Graeco-Roman tradition, typical of Ovid, and typical of Shakespeare and his age. The title Prince is also apposite in that Shakespeare and others frequently invoke the concept of the soul as monarch or ruler over the lesser human faculties – “these rebbell powres that thee array”.36 In a further perspective, the poore (R.C.) soule who, thus imprisoned, pines within, also resembles the “poore prisoners, hunger-staru’d” of which Drayton talks, and the word poore functions in this context as an obligatory verbatim quotation from Drayton’s referent text. Shakespeare’s invocation of Scott’s Poppea (as a feminized form of Pope) is specifically identified in conventionally disposed POPPEA and SCOTT anagrams (of which a single example only is indicated below): Poore soule the center of my sinfull Earth, [Prince of these rebbell [POwres that thee a]-rray, Why dost thou pinE within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls [so cost]|lie gay? Why [so large cost] hauing so short a lease, Dost thou vpon thy fading mansion spend? Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse, Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end? Then soule liue thou vpon thy seruants losse, And let that pine to aggrauat thy store; Buy tearmes diuine in selling houres of drosse: Within be fed, without be rich no more, So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, ther’s no more dying then.

PO P P E-A

S-CO T-T

In line 11 the word drosse comprises a mandatory verbatim quotation of a key word from Scott’s diatribe, which gains part of its rhetorical force from the oxymoron in “burnisht drosse”.

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In another perspective, the Prince is also the Prince of Wales and “these rebbell powres” are those with whom the latter finds himself at loggerheads in 1Henry IV, namely Meres and Drayton. Shakespeare’s MERES and DRAYTON anagrams, which are also emphatically present in the text, are reciprocally corroborative both in relation to each other and in relation to the SCOTT anagrams: Poore soule the center of [My sinfull Earth, Prince of these Rebbell powrES] that thee array, Why dost thou pinE within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward wallS so costlie gay? Why so large cost] hauing so short a lease, Dost thou vpon thy fading mansion spend? Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse, Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end? Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth, Prince of these rebbell powres that thee array, Why [Dost thou pine within] and suffeR dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costlie gAY? Why sO large cosT hauing sO short a lease, Dost thou vpON thy fading mansiON spend? Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse, Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end?

M-E R-ES

M-E R E S

D-R AY T ON

D-R AY T-O N

Shakespeare’s redundant repetition (enjambed over the end of line 1 and the beginning of line 2) is also intended to mimic and thus ridicule a perceived slackness in a precisely similar location in Drayton’s poem. Drayton’s nearly tautologous “censur’st what I write, / And say’st my lines be dull” is emphasised in the extract below, as is Shakespeare’s parodic response in the drumming rhythm of my sinfull earth, / My sinfull earth: Thou leaden braine, [Which censur’st what I write], And say’st my Lines be duLL] and doe not moue, I mervaile not thou feelst not my delight, vvhich never feltst my fiery touch of loue. Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth, My sinfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array, Why [Dost thou pine within] and suffeR dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costlie gAY?

W-I L-L

W-I LL

D-R D-R AY… AY…

In each case the offending solecism is enjambed across the end of line 1 and the beginning of line 2.

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Shakespeare’s critics were by no means limited to those who objected to the Roman Catholic sympathies that were revealed in the covert dimension of his texts. It was perhaps inevitable in the period that Shakespeare’s reiteration of conventional obscenities in homo-erotic contexts should prompt criticism or merely affected criticism on the basis of immorality. As will become clear, the early sonnets were based in large part upon traditional concepts of tutor-pupil relationships in the Greek tradition.37 For example, the ostensible innocence of the richly anagrammatic Sonnet 16 is found to conceal the most explicit of homosexual overtures addressed by a “tutor” to his “pupill”. In the interests of clarity of presentation a selection only of the relevant anagrams is indicated in the annotated extracts below: But wherefore do not you a mightier waie Make warre vppon this bloudie tirant time? [ANd fortifie your selfe in your decay Vvith meaneS] more blessed theN my barren rime? Now stand yoU on the top of happie houreS, [ANd many maiden gardens] yet Vnset, With vertuoUS wish would beare your liuing flowerS, Much liker then your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life re|[Paire Which this] (Times pensel or my pupill PEN) Neither In inward worth nor outward faire Can make you liue your [Selfe in EieS of MEN], To giue away your Selfe, keepS your Selfe Still, And you must liue drawne by your owne Sweet Skill. So should the lines of life that life repaire Which this [(Times pensel or] my pupill pen) Neither in inward Vvor(Th) nOR oUT|ward faire Can make you liue your selfe in eies Of men, To giue away youR selfe, keeps your selfe still, And you must liue drawne by your owne sweet skill. So should the lines of life that life repaire Which this (Times [pensel or my [pupil]] pen) Neither in inward worth nor outward faire Can make you liue your selfe in eies of men, To giue away your selfe, keeps your selfe still, And you must liue drawne by your owne sweet skill.

AN V-S

A N U-S

AN-V S P EN I S

AN US

S-E-MEN

T UT O R

T V-T-OR

P-UPILL

PUP I L L

The motives thus typically revealed in Sonnet 16 appear to comprise the subject of one of Sir John Davies’ Gullinge Sonnets (circa 1595), the mild invective of which is found to be directed primarily against Shakespeare in the context of his alleged gulling of Henry Wriothesley.38 The word Gullinge is apt in its conceptual and anagrammatic affinity with Guiliamus, the Latin version of the name William which incorporates the

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word Guil(e). It will be recalled that Shakespeare’s baptism was recorded as relating to “Guiliamus filius Iohannes Shakespere”. In a dedicatory sonnet, Davies implies that Shakespeare’s sonnets are “lewde gullieries” (the allegedly disingenuous tutor-guardian being represented as Shakespeare and the pupil (the “rich gull”) as Henry Wriothesley): TO HIS GOOD FREINDE SIR ANTH. COOKE. Here my [Camelion Muse] her selfe doth change C TO [Diuers] shapes Of gross absurdities, O-O D And like an AnticK mocks Vvith fashion straungE K-E A-V The fond admirers of lewde gullerIES. IES Your iudgement sees with pitty, and with scorne THe bastard Sonnetts of the Rymers bace, Which in this whiskinge age are daily borne To their own [shames, and Poetrie’s disgrace]. SH-ACE Yet some praise those and some perhappes will praise S-PER-E Euen these of myne: and therefore thes I send To you that pass in Courte your glorious dayes; Yet if some rich rash gull these Rimes commend Thus you may sett this formall witt to schoole, Vse your owne grace, and begg him for a foole.

Davies’ final sonnet would seem to speak directly to the sentiments expressed in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 16, and to Shakespeare’s sonnets in general. Wriothesley, the ostensible speaker, complains of his poet’s proprietorial treatment asking “But why … when … I am past the one and twentith year” must “my witt … still the yoake of wardshippe beare?” To Loue my lord I doe knightes seruice owe And therefore nowe he hath my witt in warde, But while it iS in his tuition soe Me thincks he doth intreate It passinge hard; For thoughe [HE hathe] it marryed Longe agoe To Vanytie, a [Wench of Noe RegardE], And nowe tO full, and peR|fect age doTH growe, Yet nowE of freedomE it iS most debarde. But why [SHould Loue] after minoritYE When I Am past the one and twentith yeare Per|CludE my [witt of hiS sweete libertye, And make it still] ye yoake of wardshipPE beaRE. I feare he hath an other Title gott And holds my witte now for an Ideott.

H E N-R I-E SH A C-E-S PE-RE

W-R O-TH E-S L-YE WI LL

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In the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary the phrase “knightes seruice” signifies “night’s service” or sexual intercourse, “witt” refers to penis, and “ward” has the sense of copulatory orifice, and here anus. The phrase “witt in warde” falls to be construed accordingly. Davies’ sonnet also contains ELISA VERE anagrams in the octave, which follow the form of those in Shakespeare’s sonnets: To Loue my lord I doe knightes seruice owe, And therefore nowe he hath my witt in warde, But while it is in his tuition Soe Me thincks he doth intreate It passinge hard; For thoughe he hathe it marryed Longe agoe To [VanytiE], [a wench of noE RegardE], And nowe to full, and perfect age doth growe, Yet nowe of freedome it is most debarde.

V-E-R-E

A S I L E

The shared figura condensa is adequate to the task: HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; ELISA VERE: To LouE mY lord I doe knightES SERUice OwE, And THerefoRE Nowe He hath mY witt in WArdE

The word warde here has the ostensible sense (OED, 2.c) of “The control and use of the lands of a deceased tenant by knight-service, and the guardianship of the infant heir, which belonged to the superior until the heir attained his majority”. But Davies is also using warde in the now obsolete sense (OED, 14.b) of “a guarded entrance”, and hence (here) anus. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 16 was apparently composed on the occasion of Wriothesley’s twenty-first birthday on 6 October 1594, and it seems likely that Davies has this sonnet in mind. Shakespeare’s sonnet of covert seduction is found to be based in part upon the perception of Wriothesley’s in-ward worth (line 11) at the time of his coming out of the fetters of wardshippe: [But wherefore do not you a might|IeR waie] B-I-R Make warre vppon THis bloudie tirant time? TH And fortifie your selfe in your DecAY D-A-Y With meanes more blessed then my barren rimE? Now stand you [ON the top of happiE] houres, ON-E And many maiden gardens [YEt vnset, YE With virtuous] wish would beARE your liuing flowerS, ARE-S Much liker then your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life [That life repaire] T

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Which this (Times pensel or my pupill pEN) W-EN O-N Neither in inward [Worth nor ouT|ward faire] T E Can make you liue your selfe in eies of men, Y-E Y To giue Away youR selfE, keepS your selfE still, A-R-E-S And you must liue drawne by your owne sweet skill.

Shakespeare appears to have been fully conscious of the public nature of his condemnation by rival poets and satirists. As will become clear in later chapters, John Marston’s sustained satirical attacks on Shakespeare’s allegedly lewd life and poetry were met in a variety of ways, as for example in Sonnet 111. Marston’s word-wthin-word conceit that finds Shakespeare’s ill (i.e. perverse) will in his name Will is both typical of the age and grossly insulting. Viewing the onomastic legibility of his own name Will in terms of phallic will, the poet complains that his “name” (i.e. Will) receives a “brand” (i.e. will), and that by virtue of his own craft of onomastic anagrammatism, his “nature” is in danger of being characterized accordingly, just as “the Dyers hand” becomes stained with “what it workes in”. Shakespeare’s IOHN MARSTONE and WILL anagrams are indicated in the annotated version of the sonnet below: O for my sake doe you with fortune chide, The guiltie goddesse of my harmfull deeds, That did not better for my life prouide, Then publick meanes which publick [MAnners breeds. MA Thence] comes it that my name Receiues a brand, R And almost thence my nature [Is Subdu’d I S TO what it workes in], like the Dyers Hand, O-H TO-N-E Pitty me theN, and wish I were renu’de, N Whilst like a [Willing pacient I wiLL] drinke, W-I W-I-LL Potions of EyseLL gainst my strong infection, LL No bitternesse that I will bitter thinke, Nor double pennance to correct correction. Pittie me then deare friend, and I assure yee, Euen that your pittie is enough to cure mee.

As is well known, Shakespeare’s literary achievement was publicly recognised after his death, as for example in Jonson’s memorial poem of 1623. In this poem Jonson is found to celebrate Shakespeare’s particular virtuosity in relation to anagramma figuratum in terms of regularly repeated ANAGRAME and HERMES anagrams, as for example in a wellknown passage: Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe, To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.

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Chapter Three He was not of [AN AGe], but for all time! And all the Muses still were in theiR prime, When like Apollo [He cAME forth to warme OuR eares], or like a Mercury to charme! Nature her selfe was proud of his designES, And joy’d to weare the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and wouen so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.

AN-AG R AME

HE R-M ES

Here once again the terminology of textile text is deployed in order to praise Shakespeare’s anagrammatic art, as in “so richly spun” and “woven so to fit”. Milton’s memorial poem (1630), which is similarly honorific, refers to Shakespeare’s Sonnetes, Tragedie, Historie, and Comedie: What neede my [Shakespeare for his] honour’d bones, The labour Of aN Age, iN piled stonE|s] Or thaT his hallowed ReliquES should be hid Vnder a star-ypointing Pyramid? Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heir of Fame, What needst thou such dull witness of thy Name? [Thou in our wondeR and Astonishment [Hast built thy selfe]] a last|InG Monument. For whilST to th’shamE Of slow-en|DeavouR|ing Art Thy easIE numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaues of thy unvalued Booke, Those Delphicke lines with deepe Impression took Then thou our fancy of her selfe bereauing, Dost make us Marble with too much [Conceiuing, And sO Sepulcher’d in such pompe] dost lie That Kings for such a ToM|be would wish to DIE.

S O-N-N-E T-ES

T-R-A G H-I E-D ST-O-R IE IE

C O M-E-DIE

Milton’s ANAGRAME anagram is indicated in the annotated extract below: What neede my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones, The labour of [AN AGe], in piled stones Or that his hallowed Reliques should be hid Vnder A star-ypointing Pyramid? Dear Sonne of Memory, great heir of FaME, What needst thou such dull witness of thy Name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thy selfe a lasting Monument.

AN-AG R A ME

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Shakespeare’s particular achievement is also marked in the OVID and HERMES anagrams which are closely associated with the ANAGRAME anagram: What neede my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones, The labour of an age, in piled stones [Or that his] [Hallowed Reliques] should bE hid VndeR a star-ypointing PyramID? Dear Sonne of Memory, great heir of FamE, What needst thou such dull witnesS of thy Name?

O V-ID

H-E R ME S

Notes 1

On the use of verba perplexabilia to mark covert gestures of inter-textuality and intra-textuality, see Michael Fontaine, Funny Words in Plautine Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2010. 2 Virgil’s account of the vision of Hector (Aeneid 2. 268-297) is imbued throughout with concealed PRIAMIDES and PENATES anagrams set in expolitio. 3 Construed as masculine service, homage is in the period applicable to both homosexual and heterosexual intercourse. See Gordon Williams, A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature (London: The Athlone Press, 1994), 1375. 4 In his sonnets Shakespeare is found to exploit orthographical variations in Henry Wriothesley’s forename and surname for expressive purposes. When his patron’s intrinsic worth is in issue, Shakespeare typically adopts the variant form Wrothesley, in which WORTH is anagrammatically immanent in the form of WROTH|esley. Elsewhere, the “printer’s spelling” in Wriothesley is used for the sake of the personal pronound “I”, which (invoking Classical Latin letter-play) registers the sexual meaning of “I, in Wriothesley”. On onomastic legibility and “nick-naming”, see note 5. 5 See George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), III. 19: Ye haue a figure by which ye play with a couple of words or names much resembling, and because one seemes to answere th’other by manner of illusion, and doth, as it were, nick him, I call him the Nicknamer. 6 Compare Arthur Golding’s word-play on “still in heauen” in his Metamorphosis (10.159-151), where the “Trojane boay” is Ganymede: And so he soring in the ayre with borrowed wings trust up, The Trojane boay who still in heauen even yit dooth beare his cup, And brings him Nectar though against Dame Junos will it bee. 7 The protocols of Hermetic inter-textuality stipulate that a prior text A is deemed to be brought into formal apposition to a later text B when (a) key words and/or phrases are transposed verbatim from A into B, and (b) thematically relevant anagrams from text A are quoted verbatim in B. A quasi-anagrammatic connection between A and B is then deemed to have been effected. Thus when Shakespeare wishes to bring Ovid’s triumphant envoi to Metamorphoses into

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paradigmatic apposition to his Sonnet 81, he translates Ovid’s vivam (“I shall live”) as “I shall liue”, and ore populi (“in the mouths of men”) as “in the mouths of men” and quotes Ovid’s ORO anagram. 8 The conventionally elevated form of ELISA/ELISABETH REGINA anagrams is described and illustrated in William Bellamy, “Jonson’s Art of Anagram” in Richard S Peterson (ed.) Jonsonian Soundings (New York: AMS Press), 2015. Edmund Spenser is found to extend the scope of this conventional usage to his concealed anagrams of ELISA/ELISABETH BOYLE (his Petrarchan “mistress” and later his wife), and Shakespeare follows established precedent in his ELISA/ELISABETH VERE anagrams. 9 Compare Shakespeare’s precisely similar play on which and witch in association with a WHORE anagram in the highly duplicitous Sonnet 81. The witch in this case is the poet’s mistress: Your monument shall be my gentle verse, [WhicH eyes not yet created shall ORE]-read, W-H-ORE | Witch For a full description of Sonnet 81, see Chapter Four. 10 See Chapter Six. 11 See for example Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 50-51. 12 See Note 6. 13 See J N Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London: Duckworth, 1982), 35. 14 Shakespeare makes comic use of Wyatt’s hunt the cunt in the bathos of Curio’s interjection at the end of Orsino’s enthusiastically amorous opening speech in Twelfth Night: Orsino. If Musicke be the food of Loue, play on, Giue me excesse of it … ... Curio. Will you go hunt my Lord? Orsino. Hunt what Curio? Curio. The Hart. As in the case of Latin cor (“heart”), the English word hart is commonly used in the sense of vagina. 15 See Frederick Ahl, Metaformations: Wordplay and Soundplay in Ovid and Other Classical Latin Poets (New York: Cornell University Press, 2007); David Armstrong, “The Impossibility of Metathesis”, in Dirk Obbink (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory in Lucretius, Philodemus, and Horace (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1995. 16 For anagrammatic “concatenation” in the sonnets, see Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997), 76 and passim. See also Christopher Ricks, “Shakespeare and the Anagram”, in

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Proceedings of the British Academy, 101 (2002): 111-146. Ricks appears to prefer the term “anagrammatic filaments” to “concatenations”. 17 For the “word-within-word” trope in Latin, see Ahl, 41-44. For Shakespeare’s use of the trope that Helen Vendler calls “word-inside-word”, see Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 255, 361. 18 On the use of letters of the alphabet as sexual emblems, see J N Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London: Duckworth), 1982, and Nigel M Kay, Ausonius: Epigrams (London: Duckworth), 2001. 19 In Classical Latin the letter-groups cc and oo are used to signify the testicles, and by extension to refer to sexual intercourse. See Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. Shakespeare’s “looke” translates both the literal and emblematic meanings of Ovid’s ecce. 20 Jonson uses the word exscribe to refer to the copying out of a manuscript poem in order (inter alia) to reveal its concealed anagrammata. See Bellamy, “Jonson’s Art of Anagram”. 21 Ahl, Metaformations, 51. 22 Ahl, Metaformations, 51. 23 Ann Pairet, ‘Recasting the Metamorphoses in Fourteenth-Century France’, in James G Clark, Frank T Coulson, and Kathlyn L McKinley (eds.) Ovid in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 83-107, at 92. 24 These criticisms, and Shakespeare’s responses to them, are described in Chapter Four. 25 Gordon Williams, A Dictionary, 554. 26 National Portrait Gallery, London. 27 For covert obscenity in Plautus, see Fontaine, Funny Words in Plautine Comedy. 28 Sonnet 46, Englands Heroicall Epistles. Newly enlarged With Idea (London), 1599. 29 On ancient forms of invectio, see Richlin, Amy. The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1992. 30 On the traditional association of Diogenes with masturbation, see R Bracht Branham (ed.), The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 225-227. 31 Shakespeare’s phrase “the Dyers hand” also invokes the metaphor that envisages the imbuing of text with concealed anagrammatism in terms of the dyeing of a textile cloth. 32 John Klause, “Politics, Heresy, and Martyrdom in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 124 and Titus Andronicus”, in James Schiffer (ed.) Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Critical Essays (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 219-240. 33 The principles of concealed chronogram are described in Chapter Two. 34 Klause, ‘Politics, Heresy, and Martyrdom’, 229. 35 Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 502. 36 See Chapter Four. 37 On the theme of homoerotic seduction in Sonnets 1-17, see Chapter Four.

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38 See Alexander B. Grosart (ed.), The Complete Poems of Sir John Davies (London: Chatto and Windus, 1876), vol. 2, 55-62.

CHAPTER FOUR SONNETS

Whether the foregrounding of seale is remembered when one encounters lease depends on whether the reader shares with Shakespeare the Renaissance fascination with the way words look when printed. Shakespeare belongs to the world of print, a world in which anagrams were recognized and enjoyed. —Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

1. The 1609 Quarto In 1609 the printer Thomas Thorpe published a quarto volume (“Q”) entitled SHAKE-SPEARE’S SONNETS (sic) and described as Neuer before Imprinted. Apparently assembled in conventional form, Q consists of three distinct sequential components: first, a series of one hundred and fifty two sonnets in the Petrarchan tradition; secondly, a linked pair of sonnets in the distinctive manner of Anacreon; and finally, a forty-seven stanza poem separately entitled A Louers Complaint.1 Concealed chronograms confirm that the Anacreontics (Sonnets 153 and 154) and A Louers Complaint were composed in 1609, presumably with a view to the publication of the sonnet sequence in customary form.2 An anagrammatic reading of Q would suggest that Shakespeare cooperated with Thomas Thorpe in the enterprise, and that Shakespeare himself saw to the collation, ordering, and numbering of the sonnets. The evidence upon which this conclusion is basd will become apparent as this survey of the sonnets proceeds. Each of the 1609 sonnets (153 and 154) is found to contain THOMAS THORPE anagrams, the couplet in each case being the locus of particularly clear THORPE anagrams: But found no cure, [THe bath fOR my helPE] lies, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye.

TH-OR-PE

Came [THere fOR cure] and this by that I ProuE, Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue.

TH-OR-P-E

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Sonnet 153 contains clear, sequential THOMAS THORPE anagrams which are incorporated in the octave and sestet respectively: Cupid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, A maide of Dyans this aduantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe In a could vallie-fountaine of that ground: Which borrowd from [THis] holie fire of loue, A datelesse liuely heat still tO indure, And grew a seething bath which yet Men proue, Against strange malladieS a soueraigne cure: But at my mistres eie loues brand new fired, The boy for triall needes would touch my brest, I sick withall [THe helpe] Of bath desired, And thether hied a sad distempeR|d guest. But found no cure, the bath for my helPE lies, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye.

TH O M A-S

TH-O R PE

The anagrams are so disposed as to appear to offer concealed thanks to Thorpe for his “helpe” in the project. The condensa of the attributive THORPE anagram, for example, is conventionally duplicitous in its courteous acknowledgment of Thorpe’s role in the proceedings: THORPE: THe baTH fOR my helPE

As we shall see, Sonnets 153 and 154 are formulated in hendiadys, being marked as such by the HENDIADIS (sic) anagrams with which they are respectively imbued. They stand inseparably as a single, one-in-two entity in the formal structure of the sequence. The anagrammatic dimension of the text of the two sonnets is correspondingly interpenetrative. Shakespeare’s thematically central ETERNALL TRIANGLE anagrams are for example incorporated in due sequence in two stages; the ETERNALL anagrams in Sonnet 153, and the TRIANGLE anagram in Sonnet 154. A selection of the relevant anagrams is shown below: Cupid laid by [His] brand and fell a sleepe, A maide of Dyans this aduantagE found, AND his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe In A coulD vallie-fountaine of that ground: Which borrowd from thIS holie fire of loue, A datelesse liuely heat still to indure, And grew a seething bath which yet men proue,

H E ND I-A-D IS

Sonnets Against strange malladies a soueraigne cure: But at my mistres [Eie loues brand new fired, ThE boy foR triall] Needes would touch my brest, I sick withALL the helpe of bath desired, And thether hied a sad distemperd guest. But found no cure, the bath for my helpe lies, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye. The little Loue-God lying once a sleepe, Laid by his side his heart inflaming brand, Whilst many Nymphes that vou’d chast life to keep, Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand, [The fayR|est votary tooke vp that fire,] Which many Leg|Ions of true hearts had warm’d, ANd so the GeneralL of hot desirE, Was sleeping by a Virgin hand disarm’d. This brand she quenched in a coole Well by, Which from loues fire tooke heat perpetuall, Growing a bath and [HEalthfull remedy, For meN Dis]|easd, but I my Mistrisse thrall, Came there for cure AnD thIS by that I proue, Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue.

167

E T-E-R-N ALL

T-R I AN-G-L-E

HE N-DI A-D-IS

As Alastair Fowler has suggested, Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence is numbered by reference to the hypothetical shape of a pyramidal triangle, based upon the numerologically significant number 153.3 Fowler postulates in particular that Sonnets 1-17 form the notional base of the pyramid. An anagrammatic reading of the sequence reveals that Sonnets 153 and 154 (the Anacreontics) are intended to be construed as functioning in hendiadys as a single (one-in-two) entity, an entity envisaged as forming the apex of a pyramid comprising one hundred and fifty three units. The clear, symmetrically disposed HENDIADIS anagrams in Sonnets 153 and 154 would tend to support Thomas Roche’s suggestion that these sonnets might count as one in the overall total.4 In addition (and as we shall see) three key additional (trans-textual) anagrams are found to begin in 153 and to end in 154, thus suggesting that the two sonnets are to be viewed in this context as comprising a single entity. A close study of the covert dimension of sixteenth and seventeenthcentury title-pages and frontispieces would tend to suggest that Thorpe’s dedicatory typography in Q is modelled in such a way as to reflect this pyramidal or triangular structure.5 In accordance with the protocols of chiastic quotation, which customarily involve the reiteration of the cited linguistic entity in inverse form, Thorpe disposes the first six lines of the dedication in such a way as to create a textually shaped, inverted triangle,

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which is simultaneously emblematic of the pyramid.6 The lapidary form of Thorpe’s typography, often remarked upon by commentators, is also decorously apt to the concept of Horace’s exegi monumentum, and to the notional pyramid that is comprised in the sequence overall: TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF. THESE. INSUING. SONNETS. Mr. W. H. ALL HAPPINESSE. AND. THAT. ETERNITIE. PROMISED. BY.

This gesture, which in part resembles the concealed technopaegnia covertly described in Horace’s Ars poetica, is repeated in the six lines which form the lower half of Thorpe’s text: OVR. EVER-LIVING. POET. WISHETH THE. WELL-WISHING. ADVENTVRER. IN. SETTING. FORTH.

In effect, therefore, Thorpe’s emblematic dedication serves as a quasipictorial frontispiece which reflects the nature of the ensuing work in graphic and summary form. As Fowler points out, the notional sequence of 153 units is envisaged by the poet as comprising a pyramidal triangle that is constructed around the numerologically significant number 153. In a remarkably percipient account of the numerology of the sequence, Fowler refers (inter alia) to the parable of Matthew, and in particular to the eschatological declaration that “the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they … gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away”.7 Fowler’s perceptive analysis is confirmed by hermeneutic anagrams in the covert dimension of Sonnets 153/154. Matthew’s parable and John’s specific reference to 153 fishes are cited in clear, doubled MATTHEWE, IOHNE, and FISHES anagrams. The notionally singular text also contains (inter alia) the Orphic verba certa in the form of SINNE and PENITENCE anagrams – these being omitted for the sake of clarity from the annotated versions below:

Sonnets Cupid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, A [Maide] of Dyans this aduantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe [In] a could vallie-fountaine] Of thaT ground: Which borrowd from this Holie [FIre of loue, A datelessE] liuely heat Still to iN|durE, And grew a seething bath WhicH yet men prouE, Against strange [MalladiES a soueraigne] cure: But At my mistres eie loues brand new fired, THE boy [For triall needes] would touch my brest, [I sick Withall the helpE] Of bath desired, And thether Hied a Sad distemperd guest. But found No curE, the batH for my helpe liES, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye. The little Loue-God lying once a sleepe, Laid by his side his heart [In]|flaming brand, Whilst [MAny Nymphes that vou’d chast life] tO keep, Came Tripping by, but in Her maideN hand, The fayrest votary tookE] vp that [FIire Which [MAny Legions] of truE] heartS Had warm’d, And so The Gen|erall of Hot desirE, WaS sleeping by a Virgin hand disarm’d. This brand shE quenched in a coole well by, Which from loues fire tooke heat perpetuall, Growing a bath and healthfull remedy, [For men diseasd, but I my Mistrisse] thrall, Came there for cure and thiS by that I proue, Loues fire HeatES water, water cooles not loue.

169

M A T H E W-E

I-O H N-E M A THE W-E

I-O H N-E

I O H-N E MA T-H-E W E

MA T-H E W-E

FI S H ES F I S H-ES

FI S-H E S

F-I S H-ES

Here again Shakespeare’s careful disposition of the shared figura condensa is revelatory in intent. In this perspective it is made clear that the “helpe” that the poet seeks is cleansing and ultimately eschatological: MATTHEWE; IOHNE; FISHES; PENITENCE; SOWLE; ThE bATH for my HelPE lieS, WherE Cupid gOt NeW FIre my MIstrES eyE.

This revelation corroborates (and is reciprocally corroborated by) the SOWLE anagram which is marked by the aptly located forma in “Still to endurE”: A datelesse liuely heat [Still tO indure], And grew a seething bath WhicH yet men proue, Against strange malL|adies a soueraigne curE:

S-O W L-E

Once again the shared condensa is revelatory in this context:

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Chapter Four MATTHEWE; IOHNE; SINNE; PENITENCE; SOWLE: WhicH yeT meN ProuE, / AgainsT StrangE MALladIEs a SOueraigNE CurE:

As will become clear, Shakespeare’s (1609) Ovidian word-play on malladies and mala dies speaks inter alia to the poet’s response to what he apparently views as contemporary religious intolerance. The barely veiled reference to contemporary dies mala in Sonnet 67 in “daies long since, before these last so bad” is comparable. As already noted, it would now seem that Shakespeare intends Sonnets 153 and I54 to comprise the apex of the pyramidal triangle in the form of a single, one-in-two entity. At the same time, and in another perspective, they serve a transitional purpose, in that they pave the way for the pro-Catholic allegory of A Lover’s Complaint. An anagrammatic reading confirms that (as will appear) the pyramid/triangle speaks simultaneously to a plurality of referential forms, including the triumphant monumentum and meta invoked respectively by Horace and Ovid, the penitential ascent of Dante’s Mountain of Purgatory, the eternal Form of Plato’s eternal triangle, the sequence’s thematic love triangle, and the indivisible triad of the Holy Trinity. Figure 1 (below), which is based on an anagrammatic reading of Sonnets 1-153/154 and their interactions, represents what I take to comprise Shakespeare’s notional ordering of the one hundred and fifty three sonnets in the sequence (where 153 and 154 are “one in two”). The sides of the equilateral triangle are seemingly conceived as corresponding to the poet, his patron-lover, and his mistress, respectively – a gesture that appears to be loosely based on Thomas Watson’s carmen figuratum entitled ‘My Loue is Past: a Pasquine Piller erected in the despite of Loue’.8 The notional disposition of the names of the three lovers is shown in Figure 1. Watson’s poem is founded in part upon the cryptographic device known as transilition, which involves what OED defines as “the action of leaping over or ‘skipping’; omission of intermediate numbers”. Following Dante, Shakespeare is found to divide the sequence into a penitential ascent consisting of seven incremental stages, the stages being demarcated by “transilition sonnets” according to an implicit schema of what Watson calls “ouer skipping by rule and order”. The transilition sonnets, 18, 63, 99, 126, 144, and 153/4, are emphasised in Figure 1. As we shall see, this scheme of over-skipping is regulated by reference to the “rule and order” of Dante’s compositional numerology, being based on a symmetrical alternation of the numbers 1 and 3.

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The apex of the triangle (marked “A” in Figure 1) corresponds to the number 153 and is made up of the one-in-two of Sonnets 153/154. The notional pyramidal triangle thus formed is summarized in Figure 1. The closely modelled reflection of Shakespeare’s virtual triangle in Thorpe’s triangular text is also indicated: E A E R 151 152 L E 148 149 150 I P 144 145 146 147 Z S 139 140 141 142 143 A K 133 134 135 136 137 138 B A 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 E H 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 T S 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 H 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 M 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 S A 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 T I 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 068 070 072 073 074 075 A L 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 N L 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 L I 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 E W 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 Y W R I O T H E S L E Y H E N R Y

TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF. THESE. INSUING. SONNETS. Mr. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE. AND. THAT. ETERNITIE. PROMISED. BY. Figure 1

The key features of the pyramid, including the “transilitional” function of Sonnets 18, 63, 99, 126, 144, and 153/4 will be explained and illustrated in what follows. As Fowler hypothesizes, the base of the pyramid is deemed to comprise Sonnets 1-17, each of which is found to be addressed in anagram exclusively to Henry Wriothesley as puer formosus. The basal or founding layer (1-17) in Figure 1 is thus aptly one and the same as the side of the triangle that is dedicated to HENRY WRIOTHESLEY (see Figure 1). The opening lines of Thorpe’s dedication are so disposed as to reflect this structure in a conventional gesture of inverse or chiastic quotation.

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Thorpe’s lapidary typography is decorously appropriate to the pyramidal form, and the line which contains the reference to “THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF” is now seen to correspond to the base line which is dedicated to “HENRY WRIOTHESLEY”. The inverse citation in “Mr. W.H.” of the initial letters of Shakespeare’s HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams is conventionally compliant with the protocols of quasianagrammatic inter-textuality, whereby a process of inter-penetrative transposition is deemed to set one text in revelatory apposition to the other.9 In an arcane gesture charactericstic of title-pages of the period, the title “Mr.” appears to refer to the sense in which the Earl of Southampton is in truth a Lord, and hence Dominus, and hence Maister or Mr. As explained in Chapter Three, the “Lordship” of the Earl of Southampton is an important poetic attribute of the poet’s patron-lover, providing a supposedly natural affiliation between Adon (“Lord”) and the mythical hero Adonis. Just as the name of the onlie begetter of the sequence is notionally located in the engendering basal layer of the pyramid, the names of the poet and his mistress (identified in the sequence in clear anagrammata as Elizabeth Vere) are also expressively disposed (see Figure 1). The poet’s name is appropriately depicted as undertaking (inter alia) the penitential ascent of the pyramid, while that of the allegedly promiscuous mistress is seen to take a downward moral path (a path specified in the covert dimension of the Elizabeth Vere sonnets). As will become clear, the paired letters adjacent to each other at the corners of the notional triangle of names (WW, EE, and YY) combine to create the Chaucerian noun WEY a resonant quotation from The Parson’s Tale, in which the narrator’s “ful noble wey” is emphatically epitomized as the way of penitence. It is thus that the one-in-two of Sonnets 153/154, standing in hendiadys as apices numerales (in the literal sense) at the apex of the penitential ascent, are also found to contain a plurality of hermeneutic FULL NOBLE WEY (sic) anagrams. The penitential ascent made by poet and reader in the course of the sequence culminates in the poet’s prayer for redemption at the summit of the Dantean Mountain of Penitence, from which an overview of the upward journey may be gained. Hermeneutic PENITENCE and DANTE ALIGHIERE (sic) anagrams in Sonnets 153 and 154 confirm Shakespeare’s formal invocation of the ascent in Purgatorio. It is thus that the traditional requirements of Orphic confessio are reflected overall in the carefully crafted neo-Platonic design which endows the sequence with logical coherence and an aesthetic integrity that has necessarily been largely invisible to post-Enlightenment readers. When read in this way, the sequence gains a newly discovered coherence.

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It is important to note, however, that the penitential ascent of the notional pyramid is not continuous, but progresses in seven discrete increments, in the manner of Dante’s account of the ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory. For the purposes of the division into seven parts, Shakespeare envisages the notional pyramid as taking the form of a onedimensional triangle in the form of a hypothetical technopaegnion. As noted above, each discrete quantum or sub-sequence of sonnets is marked in accordance with the principles of transilition or “over-skipping”, as described in the explanatory note attached to Thomas Watson’s carmen figuratum entitled ‘A Pasquine Piller erected in the despite of Loue’. In Shakespeare’s ordering of the sequence, each of Sonnets 18, 63, 99, 126, 144, and 153/4 (“the transilition sonnets”) is found to mark the accession of a new level in the ascent of the notional pyramid or Mountain of Penitence, and a leaving behind of the lower levels. The OED entry for the word transilition is apparently based solely upon Watson’s text: ”Obs. rare. The action of leaping over or ‘skipping’; omission of intermediate numbers”. The OED citations are restricted to Watson’s explanatory notes: 1582 T. Watson țĮIJȠȝʌĮșȓĮ: Passionate Cent. Loue lxxx, Founded by transilition or ouer skipping of number by rule and order, as from 1 to 3, 5, 7, and 9. 1582 T. Watson țĮIJȠȝʌĮșȓĮ: Passionate Cent. Loue lxxx, By tables of transilition to decypher any thing that is written by secret transposition of letters.

The Piller itself (Hekatompathia LXXXI) is followed by a version of the poem entitled ‘Expansio columnae praecedentis’ (LXXXII). The Expansio is found to comprise the conventionally disposed poem upon which the technopaegnion is based. The motto AMARE EST INSANIRE is carried in vertical acrostics at the beginning and end of lines 1-16: LXXXII Expansio Columnae praecedentis. A At last, though late, farewell olde wellada; m Mirth for mischaunce strike vp a newe alarm; a And Ciprya la nemica mia r Retyre to Cyprus Ile and cease thy warr, e Els must thou proue how Reason can by charme E Enforce to flight thy blyndfold bratte and thee. s So frames it with me now, that I confess t The life I ledde in Loue deuoyd of rest

A m a r e E s t

174

Chapter Four I It was a Hell, where none felt more then I, n Nor any with like miseries forlorn. s Since therefore now my wors are wexed less, a And Reason bids me leaue olde wellada, n No longer shall the world laugh me to scorn: i I’le choose a path that shall not leade awri. r Rest then with me from your blinde Cupids carr e.Each one of you, that serue and would be free. H’is double thrall that liu’s as Loue thinks best Whose hand still Tyrant like to hurt is prest.

I n s a n i r e

The text of this poem is remodelled in the Piller in the form of a carmen figuratum (Figure 2): A 1 At 2 last, though 3 late, farewell 4 olde well a da: A m 5 Mirth or mischance strike a 6 vp a newe alarM, And m 7 Cypria la nemica r 8 miA Retire to Cyprus Ile, a e 9 & cease thy waRR, Els must thou proue how r E 10 Reason can by charmE Enforce to flight thy e s 11 blindsolde bratte & thee. So frames it with mee now, E t 12 that I confesS, The life I ledde in Loue deuoyde I 12 of resT, It was a Hell, where none felte more then I, n 11 Nor anye with lyke miseries forlorN. Since n s 10 therefore now my woes are wexed lesS, And s a 9 Reason bidds mee leaue olde welladA, a n 8 No longer shall the worlde laughe mee i 7 to scorN; I’le choose a path that n r 6 shall not leade awrie. Rest i 5 then with mee from your 4 blinde Cupids carR r e. 3 Each one of 2 you, that 1 serue, 3 and would be 5 srcE. H’is dooble thrall e. 7 that liu’s as Loue thinks best, whose 9 hande still Tyrant like to hurte is preste. Figure 2

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In this version of the poem the motto in “AMARE EST INSANIRE” is carried by external acrostics formed intermittently by the letters at the beginnings and ends of lines. The “shape” of the Piller is regulated metrically (that is to say, syllabically), the number attributed to any given line being equivalent to the number of syllables in that line. Lines 1-12 are numbered in crescendo as 1-12, while lines 13-24 are numbered in diminuendo as 12-1 (see Figure 2). By way of contrast (as Watson explains), the foot or base of the Piller is founded not on the consecutive numbering of consecutive lines, but upon the transilition that comprises the sequence 1, 3, 5, 7, 9: ALL such as are but of indifferent capacitie, and haue some skill in Arithmetike, by viewing this Sonnet following compiled by rule and number, into the forme of a piller, may soone iudge, howe much art & study the Author hath bestowed in the same. Where in as there are placed many preaty obseruations, so these which I will set downe, may be marked for the principall, if any man haue such idle leasure to looke it ouer, as the Authour had, when he framed it. First therfore it is to be noted, that the whole piller (except the basis or foote thereof) is by relation of either halfe to the other Antitheticall or Antisillabicall. Secondly, how this posie (Amare est insanire) runneth twyse through out ye Columne, if ye gather but the first letter of euery whole verse orderly (excepting the two last) and then in like manner take but the last letter of euery one of the said verses, as they stand. Thirdly is to bee obserued, that euery verse, but the two last, doth end with the same letter it beginneth, and yet through out the whole a true rime is perfectly obserued, although not after our accustomed manner. Fourthly, that the foote of the piller is Orchematicall, ye is to say, founded by transilition or ouer skipping of number by rule and order, as from 1 to 3, 5, 7, & 9: the secret vertue whereof may be learned in Trithemius, as namely by tables of transilition to decypher any thing that is written by secret transposition of letters, bee it neuer so cunningly conueighed. And lastly, this obseruation is not to be neglected, that when all the foresaide particulars are performed, the whole piller is but iust 18 verses, as will appeare in the page following it, Per modum expansionis.

Trithemius’ concept of transilition is found to be of central importance in relation to the neo-Platonic structuring of Shakespeare’s sonnet pyramid. For this reason it may be helpful at this point to emphasise that Watson’s adoption of the device of transilition is by no means a unique instance. Spenser’s nearly contemporaneous sonnet addressed to Gabriel Harvey contains, as Fowler has demonstrated, a cryptographic external acrostic based on the lambda sequence 1, 3, 9, 27, 81.10 It is now

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discovered that Spenser’s hermeneutic TRANSILITION anagrams mark a numerical “over-skipping” in terms of the lambda sequence. In the interest of clarity, one only of Spenser’s TRANSILITION anagrams is shown below. In accordance with conventional practice, the sonnet is also imbued with attributive IOHANNES TRYTHEMIUS (sic) anagrams: Harvey, [the happy above happiest men] [I Read: that sitting like A looker-on Of this] worldes stage, does Note with critique pen The Sharpe dislikes of eacH condit|Ion: And As one care|Lesse of suspit|Ion Ne fawnesT for the favour of the great: Ne fearest foolish reprehensION Of faulty men, which daunger to theE threat But freely doeS, of what thee list, en|[TReat, Like a great Lord of peerelesse] libertY: Lifting The Good up to high Honours seat, And the evill damning Ever|Mo to dy. For Life, and Death Is in thy doomefull Vvriting: So thy renowne liveS ever by endighting.

I O H A N N E S

T R-A N S-I L-I T ION TR Y T-H E-M I-V S

The attributive anagrams are formally inaugurated and additionally marked in duplicitous deixis by the conspicuously located phrase “I read” at the beginning of the second line. In addition, the necessary sub-division of en|treat (thus) is also conventionally corroborative in its consequential release of Latin en! (“behold”) - a parallel gesture which marks and inaugurates the surname. The shared condensa is also duplicitously epideictic, as here in the conventionally deferential address to Trithemius in “thy renowne liues euer”: IOHANNES TRYTHEMIUS; TRANSILITION: LIfe ANd Death Is IN ThY dooME|full writing: SO THy Renowne LIVeS eveR

When the influential character of Trithemius’ writings in the late medieval period and the early Renaissance is considered, it seems likely that earlier examples of poetic transilition will be found to exist. As we shall see, Shakespeare himself makes further use of the device in individual sonnets elsewhere in the sequence, and in particular in Sonnet 144.

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To reiterate: in Shakespeare’s sequence each of Sonnets 18, 63, 99, 126, 144, and 153/4 (“the transilition sonnets”) is found to mark the accession of a new level in the penitential ascent of the notional pyramid which, in one optimally relevant perspective, is also viewed as Dante’s Mount of Purgatory. It is important to bear in mind, however, that the function of the transilition sonnets in this context is typically manifold. Sonnet 18, for example, marks the leaving behind of the first stratum of poems in the basal group 1-17 and at the same time establishes a new “triangle rising” with its base in 18-33 (see Figure 1), and consisting of Sonnets 18-153/4. 11 The first stage of the triangle in 1-17 is unique in that each sonnet therein is addressed (by way of concealed anagrams) to Henry Wriothesley and is characterized (following established precedent inter alia in Ovid, Esrasmus, and Thomas Wilson) by a markedly duplicitous, covert invitation to sexual intimacy. The anagrams which support this strategy are typically indecent and specific, but as noted in Chapter Three, the indecencies are Classical, conventional, and (in the historical and literary contexts) decorously relevant to the youthful and manifestly effeminate young earl. The purported invitation to sexual intercourse neither implies nor excludes an actual invitation or actual sexual intimacy – these alternatives being aesthetically irrelevant. The process continues as the sequence proceeds. Each transilitional sonnet marks the leaving behind of the sonnets before and below it, and inaugurates a new “triangle rising” above it. As the penitential ascent proceeds, Sonnet 18 is found to mark the epochal start-point of the arithmetically defined sonnet-group comprised in Sonnets 18-62 and the newly defined upper triangle in 18-153/154 (see Figure 1). Similarly, Sonnet 63 (numerologically and appositely marking the climacteric, a word derived from the Greek for “rung of the ladder”), again marks the leaving behind of the stages below it and establishes a new triangle rising” with its base on 63-75. At the same time Sonnet 63 marks the start-point of the sonnet-group that is comprised in Sonnets 63-98. Fowler’s instinct as to the pivotal character of Sonnets 99 and 126 is now also proved right, as is his sense that the sonnet which inaugurates the final ten sonnets is also significantly located. The triangle rising from Sonnet 99, for example, has three sides consisting of ten numerals each. Within this triangle, Sonnets 99, 126, 144, and 153/4 are epochal in the sense that each inaugurates a new triangle rising (see Figure 3):

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Chapter Four E A E R 151 152 L E 148 149 150 I P 144 145 146 147 Z S 139 140 141 142 143 A K 133 134 135 136 137 138 B A 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 E H 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 T S 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 H 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 Figure 3

Fowler notes that “the twelve-line 126 begins a twenty-eight-sonnet triangle” and that the number 28 is a symbol of perfection. He points also to the importance of the sonnet that “begins a culminating ten-sonnet triangle”, and continues: “Moreover, two of these triangular numbers had great arithmological significance, 10 as the principle of divine creativity itself, 28 as a symbol of moral perfection”. The ordering of the sequence thus represents an overall progression from the eschatological insouciance of the basal seduction sonnets (1-17) to a locus of confession and penitence in the “culminating ten-sonnet triangle”. The process of notionally upward, incremental progress continues until the one-in-two apex is reached in Sonnets 153/154. Each sonnet-stage (117, 18-62, 63-98, 99-125, 126-143, 144-152, and 153/154) is found to have its own general character and its own role to play in the penitential ascent. Poet and reader proceed from one sonnet-quantum to the next, beginning in 1-17 and ending in the invocation of Dante’s Purgatorio and Chaucer’s “ful noble wey” of penitence at the apex in 153/154. Watson defines transilition as the over-skipping of number “by rule and order”. Here again, Fowler’s numerological analysis is found to be helpful in identifying the numerical “rule and order” of Shakespeare’s schema. Referring to Dante’s Purgatorio, Fowler points out that a symmetrical array in the form 3 | 1 | 3 is found in the seven “cornices” of purgatory.12 As will be evident from Figure 4, the “over-skipping” that marks out the seven stages of the pyramid is regulated by a neo-Platonic formulation involving a somewhat similar alternation of 1 and 3: 1+3+3+3+3+3+1

In Figure 4 the singular apex comprised in the one-in-two of Sonnets 153 and 154 is again represented by the letter A. Each of the transilitional

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sonnets (emphasised) mark the inauguration of new triangles arising, and A represents the ultimate locus of penitential purgation: A 151 152 148 149 150 144 145 146 147 139 140 141 142 143 133 134 135 136 137 138 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 068 070 072 073 074 075 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017

Figure 4

With reference to the ascending left-hand outer numerals (i.e. from 001 to A), each transilitional sonnet (emphasised in Figure 4) is followed by the “skipping” of two ascending numerals before the next transilitional sonnet is reached. After the first such sonnet (18), for example, 34 and 49 are skipped before the next transilitional sonnet (63) is brought into play. This process continues as the ascent proceeds. Accordingly, with specific reference to the left-hand outer numerals of the pyramid-triangle in Figure 4, the seven levels of penitential ascent are capable of summary description: 1st level

001-018

1

layer

2nd level

018-049

3

layers

3rd level

063-088

3

layers

4th level

099-118

3

layers

5th level

126-139

3

layers

6th level

144-151

3

layers

7th level

153/154

1

layer

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As the poet and the reader progress though the sequence, each of the seven levels is found to mark a discernibly different stage in the penitential ascent. As the upward journey progresses, the poet’s consciousness of his own sinful existence becomes more and more to the fore, until in Sonnet 146, for example, he prays (inter alia) for the salvation of his own “Poore soule”. In this context, Fowler’s numerological analyses are found to be perceptive indeed. All unwitting of Shakespeare’s application of Trithemius’ concept of transilition, Fowler nevertheless discerns, for example, the key role that Sonnet 126 might play in relation to the structure of the sequence. He notes that this sonnet initiates “the pyramid of 28”, and continues: We conclude that the “basis for eternity” described as more short than waste [i.e. in Sonnet 125] is in one sense Sonnet 126 itself, the sonnet on Love defying Time. Time, which figures very prominently in earlier sonnets, is never mentioned in the sequence after 126. Moreover, from a numerological point of view, 28 is suitable to eternity, as a number symbolizing the perfect bliss in heaven towards which all saints yearn.13

In due accord with the tendency thus identified, the transilitional Sonnet 144 is found to introduce a sonnet-group that is generally concerned with the poet’s consciousness of the moral and eschatological implications of his adultery. In this context, Sonnet 144 is particularly apt to introduce the penultimate level of the penitential ascent in that for the first time in the sequence it takes as its covert theme the sexually doubled nature of the poet’s apparently simultaneous liaisons with his patron and his mistress. An anagrammatic reading of the sonnet reveals the poet’s consciousness of his own adultery, and of the marriage vows that he has broken in relation to his wife – whom he names in clear plural anagrams as ANNE HATHAWAY(E): Two loues I [HAue] of comforT and dispaire, WhicH like two spirits do sugiest me still, The better [ANgell is a maN right fairE]: The Worser spirit A womaN collour’d il. To win mE soone to [Hell My] femall euill, Tempteth my better Angel from my sight, And would corrupt my saint To be a diuel: Wooing his purity with Her fowle pride. [ANd Whether that my] angel be turn’d finde, Suspect I mAY, yet Not directly tell, But being both from mE both to each friend, I gesse one angel in [AN others hel.

HA-T H A A-N W-A N Y E H A T H AN A-W N AY E AN

Sonnets Yet this shal I NerE] know but liue in doubt, Till my bad [ANgel fire my good oNE] out.

181 N-E AN-NE

The verba certa appropriate to the sonnet are comprised in plural SINNE, LUST, and ADULTERYE anagrams: Two [Loues I haue of comfort] [And Dispaire], Vvhich Like two spirits do sugieST me still, The bettER angell Is a man right fairE: The worser spirit [A woman collour’D il. To Vvin me soone] to helL my femall euill, Tempteth my bettER angel from my sight, And would corrupt mY saint to bE a diuel: Wooing his purity with her fowle pride. [AnD Vvhether that my angel be turn’d finde, Suspect I may], yet not directly telL, BuT being both from me both to each friend, I gesse one angel in an othER|s hel. Yet this [shal I nerE] know but liue in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

A-D L V-L V-ST T-ER-I-E A-D V-L T-ER Y-E A-D-V L T ER Y-E

S-I-N NE

A full, anagrammatic reading of Sonnet 144 reveals that Shakespeare models its own poetic upon Watson’s concept of the Antitheticall: First therfore it is to be noted, that the whole piller (except the basis or foote thereof) is by relation of either halfe to the other Antitheticall or Antisillabicall.

The earlier publication of Sonnet 144 (with minor variations) in William Jaggard’s The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) would tend to suggest that the poem was not composed as a transilitional sonnet for the purposes of the 1609 Quarto. As with Sonnets 18, 63, 99, and 126, this sonnet appears to have been selected retrospectively as apt for that purpose, and numbered accordingly, because of its special suitability in a transilitional role. The allocation of individual sonnets to a particular stage in the notional ascent is not necessarily based upon the chronological order of their composition. Sonnet 145, for example, was apparently composed in 1582, when Shakespeare was eighteen years old (see below). It gains its place in the culminating ten-sonnet triangle by virtue of the vivid reminder that it affords of the poet’s marriage vows and of his adultery. The Antitheticall theme of Sonnet 144 is conspicuous in the poet’s proemial distinction between “comfort and dispaire” and between “a man” (line 3) and “a woman” (line 4). Indeed, the sonnet as a whole is

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informed by the invocation of opposites. In addition to attributive IOSEPH WATSON and TRANSILITION anagrams, Shakespeare marks his quasianagrammatic invocation of Watson’s poem by means of plural AMARE INSANIRE anagrams, one of two AMARE anagrams being dedicated to the man, and the other to the woman. The male AmarE anagram has its forma in “A man right fairE”, while the forma of the female AmarE anagram is comprised in “A woman colour’d il. / To win mE”. Shakespeare’s ANNE anagrams in the sestet are relevant to his citation of Watson’s amare insanire and are included in the annotated version below: Two loues I haue of comfort and dispaire, Which like two spirits do sugiest me still, The better Angell is [a MAn right faire]: The worseR spirit [A woman collour’d [Il. To wiN ME] soone] to hell my fem|All euill, Tempteth my betteR angel from my Sight, ANd would corrupt my saint to bE a diuel: Woo|Ing his purity with heR fowle pridE. [ANd whether that my angel be turN’d findE, Suspect I may, yet Not directly tell, But being both from mE both to each friend, I gesse one angel in [AN others hel. Yet this shal I NerE] know but liue in doubt, Till my bad [ANgel fire my good oNE] out.

A-MA I R N E S AN I-R-E AN-N-E

A MA R E AN N E

AN N-E AN-NE

The shared figura condensa is located at the end of the respective extensae in the couplet: ANNE HATHAWAY; HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; ELISABETH VERE; SINNE; LUST; ADULTERY: YeT THiS ShAL I NeRE knoW but Liue IN DOUbt, TiLL my bAD ANgeL fIRE mY good oNE oUT.

The sonnet’s confessional verba certa are also consonant with the upper levels of the penitential ascent in that they are accompanied by PENITENSE (sic) anagrams. In the interests of clarity, a selection (only) of the relevant anagrams is shown: Two [Loues I haue of comfort] And dis|[Paire], Vvhich like two spirits do sugieST mE still, The better angell is [A man right faire]:

P E N

L V-ST A

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The worser spirIT a woman collour’D il. To VviN mE sooN|e to hell my femall euilL, Tempteth my bettER angel from mY sight, And would corrupT my saint to bE a diuel: Wooing his purity with her fowle [Pride]. [AnD Vvhether that mY angel bE] turN’d finde, Suspect I may, yeT not directly telL, But being both from mE both to each friend, I gesse one angel iN an otheR|s hel. Yet this [Shal I nerE] know but liuE in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

IT E-N S E

D V-L T-ER-Y E P A-D-V E-N L I-T T-E E R N I-E S-E

The identities of the man and the woman are revealed in HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams and ELISABETH, ELISA, and VERE anagrams – of which representative examples are shown below: Two loues I [Haue] of comfort and dispaire, [Which likE] two spirits do sugiest me still, The betteR angell is A maN RIght fairE: The worser Spirit [a woman colour’d IL. To win mE] soonE tO hell my femall euill, TempteTH my better angel from my sight, And would corrupt my saint to bE a diuel: Wooing hiS purity [Vvith hER fowLE] pridE. And whethER that mY angel bE turn’d finde, Suspect I may, yet not directly tell, But being both from me both to each friend, I gesse one angel in an others hel. Yet this shal I nere know but liue in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

H E N-RI-E

V-ER E

W R I O TH E S-LE Y

A S-IL E

V ER-E

The shared condensa is again aptly located. Typically, the concealed anagrams specifically identify the otherwise un-named “two loues” who are invoked in general terms only in the overt dimension of the text: HENRIE WRIOTHESLIE; ELISA VERE: Two loUES I hauE Of comfort And dispairE, WhicH LIkE two spiRIts do Sugiest mE still

Shakespeare’s scheme in Sonnet 144 also follows Watson in that it is both “Antitheticall” and “Antisillabicall”. An Antisyllabicall reading of the quatrains and couplet produces the cryptically concealed words TELL and TOUT respectively. In the sexual vocabulary of the period the word tell (i.e. “count”, and hence cunt) signifies cunnus, and tout is Chaucer’s

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“towte” and signifies culus. As always the gesture is corroborated by and corroborates conventionally constructed TELL and TOUT anagrams in lines 1-12 and 13-14, respectively. The meaning of tell is confirmed by the corroborative anagram in line 7 and an authorial clue to the concealment of tell is provided by the duplicitous assertion that “I may … not directly tell” in line 10: Two loues I haue of comfort and dispaire, Which like two spirits do sugiest me still, [The better Angell] is a man right faire: The worser spirit a woman collour'd il. [To win me soone to hell] my femall euill, [Tempteth my better angel] from my sight, And would [Corr|Upt my saiNT] to be a diuel: Wooing his purity with her fowle pride. And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend, Suspect I may, yet not directly tell, But being both from me both to each friend, I gesse one [angel in an others] hel. Yet [This shal I nere know but liue in doubt, [Till my bad angel fire my good one OUT].

T-ELL

TE-L L

T E L-L T-OUT

T O-UT

The distinction that the poet makes between the quatrains and the couplet follows Watson’s concept of “euery whole verse orderly (excepting the two last)”. The principles of transilition, applied by Watson, Spenser, and Shakespeare in individual poems, are traceable also in the names that are notionally annexed to the sides of the neo-Platonic pyramid (illustrated in Figure 1). Watson’s description of transilition refers to the deciphering of that which “is written by a secret transposition of letters”. As indicated in Figure 1, the sides of the pyramidal triangle appear to represent (inter alia) the love triangle of poet, patron, and mistress. The sides are envisaged as corresponding to the letters of the respective names and surnames of the three persons involved. There seems to be no attempt to link the letters of the three names with the text of individual sonnets themselves, but the “secret transposition” of letters at the corners of the triangle gives rise to the word WEY, thus invoking the locus classicus of Chaucer’s ful noble wey of pentitence. The letters and single spaces of the names (as thus formulated) are numerologically and formally apt in that they number seventeen in each case. In relating the names one to another, Shakespeare imitates the conventional dynamic of Ovid’s triumphant triangular figura intexta in astra spatium nostrum (“my course the stars”), which follows the transit of

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the sun: low in the eastern part of the text, high in the middle, and low again in the western half of the text.14 Shakespeare’s names are notionally disposed in such a way that they may be read by starting in the east, progressing to the zenith, and then descending to the west, and so around again in due sequence: WILLIAM SHAKSPERE > ELIZABETH STANLEY > HENRY WRIOTHESLEY. As we shall see, this is also the dynamic evoked in the emblem-sonnet ‘Loe as a careful huswife runnes to catch’, which immediately precedes Sonnet 144 in the sequence. As is evident from the diagram in Figure 1, the triangular arrangement of the three names affords a potential pairing of the acrostic letters WW, EE, and YY (in that order) at the respective corners of the triangle. It is thus that the (then) resonant word WEY is spelt out in a form of over-skipping or transilition at the extremities of what might be called the monumentum figuratum comprised in the structural pyramid. Shakespeare finds in this happy hermaion an entirely apt reference to the resonant wey of Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale and to the “ful noble wey” of penitence that leads “to oure lord jhesu Crist, and to the regne of glorie”. It is thus that (in the transtextual manner of Hermes) Chaucer’s narrator is deemed to supply an apt envoi to Shake-speares Sonnets: Ther is a ful noble wey and ful covenable, which may nat fayle to man ne to womman that thurgh synne hath mysgoon fro the righte wey of jerusalem celestial; and this wey is cleped penitence.

Here the operative words for Shakesepeare (and indeed for Chaucer) are “Ther is a ful noble wey … and this is cleped penitence”. Here again, the invocation of these words is formally registered in FULL NOBLE WEY and PENITENCE anagrams in Sonnets 153 and 154, the word penitence serving also as a newly invoked reticular link between Dante’s text and Chaucer’s. As will appear, the foregoing interpretation of Shakespeare’s overall plan for the Quarto sequence is corroborated by hermeneutic anagrams in the one-in-two of Sonnets 153/154 which comprise the apex of the pyramidal triangle, and which thus (as noted above) provide an overview encapsulating all that has gone before. Their importance in this context is emphasised rather than diminished by the duplicitously Anacreontic manner of the poems. In accordance with the protocols of quasianagrammatic inter-textuality, the relevant passage from Chaucer (and the expolitio with which Chaucer imbues it with overt utterances of the words wey and weyes) is deemed to be set in revelatory apposition to Sonnets 153 and 154 and hence to the sequence as a whole. In other words, the full import of the sequence can only be understood if the reader (after reading,

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exscribing, and further re-reading) is able to bring to mind and into present consciousness the resonant words “ther is a ful noble wey ... and this wey is cleped penitence”. The eschatological insouciance of Sonnets 1-17 (for example) is intended to be read in this context. The word wey is prominent in Chaucer’s text, and for Shakespeare and his age the Parson’s words comprise a literary locus classicus in relation to the theme of penitence (emphasis added): Oure sweete lord God of hevene, that no Man wole perisse, but wole that we comen alle yo yhr knoweleche of hym, and to the blisful lif that is perdurable, amonesteth us by the prophete jeremie, that seith in thys wyse: stondeth upon the weyes, and seeth and axeth of olde pathes (that is to seyn, of olde sentences) which is the goode wey. And wald eth in that wey, and ye shal fynde refresshynge for youre soules, etc. Manye been the weyes espirituels that leden fold to oure lord jhesu Crist, and to the regne of glorie. Of whiche weyes, ther is a ful noble wey and ful covenable, which may nat fayle to man ne to womman that thurgh synne hath mysgoon fro The righte wey of jerusalem celestial; and this wey is cleped penitence, of which man sholde gladly herknen and enquere with his herte…

Shakespeare sets Chaucer’s text in notional apposition to his own by following the protocols of quasi-anagrammatic inter-textuality. In particular, he incorporates attributes doubled CHAUCERE (sic) anagrams and quotes the key phrase ful noble wey in closely associated FULL NOBLE WEY anagrams which are enjambed across the one-in-two text(s) of Sonnets 153 and 154: Cupid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, A maide of Dyans this aduantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe In a could vallie-fountaine of that ground: Which borrowd from this holie fire of loue, A datelesse liuely heat still to indure, And grew a seething bath which yet men proue, Against strange malladies a soueraigne cure: But at my mistres [Eie loues brand new fired, E ThE boy foR triall] Needes would touch my brest, T-E-R-N I sick withALL the helpe of bath desired, ALL And thether hied a sad distemperd guest. But found no cure, the bath [For my helpe] lies, F [VvherE Cupid got [New fire]; mY] mistres eye. V N W | | |

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The LittLE Loue-God lying OncE a sleepe, L-LE O E Laid bY his side his heart inflaming Brand, B Y Whilst many Nymphes that vou’d chast LifE to keep, L-E Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand, [The fayR|est votary tooke vp that fire,] T-R Which many Leg|Ions of true hearts had warm’d, I ANd so the GeneralL of hot desirE, AN-G-L-E Was sleeping by a Virgin hand disarm'd. This brand she quenched in a coole Well by, Which from loues fire tooke heat perpetuall, Growing a bath and healthfull remedy, For men diseasd, but I my Mistrisse thrall, Came there for cure and this by that I proue, Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue.

The WEY anagrams (which are set in expolitio) are especially significant in that they speak at this culminating point to the triangular motif W-E-Y which informs the pyramidal eternall triangle. Generated in the close association of FULL NOBLE WEY, the WEY anagrams are pervasive therafter. Their trans-textual deployment, involving the spanning of Sonnet 153 and Sonnet 154 is a formal marker in the manner of Hermes (the god of textual boundaries and of boundary-crossings) of the hendiadys that defines their inter-penetration: But found no cure, the bath for my helpe lies, [WherE Cupid got new fire; mY] mistres eye.

W-E | Y

W W-E-Y | E Y W W E-Y E Y

The littlE Loue-God ly|ing OncE a sleepe, Laid bY his side his heart inflaming Brand, [Whilst many] [Nymphes that vou’d chast LifE to keep, [CamE tripping bY, but in her maiden hand, The fayrest votarY tooke vp that fire, [Which many] Legions of true hearts had warm]’d, W And so thE Generall of hot desire, E [Was sleeping bY] a Virgin hand disarm’d. Y W This brand shE quenched in a coole [WEll bY], WE-Y W E-Y [Which from loues firE tooke heat perpetuall], W E Growing a bath and healthfull rE|medY], E Y For men diseasd, but I my Mistrisse thraLL, Y Came there for cure and this by that I proue, Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue.

The eternal health offered by the ful noble wey of penitence is evoked in the concluding FULL anagrams which are marked respectively by the

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phrase “healthfull remedy” and by the formae in “Fire … tooke heat perpetualL” and in “health|[FulL] remedy”: Which from loues [Fire tooke heat perpet|UaLL], Growing a bath and health|[fULL] remedy, For men diseasd, but I my Mistrisse thraLL, Came there for cure and this by that I proue, Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue.

F-ULL FU LL

F ULL

Shakespeare has taken care to ensure that the letters of the enjambed extensa of the NOBLE anagram form a transverse rectilinear trace across the metrical and visual field of the text – again a conventional reference to the deemed interventions of Hermes (and thus a registration for the reader of authorial intent): But found no cure, the bath for my helpe lies, Where Cupid got New fire; my mistres eye. The little Loue-God lying Once a sleepe, Laid by his side his heart inflaming Brand, Whilst many Nymphes that vou’d chast LifE to keep, Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand, The fayrest votary tooke vp that fire,

N O B L-E

The effect is to connect the two sonnets in a gesture of Hermetic ligatio, a joining-together that is both marked and aesthetically corroborated by the trans-textual rectilinear trace. It is only when many such traces are noted and compared that the authenticity of the device becomes fully persuasive. The similarly emphatic transverse extensa of Virgil’s honorific AUGUSTUS anagram in the proem to the Aeneid is a locus classicus in this context: [Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus] ab oris Italiam fato profUGUS Laviniaque venit litora multum ille et terris iactaTUS et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram multa quoque et bello passus dum conderet urbem inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.

A UGUS TUS

In a conventional gesture of reciprocal corroboration, the shared condensae of Shakespeare’s associated CHAUCER and FUL NOBLE WEY anagrams are comprised in similarly disposed and similarly worded locations in the couplets of the respective sonnets:

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CHAUCER(E); FUL NOBLE WEY: 153: CUre, the BAth fOR mY HELpe Lies, /Where CUpid got New firE; my mistres eyE. 154: CamE therE for CUre And this BY that I proue, / Loues Fire Heates Water, water cooles NOt LoUE.

It would seem that Shakespeare’s pyramidal gesture was readily apparent to his contemporaries and his pre-Enlightenment successors. Fowler finds a possible reference to Shakespeare’s pyramid in Milton’s poem ‘An Epitaph on the Admirable Poet W Shakespeare’ (1630). Printed in the Second Folio of 1632, Milton’s epitaph is found to incorporate a SONNETES anagram in lines 1-4, an anagram which is specifically associated with the overtly stated epithet “a star-ypointing Pyramid”: What neede my [Shakespeare for his] honour’d bones, The labour Of aN Age, iN piled [stonE|s] Or thaT his hallowed ReliquES should be hid Vnder a star-ypointing Pyramid?

S O-N-N-E T-ES

The figura condensa of Milton’s SONNETES anagram is so formulated as to identify Shakespeare’s Sonnetes with the monumental pyramid: SONNETES: The labor Of aN agE in piled StoNES

It is also noteworthy that Milton is found specifically to describe Shakespeare’s“hallowed Reliques” as lying “Vnder a star-ypointing Pyramid”. It seems possible that the historical scope of the sonnets, from Sonnet 145 (1582) to Sonnets 153/154 (1609) may be reflected in Milton’s “labour of an Age”. A significant aesthetic function of the triangular structure of the sonnet sequence is to provide formal corroboration of the theme of erotic triangulation which is found to inform the work as a whole. Several commentators have pointed in passing to the motif of triangulation in the sequence, but it is perhaps Colin Burrow who has come closest to the truth in his recognition of the significance of the poet’s mistress in relation to the triadic tendency: Her … role in the sequence is to triangulate desire, in every sense of ‘triangulate’: the presence of a female outside the close and mostly male

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bonds of the earlier poems makes the love triangular; it also negatively defines and shapes the contours of the male-male love. Rivalry is one of the forces at the heart of the sequence…17

Burrow is by no means alone in his diagnosis of an all-informing triangulation, but his claim that the role of the poet’s mistress in the sequence is “to triangulate desire” is particularly suggestive. The GraecoRoman poetic requires that literary utterance be composed in terms of words and phrases which inter-connect (covertly, in the manner of Hermes) with a plurality of referential contexts. In this context it is noteworthy that the irreducible, minimum building block of inter-textual reticulation in the Graeco-Roman tradition is the triangle, as for example in Shakespeare’s invocation of the concept of penitence in Sonnets 153/4: Dante penitenzia \

—

Chaucer penitence /

Shakespeare penitence

The Hermetic inter-linking of the words penitenzia and penitence also creates a newly revealed affinity between the leading Italian and English poets of the early Renaissance – a reticulation that is typical of text composed in pursuit of the Graeco-Roman poetic. It is thus that Shakespeare establishes his rightful place in a triumvirate of the greatest of “modern” poets. In Shakespeare’s world the word triangle also speaks inter alia (1) to Plato’s eternal forms (and to their geometric exponents), (2) to the Platonic Triad of the good, the true, and the beautiful, (3) to the Holy Trinity, and (4) to what Shakespeare himself covertly terms the ETERNALL TRIANGLE of lovers. The triangulation of desire may be demonstrated by reference to the much misunderstood Sonnet 105, which contains hermeneutic ETERNALL TRIANGLE anagrams that are contextualized by means of a closely associated PLATO anagram. In order to demonstrate the revelatory effect of Shakespeare’s duplicitous word-play, the word since (line 3) in the extract below is replaced by the word “sins”, thus highlighting an important authorial clue as to the poet’s hidden theme and compositional motivation. The textual fragmentation inherent in the versal apparatus has the effect of converting the E of L|Et (sic) into an acrostic letter for the purposes of the forma of the ETERNALL anagram:

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L

[ET not my louE be cal’d Idolatrie, ET-E NoR my beloued as aN Idoll show, R-N Sins All alike my songs and [Praises be A [To] one], of one, stiLL such, And eueR so. LL Kinde Is my loue To day, tO morrow kinde, Still constant in A wondrous excellence, Therefore my verse to constancie confiN’de, One thing expressinG, Leaues out differencE. Faire, kinde, and true, is all my argument, Faire, kinde and true, varrying to other words, And in this change is my inuention spent, Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords. Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu’d alone. Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one.

191

P T-R L-A I TO A N G-L-E

The conventionally epideictic condensa of the PLATO anagram is disposed in such a way as to suggest in a double syntax the respect due to the Greek philosopher. Newly re-contextualized, the phrase “and euer so” speaks inter alia to the eternal forms of the revered Plato: PLATO: Praises be To one, of one, stilL such, And euer sO

The shared condensa of the ETERNALL TRIANGLE anagrams is comprised in the apt locus of “Is ALL my ARGumENT”, and the PLATO anagram (marked by the forma in “Praises be tO”) is again decorously deferential. When the anagrams are substituted for their textual matrix, the hybrid formulation thus created is succinct: Faire, kinde, and true … ETERNALL TRIANGLE

The location of the shared condensa of the ETERNALL TRIANGLE anagrams in “true is all my argument” has the effect of confirming the sonnet’s ulimate theme: ETERNALL TRIANGLE: TRuE Is ALL my ARGumENT

The indecent play on true/trou is augmented by the sexual sense of all. 19 A plurality of thematically relevant senses of the word true is thus invoked. First, the poet (as poet) and his verse are implicitly true in the literal sense of the word. Secondly, the poet’s patron-lover has failed to

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live up to his nomination as the one true Lord and the one trou Lord . In this context Wriothesley has proved untrue in two distinct ways, having betrayed the poet by stealing his mistress, and having contravened the homoerotic ethic by being un-trou (where French trou signifies anus). Thirdly, the poet’s un-true mistress may be said to be true only insofar as her surname Vere means “true” in Latin. The shared figura condensa of the PLATO, ETERNALL TRIANGLE, and SINNE anagrams is again poignantly disposed: SINNE; ETERNALL TRIANGLE; PLATO: ALL ALIke my SONGs and PRaises be To oNE

The Platonic triad “Faire (beautiful), kinde (good), and true” is specifically identified with the erotic triad of poet, patron, and mistress in terms of concealed anagrams of WILL SHAKESPEARE, HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, and ELISABETH VERE. The shared condensa of all three anagrams is aptly located in the metrically crowded concluding line: “WHIcH tHREE tILL NOw, neUER KEPt SEATE In oNE”. It is of this line that Booth (all unwitting of the concealed “point” of the sonnet) writes most perceptively: “The line is nearly prose; whether by accident or design, its rhythmic awkwardness suggests the difficulty of retaining three in one”. The duplicitous nature of Sonnet 105 is revealed in two important authorial clues which were readily apparent to Shakespeare’s original readers. First, the typically Ovidian word-play on Since and Sins in line 3 has the effect of epitomizing Wriothesley of having been not the One True/Trou Lord, but a False Idoll: LET not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, Sins all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and euer so.

In an alternative reading, therefore, the poet’s reference in “To one, of one …” is a reference to my beloued as a confirmed Idoll. A further authorial clue to the ultimate theme of this sonnet is to be found in the mannered chiasmus of line 5, which for post-Enlightenment commentators has (quite understandably) tended to suggest a merely tautologous gesture: Kinde is my loue to day : to morrow kinde,

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When read in terms of the immediate and wider literary contexts, however, this line is found to carry the alternative sense of “Kinde is my loue today (to me), to morrow kinde (to her). The gesture in “Kinde is my loue today, to morrow kinde” is directly comparable to that of Barnabe Barnes in Madrigall I of Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593): Oh powers celestial, with what sophistrie Tooke she delight, to blancke my hart by sorrow, And in such Riddels act my tragedie, Making this day for him, for me tomorrow.

Shakespeare himself invokes the distinction between today and tomorrow in a differential sense in Act 3 Scene 2 of Much Ado About Nothing, when Don Pedro protests: “There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises; as, to be a Dutchman today, a Frenchman to-morrow”. In a sonnet describing three persons in the notably periphrastic form of faire, kinde, and true, it is beholden upon the pre-Enlightenment poet to identify his dramatis personae in the specific terms of concealed anagram. Both poet and audience follow the convention that the art of poetry consists in a happy counterpointing of the general and the specific, the overt and the covert, the Apollonian and the Hermetic. As already noted, the shared figura condensa of the three sets of anagrams is located in the crowded last line of the sonnet, at the end of the relevant extensae. Shakespeare’s ELIZA VERE anagrams are composed in usual form, with the ELISA anagrams reversed and set in elevated form: Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued As an Idoll show, SInce [alL alikE] my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and euer so. Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow kinde, Still constant in a wondrous excellence, Therefore my [VERse] to constanciE confin’dE, OnE thing expressing, leaues out differencE. Faire, kinde, and true, is all my argument, Faire, kinde and true, [Varrying to otheR] words, And in this changE] is my inuention Spent, Three theams In one, which wondrous scope affords. Faire, kinde, and true, haue often Liu’d [alonE]. Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one.

A SI-L-E

VER-E VER E

A-S I L-E

V-ER E

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Elizabeth’s sexual “veering” is evoked in the VARRO anagram in line 10, and in the Varronian play (on verba and verpa) in “other words”. 20 Henry Wriothesley is ironically epitomized in terms of the “Wondrous excellencE” that serves as the outline model of the WRIOTHESLIE anagram: Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and euer so. Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow kinde, Still constant in a [Wond|Rous excellence], Therefore my verse to constanc|Ie confin’de, One THing expressing, leauES out difference. Faire, kinde, and true, is alL my argument, FairE, kinde and true, varry|Ing to other words, And in this changE is my inuention spent, Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords. Faire, kinde, and true, [HauE] often liu’d alone. Which three till now, NeueR kept seate In onE.

W-R I O-TH-ES L I E H-E N-R-I-E

In the context of the three lovers and their eternall triangle, the poet’s own anagrammatic identification is also a generic pre-requisite. It is aesthetically necessary, also, because the inter-twining of the respective extensae of the lovers’ anagrams is a conventional reflection of their sexual intimacies. The interwoven LESBIA and CATULLUS anagrams in Catullus’ elegy ‘Vivamus, mea Lesbia’ are comparable. The forma of the SHAKESPERE anagram is comprised in the phrase “Since/Sins all alikE”, a designedly revelatory disposition which emphasises the confessional dimension of the sonnet (as in “Sins all alike my songs and praises be”): Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, [Since all alike] my songs and praises be To one, of one, still sucH, And euer so. Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow Kinde, Still constant in a wondrous excellencE, Therefore my verse to con|Stancie confin’de, One thing ex|Pressing, leaues out differencE. FaiRE, kinde, and true, is all my argument, Faire, kinde and true, [VARRrying tO] other words, And in this change is my inuention spent, Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords.

S H-A K E S P-E RE

Sonnets Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu’d alone. [Which three tILL] now, neuer kept seate in one.

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W-ILL

The syncopic VARRO anagram in line 10 aptly located. The shared figura condensa is again situated in an appropriate place in the text. The words “Which three” are now found to refer, in a double syntax, to the three lovers: WILLIAM SHAKESPERE; HENRIE WRIOTHESLIE; ELISA VERE:

WHicH thREE tILL NoW, nEUER KePt SEAtE In OnE.

In the next part of this chapter the dramatis personae of the sonnet sequence are identified in more detail, and the importance of the “biographical” context in relation to anagramma figuratum is explained.

2. Dramatis Personae In his New Cambridge edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, G Blakemore Evans poses six questions, the answers to which, he suggests, might resolve “the burden of the ‘mystery’ that the Sonnets impose”.21 Evans’ six questions may be briefly summarized as follows: (1) to what extent, if at all, are the sonnets autobiographical? (2) If a biographical reading is in order, who “in real life” were the other persons who “figure in the sonnet story”? (3) Are Sonnets 1-126 addressed to a young man (and to the same young man)? (4) During what part or parts of Shakespeare’s career were the sonnets composed? (5) Is the order of the sonnets in Q regulated methodically (e.g. by the author) or essentially random? (6) Was Thorpe’s Quarto of 1609 published without Shakespeare’s consent? As already noted, these questions arise out of the very nature of Shakespeare’s Classical poetic, which depends upon the notional division of text into two distinct dimensions, namely the overt and the covert, the ostensible and the concealed. The anonymity of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and their tendency to a periphrastic indirectness, are explicable in terms of the protocols attaching to text composed in the Graeco-Roman tradition. A similar tendency to an ostensibly non-specific and anonymous discourse may be traced in ancient Greek, in Classical Latin, and (for example) in Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton. It is thus that Evans’ questions have been asked by other commentators - mutatis mutandis - of Virgil’s poetry, of Ovid’s, of Dante’s, of Petrarch’s, of Chaucer’s, and of Milton’s.

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It is perhaps J B Leishman, an extraordinarily perceptive reader of Shakespeare and of the sonnets, who has come closest to understanding their tendency: Some perhaps might be inclined to see in this preference for metaphorical periphrasis to direct allusion no more than the conscious or unconscious influence of a certain deliberately chosen hermeticism or hieroglyphicalness which pervades Shakespeare’s sonnets, as though he were trying to ensure that no reader should be able to discover from them the identity of the person addressed. This may indeed have been a contributory factor, but more important, I think, is the relation between this fact and … the fact, namely, that in the sonnets…there is an abundance of metaphor and metaphorical personification, but … very little – indeed, almost a complete absence – of detailed and direct description.22

In brief, Leishman rightly diagnoses in Shakespeare’s preference for periphrasis over direct allusion the influence of “a certain deliberately chosen hermeticism or hieroglyphicalness”. What is important, he suggests, is the relation between this fact and the fact that there is in the sonnets “almost a complete absence of detailed and direct description”. In other words, concealed specification and overt generalization go together. The acuity of that speculative insight is now confirmed. More recently, Mary North has further explored the relation between what Leishman calls “hermeticism or hieroglyphicalness” and Renaissance conventions of anonymity. In her important book The Anonymous Renaissance, North points out that “Naming and anonymity also overlap in the anagram, which can identify the author in one context and disguise the author in another”.23 In the Introduction to his magisterial edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, John Kerrigan also identifies in this context a deliberate apparent act of omission on Shakespeare’s part: Time and time again we are assured that the friend will live forever in the lines. ‘Yet do thy worst, old Time’, the poet says; ‘despite thy wrong, / My love shall in my verse ever live young’ (19.13-14); ‘And thou in this shalt find thy monument’, he writes, ‘When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent’ (107.13-14); most striking of all, in Sonnet 81 he claims ‘Your name from hence immortal life shall have’ (line 5). Yet we never learn the young man’s ‘name’. Now it could be argued that Shakespeare was not in complete control of his material when he allowed this discrepancy to emerge between what he so conventionally said and what he actually delivered. But it seems much more likely … that the poet was prepared for this discrepancy to register… 24

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Shakespeare was indeed prepared for “this discrepancy” (a discrepancy inherent in the art of anagram) “to register”. We now know that in the very lines in Sonnet 81 that Kerrigan quite rightly cites as raising the expectation of naming, the name of the young man does in fact appear – not indeed expressly, but in terms of concealed anagram. Perhaps “most striking of all” in this respect is Shakespeare’s specific identification of the name of his patron, Henry Wriothesley, in the very place in which Kerrigan would most reasonably expect to find a name: HENRY: HENce your memoRY

Kerrigan himself unwittingly supplies the answer to his question when, later in his wide-ranging Introduction, he claims that “The friend is coextensive with the text”. Kerrigan rightly refuses to believe that “biographical inquiry” might solve what the calls “the ‘mystery’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets”, but in order to understand Shakespeare’s essentially onomastic verse, we must at least know the names and natures of the persons to whom he refers. As will become evident as this chapter proceeds the art of Shakespeare’s sonnets is essentially an art of onomancy in the widest sense and of onomastic anagram. As already demonstrated, the specific identifications provided by concealed anagram are by no means limited to the naming of otherwise unnamed persons. Shakespeare inhabited a literary universe in which words in general were envisaged in terms of names. As we shall see, the unspoken word sun is conspicuously withheld in Sonnet 7, as is the word rose in Sonnet 18, and as is the resonant epithet two angels in Sonnet 144. Shakespeare’s sonnets are invariably found to comprise “occasional pieces” based on anagrammatic readings of persons and events in their lives, and it thus that biographical inquiry in the wider sense is a necessary pre-requisite for an adequate reading of the sonnets. The “Cratylitic” basis of pre-Enlightenment text is most typically expressed in terms of what Laurie Maguire in Shakespeare’s Names calls onomastic legibility. An anagrammatic reading reveals that Shakespeare follows long-established tradition in basing his plays and poems in part or in whole upon an onomastic aesthetic. Perhaps influenced by Plutarch’s thinly veiled reference to the impropriety attaching to an onomastic analysis of the name Coriol|anus, Shakespeare bases his tragedy upon the onomancy that finds in Coriol(e) a “little leather” (or boy-whore in Classical Latin and in Renaissance English), and in anus the boy-whore’s culus. There is poignant dramatic irony, therefore, when Volumnia

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proudly refers to her son as having been given, in Shakespeare’s wordplay “the whole Name of the Warre” (i.e. “the hole-name of the whore”, where in this context hole is culus). In the interests of clarity of presentation, a selection only of Shakespeare’s hermeneutic WHORE and HOLE anagrams is shown in the annotated extract below: Vol. Good Ladies let’s goe. Yes, yes, yes: The Senate ha’s Letters from the Generall, [WHerein [Hee] giues my Sonne] the whOLE Name Of the WarRE: he hath in this action out-done his former deeds doubly. Val. In troth, there’s wondrous things spoke of him.

WH O-RE

H OLE

Shakespeare’s use of the word “whole” to signify hole in the sense of vagina in Sonnet 134 (q.v.) is comparable. As we have seen, it is to this onomastic tradition that Addison refers when he describes the Business of the Anagrammatist in terms of “a Name to work upon”: When the Anagrammatist takes a Name to work upon, he considers it at first as a Mine not broken up, which will not shew the treasure it contains till he shall have spent many Hours in the search of it: For it is his Business to find out one word that conceals itself in another…

Shakespeare shares what Laurie Maguire calls “the period’s interest in onomastic relevance”. Evans’ six questions thus become acutely relevant, for (to reiterate) Shakespeare is found to compose his poems and plays in pursuance of a Cratylitic aesthetic in which the inter-verbal and linguistic affiliations of names play a predominant role. The first line of Sonnet 23 (“As an vnperfect actor on the stage”) is for example found to derive from Shakespeare’s prior analysis of Christopher Marlowe’s surname in terms of the verb to mar (in the sense of “to render imperfect”). Again, in the perfect musical universe of Twelfth Night the crudely vituperative satirist Iohn Mars-tone is depicted in Malvolio as one who “mars tone”, and is further dramatized as the overweening Satyr Mars-yas (who was flayed alive as the unfortunate loser of a mythical musical contest with Apollo). Marston’s signature anagram in his earlier “anonymous” satire Willobie His Avisa had been founded upon the notional rebus in Mars + Tone (a supposed indicator of the vituperative nature of his satire). It is, moreover, frequently found that the devise which informs a poem or play is based upon a prior onomastic/anagrammatic conceit. In a wider context it is thus important to bear in mind that the pursuit of a Cratylitic aesthetic in terms

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of onomastic legibility is by no means limited to Shakespeare. Indeed, such a pursuit is inherent in pre-Enlightenment text. In the Cratylus itself, for example, Plato is found to read the name Herm|ogen|es in terms inter alia of the principle that the god Hermes (the god of both boundaries and names) encloses OGEN (the otherwise unconstrained “ocean”) in the bounded form of Herm|OGEN|es. As Addison explains, it is the Business of the Anagrammatist to find one word that conceals itself within another. A cross-bearing in Elizabethan England may perhaps be taken from Edmund Spenser’s lovely sonnet ‘Most happy letters fram’d by skilfull trade’ (Amoretti 74). Spenser (whose monogram is E.S.) is found to base his sonnet on the prior onomastic perception that the happy letters of his beloved ELISABETH (Boyle) make A BLITHE E.S. The poet’s prior devise must not be overtly cited, but it is these “happy letters”, the poet confirms, that “happy hath me made”. In the period, an overt anagram might typically have been disposed as below, where the anagrammatic transposition is set in revelatory apposition to the subject name: ELISABETH Anagram: “A BLITHE E.S.”

The essence of this gesture is subsumed within Spenser’s text in the form, “Most happy letters fram’d by skilfull trade … happy hath me made”. In such cases it is beholden upon the poet to incorporate corroborative anagrams in his text, anagrams which serve a specifically hermeneutic purpose, and in effect create a self-interpreting text: Most happy letters fram’d [By skilfulL trade], WITH which that happY name was first defynd: THe which threE times thrise happy hath me made, With guifts of body, fortune and of mind.

B-L ITH-E

B-L Y TH-E

Hermes, the god inter alia of letters, of unexpected gifts, and of trade, is deemed responsible for the hermaion of the happy transposition (or skilfull trade) upon which the poem is founded. Spenser’s BLITHE anagrams are intended to be read in close association with his attributive HERMES anagrams, a selection (only) of which is shown below:

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Chapter Four Most [Happy lettER|s] fraM’d by skilfull tradE, With which that happy naME waS first defynd: The which threE timeS thrise happy hath me made, With guiftS of body, fortune and of mind.

H-ER ME-S

H-ER ME S

The god’s notional role in this context is also marked by concealed word-play in the ambient text, including the respective references therein (a) to hap or chance in “happy letters”, (b) to linguistic boundary-marking in “fram’d” and “defynd”, (c) to transpositional exchange and mercantile success in “skilfull trade”, and (d) to the hermaion itself in “guift”. In addition, Spenser’s “thrise happy hath me made, / With guifts of body, fortune and of mind” echoes Horace’s felices ter et amplius, and in both texts the triadic epithets Mercurius ter maximus (“thrice greatest Hermes”) and Hermes Trismegistus are also covertly invoked. Typically, the nonspecific numerology invoked in the overt dimension of the sonnet is given complete semantic and thematic coherence only when the underlying onomastic devise and its defining anagrams are recognised. As already mentioned, the poet and his audience expect the poem to be read, copied out, and re-read. Typically, the shared condensa of the HERMES and BLYTHE anagrams serves a conventionally proemial function in its identification of the poet’s aesthetic strategy, and in its corroboration of the covert authorial clues in the line: BLITHE; HERMES: Most HappY lettERS fram’d By skIL|full TradE

The sonnet also contains ELISABETH BOYLE anagrams which share their condensa with the BLITHE and HERMES anagrammata: ELISABETH BOYLE; BLITHE; HERMES: MOsT HAppY LEttERS fram’d BY skIL|fulL TradE

It is thus for example that in Shakespeare’s sonnets Elizabeth Vere’s surname (Latin vere, “true”) gives rise to word-play and concealed anagrammata in relation to the ironical onomastic conceit that finds the poet’s mistress to be paradoxically un-true. Potential objections to the identification of Elizabeth Vere as the poet’s “mistress” (based on inherited historical, social, and/or biographical narratives) are in a sense irrelevant in this context. We can only say (and only wish to say) that from start to finish the sequence contains clear and numerous anagrams which identify the poet’s Petrarchan mistress as “Elizabeth Vere”, and that these

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anagrams are conventionally corroborated by (and in turn corroborate) apposite and poignant word-play in the ambient text. As will become clear, their presence in Shakespeare’s verse is confirmed by covert references in the published work of several contemporary poets. The conventional context in which Shakespeare writes his sonnets is defined in large part by the erotic verse of Ovid (in relation to “Corinna” and of Catullus (in relation to “Lesbia”). However, Elizabeth Vere’s historically recorded infidelities, her widely satirized licentiousness, her black hair, and her piercing black eyes, are together sufficiently indicative to ensure that commentators will discuss the biographical dimension of the “Dark Lady” sonnets ad infinitum. Similarly, Sonnet 95 (for example) is found to be informed (a) by the word-within-word conceit that finds the truth-revealing word RIOT concealed within wRIOThesley, and (b) by the conceit that apparently detects a phonetic version of the adverb RIOTOUSLY in the voiced utterance of the name WRIOTHESLEY. In this sonnet, Shakespeare’s WRIOTHESLIE and RIOTOUSLIE anagrams are typically incorporated in close association in the octave. In the annotated version below, the HENRY anagram marked by the ironical forma in “How sweet and louelY”, is also shown: [How sweet and louely] dost thou makE the shame, [Which like] a canker iN the fragrant [Rose, Doth spot the beautie] of thy budd|Ing name? Oh in whaT sweets doest thOU THy sinnes inclose That tongue that tells the story of thy daiES, (Making Lasciuious comments on thy sport) Cannot dispraise, but In a kinde of praisE, Naming thy name, blesses an ill report]. Oh what a mansion haue those vices got, Which for their habitation chose out thee, Where beauties vaile doth couer euery blot, And all things turne to faire, that eies can see Take heed (deare heart) of this large priuiledge, The hardest knife ill vs’d doth loose his edge.

W-R I O-TH ES L I-E

H-E R N-R I Y OU-T ES L I-E

Immediately after the WRIOTHESLIE and RIOTOUSLIE anagrams have been completed in line 7, line 8 summarizes the poet’s argument: “Naming thy name, blesses an ill report”. The epithet “the fragrant Rose” derives its special resonance from its invocation of the neo-Platonic emblem that Shakespeare associates with Henry Wriothesley, namely “beauties Rose” (as defined in the proemial Sonnet 1). Sonnet 95 is conventionally (and thus expressively) inter-

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linked with the earlier sonnet by means inter alia of the verbatim quotation of “Rose” and of “beautie” in “the beautie of thy budding name” and “beauties vaile doth couer euery blot”. The young earl’s Rose emblem is itself derived from the onomancy that reveals a neo-Platonic perfection in the ROSE that is spelt out in regularly occurring increments within the name wRiOtheSlEy: wRiOtheSlEy

When the inoperative letters of the name are suppressed, as in a carmen cancellatum, the perfect symmetry of the gesture is revealed: x R x O xxx S x E x

The perfection of the young earl’s rose is found to arise as if naturally from an innate neo-Platonic design: 1

| 1 | 3 | 1 | 1

As we shall see, the word-within-word PINE that is concealed within the censored word PrINcE in Sonnet 146 is somewhat similarly disposed. The poet asks, “PrINcE … Why dost thou PINE within?” P x IN x E

The regularity of the “secret” letters of Wriothesley’s Rose is thus registered in the transilitional sequence 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 (which refers to the unused letters of the surname). The emblem is framed in a numerically ordered array, the centre of which is defined by the numerologically significant number 3, and which totals seven (1+1+3+1+1), a number signifying perfection. There is thus revealed a “natural” link between the numerical symmetry of Wriothesley’s emblematic Rose and the pyramid of the sequence: ROSE:

1+1+3+1+1

PYRAMID:

1+3+3+3+3+3+1

Having in Sonnet 1 invoked the natural, word-within-word affinity between Wriothesley and the neo-Platonic perfection of beauties Rose, the poet is disappointed in Sonnet 95 to find that “thy budding name” (i.e. the name that brings forth the neo-Platonic Rose) is now rendered imperfect,

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contaminated by the sexual RIOT and moral blot or ROT that threaten to spoil the name of the rose. That marring “blot” is envisaged as hidden within Wriothesley (i.e. within the beauty of his external appearance), and is reflected in the onomancy that finds ROT and RIOT hidden within WRiOThesley/WRIOThesley. It is noteworthy that Shakespeare also draws a deliberate distinction between the graphic word-within-word indicators in ROT and RIOT (on the one hand), and the phonetic resemblance between Wriothesley and Riotously (on the other). In relation to the latter, the poet in effect says: the “tongue that tells” (i.e. tells aloud) that you behave riotously cannot also refrain from “naming thy name” (because the two words sound alike when spoken aloud): That tongue that tells the story of thy daies, (Making lasciuious comments on thy sport) Cannot dispraise, but in a kinde of praise, Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.

The phrase “the story of thy daies” is also aesthetically apt in a context of thematic paronomasia in that it exploits the (then) similarity in sound between daies and dies (where dies are sexual climaxes). In English word-play in the period, the word story customarily invokes tale (i.e. “tail” and hence, here, penis). The specific instance of the generalized riotous behaviour to which the poet overtly refers is identified in concealed ELIZABETH VERE anagrams. In the period, Elizabeth Vere’s apparently doubtful reputation prompted several poets to address her covertly through sexually suggestive anagrams. Her surname Vere is suited to onomastic anagram and wordplay. As noted in Chapter Three, Sir John Davies finds a forma for his pejorative VERE anagram in the word “VanitiE”: [VanitiE], a wench of noE RegardE

V-E-R-E

V-E-R-E

In such a context the word noe customarily invokes the concept of nothing (i.e. an absence of penis and hence vagina). Similarly, in Willobie His Avisa (which is found to list Elizabeth Vere’s alleged lovers), Elizabeth is ironically depicted as a wife who is “true” and “constant” (Latin vere). In his conventionally duplicitous proem, Marston writes: Of [VERtues birdE] my MusE must sing

VER-E

VER-E

In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 95 Elizabeth is identified as the blot which “beauties [VailE]” “doth couer”:

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Chapter Four [How sweet and louely] dost thou make the shame, Which (LI)ke [a canker in the fragrant [Rose]], Doth spot] the beautie of thy budd|Ing name? Oh in what sweets doest thou thy sinnes inclose That tongue that tells the story of thy daies, (Making lasciuious comments on THy sport) TH Cannot dispraisE, But in a kinde of praise, E-B Naming thy name, blesses An ill [report]. A Oh what a mansion haue those viceS got, S Which for THeir habitat|Ion chosE out [thee, I Where beauties [VaiLE]] doth couER euery Blot, LE And All things turne to fairE, that eies can see. Take heed (deare heart) of thiS large priuiledge, [The hardest knife Ill vs’d doth Loose his edgE].

A-S (LI)-E R I O-T

R OT TH-E B V-ER A E S I-L-E

An anagram in the variant form VER is also possible: “VailE doth coueR”. In the period the surname Vere is found in a number of variant forms, including Ver, Vayer, and Vaire. In addition, word-play involving the letters v and f was commonplace. Accordingly, Shakespeare makes frequent use of the word faire in the corroborative word-play which conventionally accompanies concealed anagram. In Sonnet 95 this is manifest in the third quatrain, the apt locus of the VERE anagram: Oh what A mansion haue those viceS got, Which for their habitat|Ion chose out [thee, Where beauties [VaiLE]] doth couER euery Blot, And All things turnE to fairE, that eies can seE.

A-S I LE

V-ER E

The elevated ELISABETH anagram and the VERE anagram both commence in the word vaile (the VERE forma), and the gesture ends in the sexual invective of “all things (i.e. phallic things) turne to Vere, that eies can see” (where all, things. eies and see have their usual sexual meanings). At the same time the verb veer (and its variant form vere) are brought into play in the notional declaration that “All things turne/veer to faire/Vere”. As we shall see, Sonnet 115 is informed throughout by the prior devise that finds the verb veer in Vere. At the same time the commonly found letter-play on f and v permits the poet’s exploitation of the linguistic affinity between Vaire and faire. It is thus that the sequence as a whole contains a succession of sonnets playing on the words true and faire, words that are derived respectively from Vere and Vaire. This process begins in the basal Sonnets 1-17, in which Elizabeth Vere’s uterus is portrayed as a suitable receptacle for Wriothesley’s seed, as for example in Sonnet 3. At this stage Elizabeth (“so faire / sow Vere”) is purportedly

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blameless. As mentioned in the Introduction, the comparatively infrequent initial letter v is interchangeable with the letter w in English anagrammatism of the period: For [VvherE] is she so faiRE whose vn-eard wombe] Disdaines the tillage of thy husbandry?

V-E-RE

Later, in Sonnet 40, Henry Wriothesley is alleged to have had private wilfull taste of Elizabeth (after having publicly refused her as a marriage partner), and in Sonnet 70 (addressed to Wriothesley) the poet now puts the blame on her, for “slanders marke was euer yet the “faire / Vere”: That thou are blam’d shall not be thy defect, For slanders marke [Vvas euER yet the fairE, The ornament of beauty is suspect, A Crow that flies in [HEaueNs sweetest ayre]. So thou be good, slandeR doth but approue, Their [Worth the greateR bee]|Ing woo’d Of timE, For canker vice THE sweetest budS doth Loue, And THou present’st a purE vnstayned primE. Thou hast past BY the ambush of young daies, Either not Assayld, or victor Beeing charg’d, Yet this thy praise cannot be Soe thy praise, To tye vp en[Uy, EuermoRE] Inlarged, If some suspect of ilL maskt not thy show, [Then thou alonE] kingdomes of hearts shouldst owe.

V-ER-E HE-N R I-E W-R-I-O THE-S-L TH-E E B Y A S I U-E-RE L E

The sonnets addressed to Elizabeth are found to be similarly imbued with the paronomasia of Vere/Vayer and faire. In the extracts below, for example, each relevant anagram is associated with duplicitous word-play involving Vere/Vaire and faire: 127 In the ould age blacke was not counted faire, Or if it [VvearE] it boRE not beauties namE:

V-E-RE

135 Shall [Vvill in others seemE] right gracious, And in my will no faiRE acceptance shine:

V-E RE

135 Let no [VnkindE], no faiRE beseechers kill, Thinke all but one, and me in that one Will.

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Chapter Four 152 For I haue sworne thee faire: more periurde eye, To swere Against the truth So foule [a (li)e].

A-S-IL-E

It is thus that none of Shakespeare’s sonnets can be fully understood unless the biographical context is addressed. The compositional strategy for each sonnet is based in whole or in part upon the prior anagrammatic analysis of thematic words and the names of lovers, poets, gods and heroes. In addition each sonnet is found to identify its subject or addressee in concealed anagrams of the relevant name or names. Biographical enquiry is thus in order, at least insofar as a prior knowledge of specific context helps to reveal the names, events, and themes which are anagrammatically analysed and thematically relevant in the sonnets. Evans does not attempt to provide a definitive answer to any of his six questions, merely ending his comments in a gesture of acquiescence in what he apparently views as the generic inscrutability of the sonnet form: Perhaps Sir William Alexander’s teasing comment on the ‘mystery’ inherent in so many sonnet sequences may serve as a fittingly ambiguous conclusion: Yet Lines (dumbe Orators) ye may be bold, Th’ink will not blush, though paper doth looke pale, Ye of my state the secrets did containe, That then through clouds of darke inuentions shin’d: Whil’st I disclos’d, yet not disclos’d my minde, Obscure to others, but to one ore plaine.

Few editors and commentators would disagree with Evans’ acquiescence in the Shakespearean mysteries which he detects, and which he appears to accept as designedly insoluble. In fact, there is no mystery beyond the generic duplicity of the Classical poetic. The concealed invectio of Alexander’s sonnet (for example) is revealed when its plural and closely associated ELISABETH REGINA and WHORE anagrams are read in close counterpoint to the overt dimension of the text. Not untypical of the covertly negative literary responses to Elizabeth I which were circulated in manuscript form, Alexander’s poem was first published in 1604, a year after Elizabeth’s death.33 Evans has unwittingly cited one of the very few poems of the period which refer to concealed anagram in terms of “secrets” and “darke (i.e. covert) inuentions”. The duplicitously concealed WHORE anagram in the above extract is apparently intended to be read in close counterpoint to the

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apt theme of disclosure (playing in paronomasia upon this closure) in both of its senses. Two (only) of the plural extensae are indicated: Yet Lines (dumbe Orators) ye may be bold, Th’ink will not blush, though paper doth looke pale, Ye of my state the secrets did containe, That then through clouds of darke inuentions shin’d: [Whil’st I disclos’d, yet not disclos’d my minde], ObscuRE to others, but tO One ORE plaine.

WH WH O-RE ORE

Alexander’s conventional word-play on not and knot (where knot refers to anagram) invites an alternative reading which perfectly describes the principles and practice of concealed anagram: Whil’st I disclos’d, yet knot disclos’d my minde, Obscure to others, but to one (wh)ore plaine.

Here again, corroborative word-play in relation to the anagram is comprised in the paronomasia of “Obscure to others, but to one whore plaine”. The mutually corroborative deployment of anagram and wordplay is again capable of summary description: [WHil’st I disclos’d, yet anagram disclos’d my minde], Obscure to others, but to one ORE plaine.

WH ORE

| to one whore

Evans’ six questions, formulated in ignorance of the nature of preEnlightenment literary culture and based upon partial or wholly defective readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets, are arguably anachronistic and of historical interest only. In any event, the anagrammatic evidence confirms that the part of the apparently anonymous “Young Man” of the sonnets is taken by Shakespeare’s patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. The poet’s mistress (allegedly stolen from him by his patron) is also specifically identified in numerous anagrams (and reciprocally corroborative word-play) with Elizabeth Vere, a Maid of Honour to Elizabeth I and the potential wife whom Wriothesley publicly refused to marry. Elizabeth Vere took the name and title of Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Derby on her marriage to the 6th Earl, William Stanley, in 1595, and (as will become clear) she is addressed as such in several of the later sonnets. The “rival poet or poets” are now confirmed to include Christopher Marlowe (predominantly), together with Henry Constable, Barnabe Barnes, and Thomas Nashe.

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Most of the sonnets numbered 1-126 are found to be addressed to Henry Wriothesley. Most of the remaining sonnets (127-154) are addressed either to Elizabeth Vere or to Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Derby, according to the date of composition, the remainder being addressed to the world generally. With one exception, the evidence of anagram, chronogram, and external reference would suggest that the sonnets were composed between 1593 and 1609. The exception is Sonnet 145, which concerns Anne Hathaway, and which was apparently written in 1582, when Shakespeare was eighteen years old. Based ultimately upon the onomastic perception that Anne hath a way (where way in the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary signifies vagina), Sonnet 145 also contains double EIGHTEEN anagrams (a reference presumably to the poet’s age in 1582). An anagrammatic reading reveals that the arrangement of the sonnets in Q is regulated overall according to numerological principles, and in particular to the seven levels of the overall scheme shown in Figure 1. The sonnets are not arranged in strict chronological order. Sonnet 145 (for example) was apparently composed in 1582, but it is located near the end of the sequence, in the sixth level of the penitential ascent, in the context of the poet’s poignant consciousness of the sin of adultery. As will become clear, Sonnets 1-17 appear to have been composed circa 1593. Sonnets 115 and 116 were composed to mark Wriothesley’s marriage to Elizabeth Vernon in August 1598. Sonnets 153 and 154 were composed in 1609 in contemplation of the publication of Shake-speare’s Sonnets in that year. An anagrammatic reading reveals that Sonnets 153-154 and ‘A Lover’s Complaint’ refer to events which were topical in 1609. The evidence would suggest that Shakespeare composed these conventionally required “Cupidic” poems in contemplation of imminent publication. It would also seem that Shakespeare collaborated with Thorpe in relation to the publication. Each of the 1609 sonnets (153 and 154) contains attributive THOMAS THORPE anagrams. Although the central player in the sequence is now confirmed as Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, Elizabeth Vere is covertly present in the sequence from the outset, first as a publicly refused, prospective wife for Wriothesley, and subsequently in relation to the young earl’s privately enjoyed “wilfull taste of what thy selfe refusest”. Similarly, a relatively large number of the sonnets addressed to Wriothesley are also found to relate to Christopher Marlowe, who is invoked in terms of a literary, and perhaps homosexual, triangulation.

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3. Sonnets 1-17 In Sonnets 1-17 Shakespeare follows Classical and Renaissance precedent in adopting the conventional literary persona of an older man advising a younger, and in particular of a tutor advising his pupil. The relationship envisaged is archetypally embodied in the Greek myth of Apollo and Hyancinthus, and becomes a recurrent topos in the GraecoRoman literary tradition. It is in this context that Shakespeare’s seventeen basal sonnets exploit a range of rhetorical devices in order to persuade the puer formusus to fulfill his responsibilities in relation to sexual reproduction, whilst simultaneously pursuing a covertly executed programme of conventional (and conventionally concealed) homoerotic seduction.34 In Sonnets 1-17 the poet refers to the habit of masturbation that he attributes to pueri in general and to the young Henry Wriothesley in particular, and reiterates in concealed anagram the Ovidian question: cur solus fricas? (“Why masturbate alone?”). Ovid’s rhetorical question is comprised in concealed anagrams in the Ars amoris (as Shakespeare appears to have known it), in which Ovid (magister amoris) adopts inter alia a pedagogic approach to the art of seduction. Following Ovid, and designedly framing his covert addresses in the form of the Classical poet’s insinuating question (“Why masturbate alone?”), Shakespeare adopts the persona of the erastes who, skilled in the art of rhetoric, is conventionally engaged in seducing his youthful eromenos. It is a situation that is familiar from The Taming of the Shrew, in which Lucentio and Hortensio are rivals in the attempted seduction of Bianca. In Act 3 Scene 1, Lucentio, in the guise of pedagogic tutor to Bianca, is suspicious of Hortensio in the guise of pedagogic music-master. Shakespeare’s concealed PEDERIST (sic) anagram completes a coherent, logical sequence in “Pedant is … Pedascule … Pederist”: Hor. Madam, tis now in tune. Luc. All but the base. Hor. The base is right, ‘tis the base knaue that iars. Luc. How fiery and forward our Pedant is, Now for my life the knaue doth court my loue, [PEDdascule, Ile watch you bettER yet]: In time I may beleeue, yet I mistruST.

PED-ER I-ST

The word pederist occurs as a variant form of pederast.35 The Ovidian cul in pedascule is corroborative, and is presumably associated with the paronomasia of scule and school.

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Shakespeare’s poetic strategy in the seventeen basal sonnets may best be described by means of an example. Sonnet 16 is printed thus in Q:

B

Vt wherefore do not you a mightier waie Make warre vppon this bloudie tirant time? And fortifie your Ǖelfe in your decay With meanes more bleǕǕed then my barren rime? Now Ǖtand you on the top of happie houres, And many maiden gardens yet vnǕet, With vertuous wiǕh would beare your liuing flowers, Much liker then your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life repaire Which this (Times penǕel or my pupill pen) Neither in inward worth nor outward faire Can make you liue your Ǖelfe in eies of men, To giue away your Ǖelfe, keeps your Ǖelfe still, And you muǕt liue drawne by your owne Ǖweet Ǖkill.

Helen Vendler’s opening remarks on Sonnet 16 are typically perceptive in relation to the overt dimension of the text: The speaker here first explicitly identifies himself as a poet, as he speaks of his barren rhyme. The sonnet contrasts, thematically, the superior power of the young man’s potential self-representation by biological generation to the inferior representational power of the graphic artist’s pencil or the writer’s pen. In addition, in a subcontrast, representation by drawing here enters the Sonnets to rival (in truth of depiction) representations by rhyme.36

In order to progress beyond a surface reading of the poem, however, it is first necessary to identify the poet’s thematic preoccupations in terms of the verba certa of the mandatory Orphic rite. In the present instance, Shakespeare’s ulterior MYSTERY, SINNE, SELFE LOUE, and SELFE ABUSE anagrams indicate the ultimate focus of the poet’s attention. These anagrams are reciprocally corroborative in relation to the four instances of the word selfe in the overt dimension of the text: But wherefore do not you a mightier waie Make warre vppon this bloudie tirant time? [And fortifie] your [Selfe] IN your decay S-IN With meanes more blessed theN my Barren rimE? N-E Now stand yoU on the top of happie houres, And many maiden gardenS yet vnset, With vertuous wish would bearE your liuing flowers, Much liker then your painted counterfeit:

A B U S E

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[So should thE lines of LiFE] that lifE repaire S-E-L-FE S-E Which this (Times pensel or my pupilL pen) L Neither in inward worth nor outward FairE F-E Can [Make You [Liue] your Selfe in eies Of men, L-O To giUE away your selfE, keeps youR selfe still, UE And you must liue drawne bY your owne sweet skill.

As will appear, these anagrams are also corroborated by (and in turn corroborate) the precisely similar figures which are incorporated in the other basal sonnets. Shakespeare’ concealed emphasis on masturbation is clarified and amplified by the Renaissance poet’s Latinate WHY MASTURBATE ALONE anagrams. The equivalent verb in the English vernacular of the period is also anagrammatized.37 Here again, the anagrams which pose the rhetorical question are corroborated by, and in turn corroborate, parallel anagrams in the other basal sonnets: But wherefore do not you a mightier waie MAke warre vppon thiS bloudie Tirant time? And fortifie yoUR selfe in your decay [WitH meanes more blessed then mY] BArren rime? Now stand you on the Top of happiE houres, And many maiden gardens yet vnset, With vertuous wish would beare your liuing flowers, Much liker then your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life repaire [Which this (Times pensel or mY] pupill pen) Neither in inward [Worth nor outward faire] CAN make you liue your selfe in eies of men, To giue [Away your selfe], Keeps your selfE stilL, [And you must Liue] drawne by your OwNE sweet skill.

MA-S-T UR BA W-H-Y T-E

WH-Y

A-L O-NE

W AN K-E

The use of the English word is apparently precocious. Dictionaries are necessarily limited to words used in the overt dimension of text, and do not take account of concealed anagrammatic usage.38 The shared figura condensa is located at the beginning of the relevant extensae, in lines 1-2. MYSTERY; SELFE ABUSE; SELFE LOUE; WHY MASTURBATE ALONE? But WHereFORE do Not YoU A MightieR waiE MAKE WArrE Vppon thIS BLoudie TiranT TimE?

In this new perspective, the covert commendations of the poet replicate the seduction rituals of erastes and eromenos, and the diction of the overt

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text is now found to endorse this gesture. The exhortation to “make you liue your selfe in eies of men” now invites a reading which takes account of the sexual meaning of eies and the sense in which men refers specifically to males rather than to mankind in general. The concealed anagrams have the effect of re-contextualizing the overt dimension, and upon re-reading, the sonnet is seen to begin with a typically periphrastic prompt (in the poet’s choice of “wherefore” rather than “why”) as to the hidden rhetorical question that ensues:

B

Vt wherefore do not you a mightier waie

Shakespeare’s original reader, aware of the literary conventions of Classical and Renaissance erotic poetry, sensitive to the poet’s habitual use of the versal apparatus for expressive purposes, and accustomed to Sir Philip Sidney’s pervasive BUTT anagrams, will respond at once to the poet’s scarcely concealed reference to butt (i.e. “buttocks”):

B

VT] wherefore do noT you a mightier waie

BVT-T

To point to Shakespeare’s BUTT anagram is not to “read it into” the sonnet, but to read the sonnet as it was intended to be read. The original reader will also note the age’s customary word-play on not you and knot you, a duplicitous instruction to the reader to pay heed to the concealed anagram in the ambient text.39 The BUTT anagram is typically corroborated by – and corroborates – the additional hermeneutic anagrams which together identify the poet’s traditional strategy: [[BVT] wherefore do noT] you a mightier waie BVT-T Make warre Vppon this bloudie TiranT time? [And fortifie] youR SelfE in youR decay A-R-S-E With meaneS more blessed then my barren rimE? Now stand you on the top of happie houres, [ANd many maiden gardens] yet Vnset, AN-V With vertuoUS wish would beare your liuing flowers, S Much liker then your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life re|[Paire P Which this] (Times pensel or my pupill pEN) EN Neither In inwarD worth nor outward faire I [Can makE you liue youR selfe in eieS] of men, S To giue Away your Selfe, keeps your selfe still, And you musT liue drawne bY your ownE sweet skill.

B V-T-T A-R S-E AN US P E D E-R A-S T-YE

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Further, closely associated anagrams indicate that the poet specifically identifies the envisaged relationship between the older poet and the younger patron as one between tutor and pupill, and as involving pederastye (sic): So should the lines of life that life repaire Which this ([Times pensel or] my [PUPill] pen) Neither In inward worth nor oUT|ward faire Can make you Liue your selfe in eies Of men, To giue away youR selfe, keeps your selfe stilL, And you must liue drawne by your owne sweet skill.

T UT O R

So should the lines of life that life repaire Which this (times [PEnsel or my] pupill pen) Neither in inwarD worth nor outward faire Can makE you liue youR selfe in eies of men, To giue Away your selfe, keeps your selfe STill, And You must liuE drawnE by your ownE sweet skill.

PUP I L L

PE D E-R A-ST Y-E

The shared figura condensa is located at the end of the respective extensae, in lines 13-14: TUTOR; PUPILL; PEDERASTYE: To giuE Away yoUR selfE, keePS YOur selfe STill, And You muST liuE DrawnE by youR ownE sweet skiLL.

The decorously located word skill is aptly disposed in the condensa. In the period, the word art was used primarily in the sense (OED, I) of “skill in doing something”. Here “your owne sweet skill” invites the alternative reading “your owne sweet art”, where Shakespeare’s usual word-play on Latin ars is invoked. It is thus that the sonnet ends as it begins, with covert reference to the ultimate object of the formulaic rhetoric of the erastes. The opening and closing lines are capable of being read in coherence sequence: “Butt, wherefore do not you a mightier waie …? You must liue drawne by your âne sweet ars”. Characteristically honest, Vendler confesses that “the sense in which biological reproduction can be termed drawing is not entirely apparent”, and - acutely sensitive as always to effects of overt anagrammatism - finds the “point” of the gesture in the perfect reversibility of ward and draw. As noted in Chapter Three, Shakespeare’s invocation of the sexual significance of ward is satirized in Sir John Davies’ historically important Gullinge Sonnets.40 Having presumably read at least a selection of Shakespeare’s early sonnets in

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manuscript, Davies treats the conventionally invoked relationship between Shakespeare and the young earl in terms of “tuition” and “wardshippe”. The traditional pederasty of erastes and eromenos is implicit in Davies’ euphemistic word-play on “knights seruice” and “nightes seruice”. The speaker is specifically identified as Henry Wriothesley in hermeneutic anagrams. In the interests of clarity of presentation, a selection only of Davies’ anagrams is shown below: To Loue my lord I doe knightes seruice owe And therefore nowe he hath my witt in warde, But while it is in his tuition soe Me thincks he doth intreate it [Passinge] hard; For thoughe [HE hathe] it marryED Longe agoe To Vanytie, a [Wench of NoE RegardE], And nowe tO full, And peR|fect age doTH growe, Yet nowE of freedomE it iS most debarde. But why [SHould Loue] after minoriTYE When I Am past the one and twentith yeare Per|CludE my [witt of hiS sweete libertye, And make it still] ye yoake of wardshipPE beaRE. I feare he hath an other Title gott And holds my witte now for an Ideott.

P ED E-R A S TYE W I-LL

HE N R I-E SH A C-E-S PE-RE

W-R O-TH E-S L-YE

Shakespeare’s ostensible purpose in Sonnet 16 is to commend marriage and the begetting of children, and to propose Elizabeth Vere in particular as a potential wife. In line 6, Elizabeth Vere is identified (perhaps ironically) as the “maiden” who with “VERtuous wish would bearE” children for the young earl. Both Henry Wriothesley and Elizabeth Vere are specifically identified in concealed anagrams, the ELISA anagram being elevated in usual form: But [Vvhere]|forE do not you a mightiER waiE Make warRE vppon THis bloudie tirant time? And fortifiE your selfe in your decay With meanes more Blessed then my barren rime? Now stand you on the top of (h)Appie houres, And many maiden gardenS yet vnset, With [VErtuous wish would beaRE] your Liu|Ing flowers, Much Liker then your painted counterfeit: So should [the lines of lifE] that life repaire Which this (Times pensel or my pupill pen) Neither in inward worth nor outward faire Can make you liue your selfe in eies of men, To giue Away your Selfe, keeps Your selfe still, [And you must LiuE] drawne by your owne sweet skill.

V-ER-E TH E B A S I VER-E L E

A-S-Y L-E

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The shared condensa of the ELISABETH VERE anagrams is aptly located: ELISABETH VERE: VERTuous wisH would BEArE your LIuing flowerS

The proposed marriage is reflected in the expanded version of this condensa, which is shared with the HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams: HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; ELISABETH VERE: WIth VERTuouS wisH would BEArE YOur LIu|INg floweRS

Shakespeare is found to derive his specific aesthetic strategy in Sonnets 1-17 from both ancient and modern sources. He finds the thematically central question cur solus fricas? (“Why masturbate alone?”) in Ovid’s Ars amoris (2.113-127), in which the poet covertly exhorts an envisaged puer formosus to learn the linguae duae (“two tongues”) of cunnus and culus. Beginning with the resonant phrase Forma bonum fragile est, Ovid’s duplicitous text incorporates plural FRICTUS, CUR SOLUS FRICAS and ANUM PEDICARE anagrams, representative elements of which are shown in the extract below: Forma bonum fragile est, quantumque accedit ad annos fit minor, et spatio [CarpitUR] ipsa suo. C C-UR Nec Uiolae sempeR nec hiantia lilia [Florent, U-R et RIget amiss]|a spina relicta rosa. et tibi iam venient CAni, [Formose, capilli, F iam venient Rugae, quae tibI CorpuS] arent. R-I-C Iam molire [ANimUM], qui duret, et Adstrue [formae: A [SOLus] ad extremoS permanet ille rogos. S SOL Nec Levis ingenuas [PectUS coluisse] per artes P US cura sit et linguaS EDIidicisse duaS. EDI Non formosus erat, sed erat faC|undus Ulixes, C et tamen aequoreas torsit AmoRE deas. A-RE A quotiens illum doluit properare Calypso, remigioque aptas esse negavit aquas!

F RI CA S SO L-U S

On this occasion the shared figura condensa is situated at the beginning of the relevant extensae:

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Chapter Four FRICTUS; CUR SOLUS FRICAS; ANUM PEDICARE: FormA bonUM FRagile esT, quantumque ACCedit aD ANnoS FIt minoR, Et SPatio CarpitUR Ipsa SUO.

The allusion to frictus (“masturbation”) and the rhetorical question cur solus fricas (“Why masturbate alone?”) are closely associated in Ovid’s text with (inter alia) ANUM PEDICARE anagrams: Forma bonum fragile est, quantumque accedit ad annos Fit minor, et spatio carpitur ipsa suo. Nec uiolae semper nec hiantia lilia florent, Et riget amissa spina relicta rosa. Et tibi iam venient cani, formose, capilli, Iam venient rugae, quae tibi corpus arent. Iam molire [ANimUM, qui duret, et adstrue formae: 120Solus ad extremos [Permanet ille] rogos. Nec levis ingenuas [Pectus coluissE] per artes cura sit et Linguas EDI|DIcisse duas. Non formosus erat, sed erat faC|undus Ulixes, Et tamen Aequoreas torsit amoRE deas. A quotiens llum doluit properaRE Calypso, Remigioque aptas esse negavit aquas!

AN-UM P E P DI EDI C C A-RE A RE

It is customary for sexually explicit anagrams to be marked (as in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 7, for example) by FAVETE LINGUIS (“Be silent”) anagrams in the ambient text: Forma bonum [Fragile] est, quantumque accedit ad annos Fit minor, et spatio carpitur ipsA suo. Nec Violae semper nec hiantia lilia florent, Et rigET amissa spina relicta rosa. Et tibi iam venient cani, formosE, capilli, Iam venient rugae, quae tibi corpus arent. Iam molire animum, qui duret, et adstrue formae: Solus ad extremos permanet ille rogos. Nec [Levis] INGenuas pectus coluisse per artes Cura sit et lingU|as edidic|Isse duaS. Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulixes, Et tamen aequoreas torsit amore deas. A quotiens illum doluit properare Calypso, Remigioque aptas esse negavit aquas!

F A V ET E

L-ING U-I-S

The shared condensa of the FAVETE LINGUIS anagrams (which is also shared with anagrams of obscene nouns) is aptly duplicitous:

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Et tibi Iam Venient cani, Formose, capilLI, iam venient rUGAE, quae tibi corpuS areNT.

As T W Baldwin and others have surmised, Shakespeare’s modern source for Sonnets 1-17 is Thomas Wilson’s translation of Erasmus’s Encomium Matrimonii, entitled An Epistle to perswade a young ientleman to Mariage, deuised by Erasmus in the behalfe of his frende (1553).41 In the context of Shakespeare’s sonnets it is also significant that Erasmus is found to have based his Encomium Matrimonii on Ovid’s Forma bonum fragile est. The relevance of the covert dimension of Erasmus’s text to the covert dimension of Shakespeare’s has, however, inevitably escaped attention. The Encomium was apparently written in contemplation of the youthful Lord Charles Mountjoy. Erasmus again follows ancient precedent by adopting the persona of tutor in relation to Mountjoy as pupil, and finds in the name Mountjoy a pretext for invoking Ovid’s duplicitous advice in the art of love. In a highly duplicitous text, Erasmus treats the rhetorical question “cur solus fricas?” in terms of its implied offer of sexual cooperation. The prior conceit or devise upon which the Epistle is based is that which perceives in the onomastic legibility of the name Mountjoy (or Mount of Joy) a blasphemous reference to mons voluptatis aeternae (where, in context, mons voluptatis signifies the male posterior). The underlying, ludic project is the conventionally envisaged “mounting” by the erastes of the “mount of joy” of the eromenos. In a gesture found to be entirely typical of the covert dimension of Erasmus’s text, a notional distinction is thus drawn between mons veneris and mons pueris. The Encomium culminates in a reiteration of Ovid’s cur solus fricas, and in a brief section beginning Tu maior natu virum Erasmus incorporates a plurality of hermeneutic MONS and VOLUPTATIS anagrams which interpret for the reader the devise upon which the Encomium is based. Erasmus also marks his text with a COMMORATIO anagram, pointing to the sense in which his prose is imbued with concealed anagrams set in rhetorical commoratio – a device whereby the author dwells upon a point by returning to it repeatedly. In the extract below, the respective extensae of three MONS and two VOLUPTATIS anagrams are emphasised in the text. The repetition of optional intermediate letters is also emphasised, as for example in the repetitions of the emblematic letter o in the sentence beginning Tu matrimonio. For the sake of clarity of presentation, a selection only of the relevant anagrams is indicated in the extract below: Tu maior natu virum te esse memineris necesse est. Illa maioribus suis commori [Voluit, tu ne [Moriantur Operam dabis]]. Soror subdixit sese officiO, tu duorum

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Chapter Four tibi partes obeudas esse cogita. NON dubitarunt filiae Loth cum patre temulento rem habere, satiuS esse iudicantes nefario etiam incestU generi consulere quam Pati interire. Tu [MatrimoniO honestO, sanctO, pudicO, sine offensA, summa cum [UOLUPTAte, NON consuleS] Tuo generi Alioquin Intermorituro? Quare sinamuS eoS HippolyTI institutum imitari, sectentur caelibatum, uel qui [Mariti fieri possunt, patreS] nON possunt, uel quorum tenuitaS liberiS educandiS nON suppeditat, uel quorum genuS aliorum opera possit propagari; aut certe eiusmodi est, ut magis Reipublicae conducat intermori quam propagari.

The COMMORATIO anagram is shown separately below: Tu maior natu virum te esse memineris necesse est. Illa maioribus suis [COMmori voluit, tu ne MORriantur oper|Am dabis. Soror subdixiT sese officIO], tu duorum tibi partes obeudas esse cogita.

The figura condensa in the sentence beginning Tu matrimonio is also shared by the CULUM, ANUM, and PEDICARE anagrams which (as will become clear) are also present in the ambient text: COMMORATIO; MONS VOLUPTATIS; CULUM/ANUM PEDICARE: Tu MatrimonIO honestO, Sancto, PUDICo, sinE offensa, suMMA CUm UOLUPtate, noN COnsulES tuo generI Alioquin INTermorituRO? Hermeneutic anagrams marking concealed rhetorical gestures in the poet’s text are not uncommon in Classical and Renaissance verse. Shakespeare is found to incorporate anagrams of the words expolitio, commoratio, homoioteleuton, and tautologie (for example) in sonnets in which he covertly employs these respective tropes. Both Erasmus and Shakespeare appear to follow Henry Peacham’s definition of commoratio in The Garden of Eloquence (1577): “Commoratio is a forme of speech, by which the Orator knowing whereon the whole waight of his cause doth depend, maketh often recourse thither, and repeateth it many times by variation”. The annotated passage below occurs towards the end of the Epistle, a point at which the author’s ludic persuasion to homoerotic activity (“upon which the whole waight of his cause doth depend”) represents the culmination of his persuasive programme. The sequence of anagrams runs in logical order: first, the question in CUR FRICAS SOLUS; secondly, the suggestion in ANUM / CULUM PEDICARE; and thirdly the onomastic dedication in MONS VOLUPTATIS. Again, in the interests of clarity, a selection only of the relevant anagrams is shown in the extract below:

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Verum si nulli serantur, quis non uideat nobis ad glandes fore redeundum? Ita caelibatus in tanta hominum multitudine, in paucis quidem laudem habet, in omnibus summam reprehensionem habiturus. Nam si maxime in aliis sit uirtutis nomen habitura uirginitas, in te [Certe Uiciosa fueR|it. [Caeteri enim pUR|itati studuisse uidebuntUR], tu generis parricida iudicaberis, quod cum honesto [Coniugio propagare potueris, turpi caelibatU passus sis inteR]|ire. Liceat e numerosa sobole uirginem Deo consecrare. Rustici [FRugum primitias] superis Immolant, non uniuersum prouentum, at te unum stirp|Is tuae reliQU|ias esse memineris oportet. Nihil autem refert uirum occidAS an seruare recuses, qui a te uno seruari et poterat, et facile poterat. At [SOroris] exemplum te ad caelibatum adhortatur. At ista ueL Una te potissimum debebaS a caelibatu deterreri. Generis enim spem quae [Prius utrisque] Erat comunis, nunc totam [AD te uNUM] reuolutam IN|telligis. Detur haeC uenia sexui, detur Aetati. Puella doloRE uicta peccavit, stultarum mulier [CULarUM], aut stultorUM Monachorum impulsu sese praecipite dedit. Tu maior natu virum te esse memineris necesse est. Illa maioribus suis [COMmori voluit, tu ne Moriantur OpeR|am dA|bis. Soror subdixiT sese officIO], tu [DUorum tibi partES] obeudas esse cogita. Non dubitarunt filiae [Loth cum patre] temulento rem habere, satius esse IudicantES Nefario etiam incestu Generi consulere quam pati interire. TU [Matrimonio honesto, sancto, pudicO, sine offensA, summa cum [UOLUPTAtE, Non consuleS] Tuo generi alioquin Intermorituro? Quare sinamuS eos HippOL|yti institutum imitari, sectentur caelibatum, Uel qui mariti fieri possunt, Patres non possunt, uel quorum Tenuitas liberis educandis non suppeditAT, uel quorum genus aliorum opera possit propagarI; aut certe eiusmodi est, ut magiS Reipublicae conducat intermori quam propagari.

The shared condensa is located in that part of the text in which Mountjoy is in effect exhorted to play the part of his sister and to “play the part of two”: CUR SOLUS FRICAS; CULUM/ANUM PEDICARE; LINGUAE DUAE; MONS VOLUPTATIS; COMMORATIO ILla maioribus SUis COMMoRI VOLUiT, tU ne MoriantuR operaM DabiS. SoroR subdixit sesE OFficIO, tU DUorUM tibi Partes obeudas Esse COGitA. She has wished to die together with her ancestors; you will make sure that they do not die. Your sister has withdrawn from her duty; consider now that you must play the part of two. (Tr. Charles Fantazzi)

Both Ovid and Erasmus purport to exhort a puer formosus to refrain from masturbation and to indulge in reproductive sexual intercourse, this overt theme being used as a screen for a conventional invitation to homosexual intercourse. Shakespeare’s strategy in the basal Sonnets 1-17 is to adopt these ancient and modern precedents and to adapt them decorously to the characteristics of the youthful Henry Wriothesley, who is both young and markedly effeminate in appearance. Shakespeare relies

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to a considerable extent upon Thomas Wilson’s translation of the Epistle into English, and is found to incorporate attributive THOMAS WILSON(E) anagrams in several of the basal sonnets. A sample extract from Wilson’s text will suffice to demonstrate his translation and incorporation of key anagrams from the covert dimension of Erasmus’s Epistle. The passages are important because Shakespeare’s anagrammatic diction and Classical indecencies are found to be based upon them. In accordance with usual practice, Wilson translates Ovid’s CUR SOLUS FRICAS anagrams in terms of the equivalent in vernacular English.42 The disposition of the concealed anagrams in Wilson’s translation of Erasmus’s Encomium is typical of English prose anagrammatism of the period. The passage is marked and inaugurated by the phrase “Now againe” (translating Latin nunc, a customary prompt as to the presence of significant anagrammatism in the ensuing text). In the interests of clarity, the respective English anagrams are indicated separately in the annotated extracts below: Now againe, [WHat a ioYE] shall this be vnto you, [WHen Your moste fairE] wife, shall make You a father, in bringyng furth a fairE childe vnto you, [WHere] you shall Haue a pretie little boYE, runnyng vp and doune Youre housE, suche a one as shall expresse Your lookE, and your [Wiues looke], sucHe a one as shall call You dad [WitH his swetE lispyng wordes. Now last of all, [WHen You arE] thus lynked in louE, thesamE shalbeeE so fastened and boundE together, as though it wer with the Adamant stone, that death it selfe canneuer bee able to vndo it. Now againe, [What A ioye] shall this be vnto you, wheN your moste faire [Wife] shall maKE you a father, in bringyng furth A faire childe vnto you, [Where] you shall haue A pretie little boye, runnyng vp And douN|e your house, suche A one As shall expresse your looKE, ANd your [Wiues looKE], suche A one as shall call you dad with his swete lispyng wordes. Now last of all, when you are thus lynK|ed in loue, the samE shall beE so fastened and boundE together, as though it wer with the Adamant stone, that death it selfe can neuer bee able to vndoe it. Now againe, what [A ioye shalL this be vntO you, wheN your moste fairE wife shall make you a father, in bringyng furth [A faire] childe vnto you, where you shalL haue [A pretie] Little boye, runnyng vp and doune your housE, suche [A ONE] as shalL expresse your LOoke, and your wiues LOoke, sucHe [A ONE] as shall call you dad with his swete Lispyng wordes. Now Last Of [ALl, wheN you arE] thus linked in Loue, the samE shallbee sO fastened and bounde together, as though it wer with the Adamant stoNE, that death it selfe can neuer bee able to vndoe it.

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At the end of this key passage (marked by duplicitous deixis in “Now last of all”) Wilson indicates that the three anagrams are to be “lincked”, “fastned” and “bounde together” to form the three-word question, and at the same time points to the figura condensa that the three words share: NoW Last Of All, WHen You ArE thus lincK|ed iN louE

The textual matrix of this condensa also contains conventionally disposed Latin ANUS and English ARSE anagrams. There is a close affinity between (a) the duplicitous sense of the overt dimension of the text and (b) the anagrams concealed within it. The gesture is again marked in “Now last of all” (translating the customary Latin prompt in nunc): Now last of [All, wheN yoU [ARe] thUS] lincked in louE Now last of [All, wheN yoU [ARe] thUS] lincked in louE

The ensuing text is imbued with a plurality of these conventionally incorporated body-part anagrams, which are set in expolitio as the passage proceeds. A selection (only) of these Latin and English anagrams is shown below: Now last of [All, wheN you [ARe] thUS] lincked in louE, the same shall bee so fastned and bounde together, as though it were with [An Adamant stone, that Death it selfe can neueR bee able to vndoe it. ThriSE happie [ARe] they (quoth Horace) yea, more then thriSE happie [Are] they, whom theSE sure bands doe holde: neither though they [ARe] by euill reporters full oft Set asvnder, shall LouE bee vnlosed betwixt them two, till Death them both depart. You haue them that shall comfort you in your latter daies, that shall close vp your eyes when God shall call you, that shall burie you, [ANd fulfill all thinges] belonging to your Funerall, by whom yoU shall seeme to bee newe borne. For so long aS they shall liue, you will neuer bee thought dead your selfe. The goodes [ANd lands] that yoU haue got, goe not to other heireS then to your owne. So that Vnto such [As haue] fulfilled all thingeS, that belong vN|to mans life, Death it selfe cannot seeme better. Old age commeth vpon VS al, will we, or nill we, [ANd this way Nature] prouided for VS, that we should waxe yong again in our children [ANd nepheVv|es. For what man can be greeued that he iS old, when he seeth his owne countenance, which he had being a childe, to appeare liuely in his sonne? Death is ordained for all mankind, [And yet by this] meanes only, Nature by her prouidence, mindeth Vnto vS a certain immortalitie, while she encreaseth one thing vpon [An other, eueN as a yong graffe] buddeth out, Vvhen the old tree iS cut doune. Neither can he

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Chapter Four seeme to dye, that when God calleth him, leaueth a yong childe behind him.

Wilson follows conventional practice in relation to prose anagrammatism in adapting the vocabulary used in the overt dimension of his text to the requirements of the anagrams in the covert dimension. In the first part of the passage, dedicated to ARSE anagrams, the word “are” is brought into play. In the second part, the ANUS anagrams are facilitated by a succession of the words “and” and “an”. To reiterate, when the bodypart anagrams are read in counterpoint to the overt dimension of the text, the covert significance of “thus lincked in loue” and “so fastned and bounde together” is revealed: “Now last of [All, wheN you [ARe] thUS] lincked in loue, the same shall bee so fastned and bounde together”. As will become clear, Shakespeare invokes a somewhat similar duplicity in the concluding line of Sonnet 7 in his word-play in “lokt on” (echoing Wilson’s “lincked in”). The influence of Wilson’s plain, simple style and his fidelity to Classical anagrammatism may be discerned, not only in Sonnets 1-17, but in all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. It is important to note that, as we shall see, a full reading of Sonnet 16 must also take into account the occasion upon which the poem has been written, and the portrait to which it additionally refers. An anagrammatic reading reveals that Wilson’s translation of Ovid’s CUR SOLUS FRICAS is an important source for Sonnets 1-17, all but two of which are found to incorporate verbatim quotations of Wilson’s vernacular anagrams. In one exceptional instance Shakespeare is found to substitute the word frygge for wanke in the sense (OED, 3b, 1598) of “masturbate”. Whatever the etymological source of the English word frygge, Shakespeare appears to have noted and exploited the linguistic and conceptual resemblances between frygge and Latin fricare. In Sonnet 7, for example, Shakespeare incorporates attributive OVIDIUS and ERASMUS anagrams in the octave, and cites Wilson’s vernacular anagrams in the sestet. A selection (only) of the relevant anagrams is shown below: Loe in the [Orient when the gracious] light, Lifts Vp his burning head, [Each vndeR eye Doth homage to his] new Appear|Ing Sight, Seruing with lookes his sacreD Maiesty, [And hau|Ing climb’d the] steepe Vp heauenly hill, Resembling [strong youth in hiS middle] age, Yet mortall lookes adore his beauty still, Attending on his goulden pil|grimage: But when from high-most pich [WitH [werY] car,

O V I D I-V S

E-R A-S M V S

W

W

Sonnets Like] feeble Age he reeleth from the daY, The eyes (fore dutious) Now conuerted are From his low tract And LooKE an other [Way]: So thou, tHY selfe Out-going in thy noon: Vnlok’d on diest vnlesse thou get a sonNE.

223 H-Y W HY

A N KE

A-L O NE

The anagrams in the sestet, which as we have seen are quoted verbatim from Wilson’s translation, are closely accompanied by attributive WILSONE (sic) anagrams: But when from high-most pich [WIth wery car, Like] feeble age he reeleth from the day, The eyes (fore dutiouS) now cON|uerted arE From his low tract And looke an other [Way: So thou, thy selfe] out-go|Ing in thy noon: Vn|Lok’d on diest vnlesS|e thou get a sONNE.

WI L S-ON-E W I L-S-O-NE

The shared condensa of the attributive anagrams is located in the ambient text at the beginning of the relevant extensae: OVIDIUS; ERASMUS; WILSONE: LOe In the ORIent WheN the graciouS light, liftS Vp hiS burning heAD, each Vnder Eye doth hoM|agE

The Orphic verba certa in Sonnet 7 are registered in SINNE, SELFE ABUSE and MASTURBATION (sic) anagrams. As to the latter, OED cites “1603 FLORIO tr. Montaigne Ess. II. xii. 340: Diogenes in sight of all, exercising his Maisterbation, bredde a longing desire ... in the bystanders”. The fact that Shakespeare’s MASTURBATION anagram is available in the text in both variant forms has the effect of corroborating rather than weakening the case for this relatively early use of the Latinate word: Loe in the Orient when the gracious light, Lifts vp his burning head, each vnder eye Doth homage to his new appearing sight, Seruing with lookes his sacred [MAiesty, And hauing climb’d the STeepe Vp heauen]|ly hill, Resembling strong youth in his middle Age, Yet mortall lookes adore his Beauty [still, ATtend|Ing ON his goulden pilgrimage]: But when from high-most pich with wery car, Like [feeble age] he reeleth from the day,

MA ST-V A-B-V R S-E B AT-I-ON

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Chapter Four The eyes (fore dutious) now conuerted are From his low tract and looke an other way: [So thou, thy [SELFE]] out-going in thy noon: Vnlok’d on diest vnlessE thou get a sonnE.

S-ELF E

SELF E

An anagrammatic reading reveals that in this sonnet Shakespeare follows Ovid in comparing the rising, “high-most pich”, and setting of the sun to phallic tumescence, ejaculation, and detumescence. In this context, therefore, the word “sonne” (an orthographical variant of sunne) in line 14 also signifies penis in the context of homosexual activity. In the couplet the tutor-poet warns his pupil that if he masturbates, he will die (i.e. reach climax) “un-locked on” (i.e. sexually disengaged) unless he gets a “sun” (a phallus, perhaps that of the poet) to join him. In such a context the formulaic FAVETE LINGUIS (“Be silent!”) anagrams are conventionally appropriate. These anagrams and Shakespeare’s ANUM PEDICARE anagrams (the latter quoted verbatim from Ovid) are shown below: [Loe IN the Orient when the Gracious] light, Lifts Vp hIS burning head, each vnder eye Doth homage to his new appearing sight, Seruing with lookes his sacred maiesty, And hauing climb’d the steepe vp heauenly hill, Resembling strong youth in his middle age, Yet mortall lookes adore his beauty still, [Attending oN his goulden pilgrimage: But Vvhen froM] high-most [Pich with wery car, Like [Feeble AgE]] he reeleth from the Day, The eyes (fore dutI|ous) now Con|Uerted ARE From his low Tract And lookE an otheR way: So thou, thy selfE out-going in thy noon: Vnlo’d on diest vnlesse thou get a sonne.

L-IN-G V-IS

F-A U-E T-E E

A-N P V-M E-D I-C-ARE /A-R E

In its various forms, the prior Ovidian devise in cur solus fricas is found to inform all of the basal sonnets 1-17. The proemial Sonnet 1 is typically duplicitous in this respect, its Orphic verba certa consisting inter alia of MYSTERY, SINNE, GLUTTONY, SELFE ABUSE, and WASTE anagrams, of which a selection is shown below: From fairest creatures we de|[Sire INcrease], S-IN That thereby beauties Rose might Neuer diE, N-E But [As the riper should by time] decease, His tender heire might Beare his MemorY]: But thoU contracted to thine owne bright eyeS, Feed’sT thy lights flamE with [Selfe] substantiall fewell,

S

A B U-S E

Sonnets [MAking a famine] whER|e aboundancE lies, Thy selfe thY foe, to thy Sweet seLFE too cruell: ThoU that art now the worlds fresh ornament, And only heR|auld to the gaudy [Spring, WithIN thine owNE] Bud Buriest thy content, And Tender chorle makst wast In niggarding: Pitty the world, or else this [GLUTTON be], To eate the worlds due, bY] the graue and thee.

225 MA S T-U R B AT-I ON

E LFE S IN-NE GLUTTON Y

The vernacular equivalent of Ovid’s cur solus fricas is again incorporated in the form of concealed anagrams, a gesture that is prompted by the sense in which a “creature” was in the period also a catamite. A further hint is provided by metrically endorsed, Ovidian double entendre in “we desire in crease” (sic). The gesture is accompanied by corroborative BUTT and ARSE anagrams in the octave: From fairest creatures we de|[Sire INcrease], That thereby beauties Rose might Neuer diE, [BUT] [As the] Riper Should by timE decease, BUT His tender heire mighT beare his memory: T [BUT] thou contracted to thine owne brighT eyes, BUT-T Feed’st thY lights flame with selfe substantiall fewell, Making a famine where aboundance lies, Thy selfe thy foe, to thy sweet selfe too cruell:

A-R S E

Shakespeare again translates Ovid’s Latin into the vernacular, in three closely associated anagrams in the sestet: Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament, And only herauld to the gaudy spring, [Within thine] owne bud buriest tHY] content, [ANd tender chorL|e] maK|st wast in niggarding: Pitty the world, Or else this gluttoN bE, To eate the worlds due, by the graue and thee.

WHY A-L ON-E

The recommended alternative to solitary masturbation is specifically identified in the BUTT, ARSE, and BUGGERY anagrams which accompany the rhetorical question: Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament, And only herauld to the gaudy spring, Within thine owne [BUd [buriest] thy] contenT, [And tender chorle] makst wast in niGG|arding:

BU GG

BU-T-T A

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Chapter Four Pitty thE world, oR else this glutton be, To eate the worlds due, bY the graue and thee.

E-R Y

R-S-E

The figura condensa is shared with Shakespeare’s customary HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams: HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; BUTT; ARSE; BUGGERY: OR Else THIs GLUttoN Be, To Eate THe WorldS due, BY thE GrauE And theE.

To reiterate, Shakespeare’s anagrams of conventional seduction are derivative and formulaic, and find their proper context not in the criminal law of Elizabethan England, but in traditional concepts and literary interpretations of the erastes/eromenos relationship. The informing aesthetic or invenio of Sonnet 1 is derived from the prior anagrammatic devise that finds a conceptual and linguistic link between Latin consumo (“eat; consume; devour; waste; squander; use up; exhaust”) and consummo (“complete; consummate; bring together; unite”). The pairing of consumere and consummare is plainly relevant to the aesthetic strategy of the overt dimension of the text, and poignantly relevant also to the poet’s ulterior motive. In Classical Latin, verbs of both eating and completing are euphemisms for sexual intercourse.43 As in Shakespeare’s comparison of Wriothesley and Riotously in parallel anagrams in Sonnet 95 (below), the words CONSUMERE and CONSUMARE (sic) are closely associated in the text. In the interests of clarity of presentation, a selection only of the relevant anagrams, including Shakespeare’s HERMES anagram, is shown below: From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die, But as the riper should by time decease, [His tendER heire might beare his] Memory: But thou [[CONtracted to thine] owne] bright eyES, Feed’st thy lights flame with selfe SUbstantiall fewell, Making A faminE wheRE aboundance lies, Thy selfe thy foe, to thy sweet selfe too cruell:

H-ER-M CON ES CON SU SU M-A-RE M-E-RE

The conventional role of Hermes in relation to the revelation of ultimate truth through linguistic transposition (as in consumo/consummo) is never forgotten. The respective formae of the CONSUMERE and CONSUMMARE anagrams are located in the same part of the text in “[contracted to thine[” and “[contracted to thine owne]”. The figurae extensae are co-

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extensive in “CONtracted … SUbstantiall … Making … a faminE wheRE” and “CONtracted … SUbstantiall … Making … A famine wheRE”, respectively. The epithet which supplies the alternative vowels E and A is that which registers precisely what is at stake in the metathesis of consumere and consumare, namely “A famine”. The shared condensa is also shared with (inter alia) the SELF ABUSE and MASTURBATION anagrams: CONSUMERE; CONSUMARE: BUt thoU CONtracted to thinE OwNE BRIght eyeS, / Feed’sT Thy lights FlAME with selfE SUbstantiall fewelL

Typically, the diverse, overtly stated themes of Sonnet 1 – erotic replication; reproductive mirroring, optical self-mirroring, selfcombustion, self-consumption, food, gluttony, waste, botanical selfextinction, and death – are mediated inter se (and thus achieve coherence) in terms of Ovid’s account of Echo and Narcissus in Metamorphoses 3. 339-510. As in Ovid’s text, that mediation is effected in terms of the difference-in-similarity in the metathesis of consumo and consummo. In pursuit of conventional obligations, Shakespeare takes care to establish a formal, appositional relationship between his own sonnet and Ovid’s text and Golding’s translation. First, Shakespeare incorporates attributive OVID, GOLDING, and NARCISSUS anagrams: From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauties Rose might [Neuer die, But As] the riper should by time decease, His tendeR heire might beare his memory: But thou Contracted to thine [Owne bright eyes, Feed]’st thy lights flame Vvith selfe SUbstant|Iall fewell, Mak|Ing A faminE wheRE abounD|ance lieS, Thy Selfe thy foe, to thy sweet selfe too cruell: ThoU that art [now the worldS fresh ornament, And only herauld to the [Gaudy spring], Within thine Owne bud buriest thy content, And tender chorL|e makst wast in niggarDING: Pitty the world, or else this glutton be, To eate the worlds due, by the graue and thee.

O V I-D

N A R C I S S U-S

G O L-DING

Secondly, key words from the prior texts are translated and and/or quoted verbatim, as for example (1) Ovid’s oculos and Golding’s “eyes” in Shakespeare’s “thine owne bright eyes”; (2) Ovid’s alimenta and

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Golding’s “plentie” in the sonnet’s “aboundance”; (3) Ovid’s igni and Golding’s “burning flame” in “flame”; (4) Golding’s “feedes a hope” in “feed’st thy light’s flame”; and (5) Golding’s “consume” in the CONSUMERE anagram. The obligatory verbal transpositions having been thus effected, Ovid’s resonant text, enhanced in its resonance through Golding’s reiterative translation, is deemed to be set in formal, revelatory apposition to Shakespeare’s. Here again the quasi-anagrammatic transposition of words and phrases goes far beyond mere allusion. The original reader (who will customarily read, transcribe, and re-read the sonnet) is invited to bring Ovid’s text into consciousness when responding to the Renaissance poem. Indeed, the reader will have failed to respond adequately to the sonnet unless he accepts that invitation. When Sonnet 1 is read and re-read in terms of the interaction of the overt and covert dimensions of the text, it thus becomes self-interpreting. In effect, its apparently diverse themes meet and gain coherence in the resemblance of two Latin words and the Classical text to which they refer. Sonnet 2 is found to exhibit a similarly duplicitous strategy. It contains attributive THOMAS WILSON anagrams, together with anagrams of the English form of the rhetorical question cur solus fricas? The verba certa are routinely incorporated in the form inter alia of SINNE, SELFE ABUSE, and WASTE anagrams. It is noteworthy that the attribution is closely associated with the three-word rhetorical question that is quoted from the covert dimension of the text of Wilson’s translation of Erasmus: [When] fortie [Winters shall beseige tHY] brow, And digge deep trenches In thy beauties field, Thy youtheS proud Liuery So gaz’d on now, [Wil be] A totter’d weed Of smal worth held: TheN being asK|t, wherE all thy beautie lies, Where [All the treasure] of thy Lusty daies; To say within thine OwNE deepe sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame, and thriftlesse praise. How much more praise deseru’d thy beauties vse, If [THou couldst answere this] faire child Of mine Shall sum my count, and MAke my old excusE Proouing hiS beautie by succession thine. This were to be new made when thou art ould, And see thy blood warme when thou feel’st it could.

W I L-S O N

W-HY

W-A N-K-E A-L O-NE

TH-O MA S

As we have seen in Sonnet 4 the rhetorical question is again presented in terms of formulaic anagrams. On this occasion, however, the quintessential word “why” is also apparent in the overt dimension of the

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text, where it occurs three times. A selection of the relevant anagrams is show in the annotated version of the sonnet below (emphasis added): Vnthrifty louelinesse [WHy] dost thou spend, Vpon thy selfe thy beauties legacY? Natures bequest giues nothing but doth lend, And being franck she lends to those are free: Then beautious nigard why doost thou abuse, The bountious largesse giuen thee to giue? Profitles vserer [Why doost thou vsE] So great A summe of summes yet can’st Not liue? For hauing traffiKE [With tHY] selfe [ALone], Thou Of thy selfe thy sweet selfe dost deceaue, Then how when nature calls thee to be goNE, [WHat acceptable Audit can’st thou leaue? Thy vnus’d beautY] must be tomb’d with thee, Which vsed liues th’executor to be.

WH Y

W H-Y

AL O NE

WH Y

Each overt utterance of the word why includes an indirect reference to “self-abuse”: “Why dost thou spend? … why doost thou abuse? … why doost thou use / So great a summe?” These overt instances of the word “why” culminate in lines 7-9, in which the anagrammatized question is paralleled overtly in “why traffike with thy selfe alone”. Hermes, the duplicous god of inter-textual boundaries, intervenes: Why doost thou vse / So great a summe of summes yet can’st not liue / For hauing traffike [With tHY] selfe alone? [Why doost thou vse] / So great A summe of summes yet can’st Not liue / For hauing traffiKE with thy selfe alone? Why doost thou vse so great [A summe] of summes yet can’st not Liue for hauing traffike with thy selfe alONE?

The ulterior motive of this sonnet (and of Sonnets 1-17 in general) is captured in miniature in the hybrid combination of overt and covert in “why … with thy selfe alone?” WHY … With tHY selfe alone? WHY … WitH thY selfe alone?

Hermes is also the god of translation, and in reading Shakespeare it is helpful to have in mind at all times the Latin equivalent of words, phrases,

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and sentences in the English text. The conventional role of the god is deemed to include the revelatory exchange of translated words (and hence themes and concepts) between English and Latin, and between the English text and a specific Latin text. A similar transpositional principle may be traced in the conventional invocation of ancient Greek in Classical Latin. Trans-textual gestures of this kind are frequently found to comprise conventional markers of significant gestures of “appositional intertextuality”. Shakespeare will often mark such moments in his text by means of conspicuous gestures involving repetition or near-repetition, as for example in “beautious niggard … bountious largesse” and “summe of all summes”. The rhetorical device of repetitio is particularly suited to the marking of events in the covert dimension, since it is capable of taking effect without semantic repercussions in the overt dimension of the text in which it occurs. Shakespeare’s “summe of all summes”, for example, is found to translate Plautus’ summa summarum in Diniarchus’ opening speech in Truculentus. The largesse that the poet’s pupil is accused of abusing corresponds to Plautus’ penes, a word which in Latin word-play invokes both penis (“the male member”) and penus (“store of food”). It is presumably for this reason that Shakespeare makes frequent use of the word store in a sexual context in the sonnets. In Plautus’ double entendre, the word penus (in its alternative sense of “innermost sanctuary”) also refers to anus. The linking of penis and penus/anus is the theme of the anagrammatic content of the opening lines of the play, which are typically Plautine in their indecent duplicity. The speech contains two sets of ANUM PENIS PEDICAT anagrams set in chiastic array. Here again, a selection (only) of the relevant extensae is noted in the margin: DINIARCHUS: Non omnis [Aetas ad perdisceN|dum] sat est amanti, dUM id [Perdiscat], quot pereat modis; neque eam rationem eapse umquam Educet Venus, quam [PENes] amantum summa summarum re|DIt], quot amans exemplIS ludifiC|etur, quot modis pereat quotque exoretur exorabulis: quot illic blanditiae, quot illic iracundiae sunt, quot supplicia danda, di vostram fidem, hui, quid perierandum est etiam, praeter munera: [Primumdum merc|Es anN|ua, IS] primus bolust], ob Eam tres noctes Dantur; Interea loC|i AuT [Ara AuT viNUM] AuT oleUM AuT triticUM, temptat benignusne an bonae frugi sies:

A-N UM PEN IS

P E DI PE-DI C C AT AT

P P-E-N-IS E-D-I-C A-T A-NUM

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DINIARCHUS (to himself): Not a whole life is sufficient for a lover thoroughly to learn, until he has become full well aware of this, in how many modes he may come to ruin; nor does Venus herself, in whose hands lie the sum and substance of lovers, ever instruct us in that art of reckoning - in how many ways one in love may be deluded, in how many modes he may come to ruin, and with how many modes of entreaty he may be entreated. How many blandishments are there in it, how many pettish ways in it, how many perils must be courted! Ye Gods! by our trust in you! Hey! what ground for perjury as well, besides the everlasting presents! In the first place then, there’s the yearly allowance; that’s her first haul1. For that the favour of three nights is granted. In the meantime she’s trying for either money, or wine, or oil, or corn, to prove whether you are lavish or thrifty. (Tr. H T Riley)

The original reader, linking “summe of summes” with summa summarum and Plautus’ anum penis pedicat, will understand the ultimate significance of the gesture, and will comprehend the unifying effect that the paradigmatic apposition of Plautus’ text has upon the modern poem. It is scarcely surprising that the puritanical Francis Meres frames his covert definition of Shakespeare’s alleged immorality in terms of his assertion that “As the comedies of Plautus … so the same vices … are now also”. As noted in Chapter Three, Meres imbues this passage with SHAKESPERE anagrams, as he does that which follows it: “As deadly poyson … killeth the spirites, and bringeth death: so sinne killeth the soule, and speedily bringeth it to destruction”. Nor is it surprising, bearing in mind the insinuating duplicity of Sonnets 1-17, that the Puritan William Scott should incorporate SHAKESPERE anagrams in his somewhat similar diatribe, when he refers to “they vnder these flowers of Poetrye, hyde snaky wantonnesse, villanye, bringe poyson in a golden goblet, and are to be enterteyned, as sowle murderers”. Plautus’ play Truculentus takes as its theme the high cost to men – to the point of financial ruin - of enjoying the favours of desirable women. A minor character, the idiosyncratically churlish Truculentus (Shakespeare’s “tender chorle”) begins in “niggardly” fashion by arguing against such expenditure. In Sonnet 4, Shakespeare marks his invocation of Plautus’ text by means of conventionally incorporated PLAUTUS, TRUCULENTUS, ANUS, and ÂNE anagrams (the latter involving Shakespeare’s usual play on French âne): 44 Vnthrifty louelinesse why dost thou spend, Vpon thy selfe thy beauties legacy? Natures bequest giues nothing but doth lend, [[ANd being franck she lends] to those] are free: Then beautioUS nigard why doost thou abuse, The bountious largesse giuen thee to giue?

AN US

ÂN-E

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[Profitles] vserer why doost thou vse So great a summe of summes yet can’st not liue? For hauing traffike with thy selfe alone, ThoU of thy selfe thy sweet selfe dost deceaue, [Then how when naturR|e calls] thee to be gone, Vvhat acC|eptable audit can’st thoU LeauE? Thy vN|us’d beauty musT be tomb’d with thee, Which Vsed liueS th’executor to be.

P L A U T T-R U V-C-U-LE S N-T V-S

The shared figura condensa of the PLAUTUS, TRUCULENTUS, ANUS, and ÂNE anagrams is located in a section of the text that in effect reiterates the fundamental question, cur solus fricas: ProfitLES Vserer why doosT thoU vse / So great A Summe of Summes yet caN’st NoT LiuE?

Individual instances of verba perplexabilia in the overt dimension, the significance of which has hitherto (i.e. since the Enlightenment) remained open to speculation, are now put in context and are seen to cohere with the aesthetic strategy of the poem as a whole. For example, the word traffike in “traffike with thy selfe alone” is unusual enough to attract attention as potentially having some undisclosed significance, but its precise relevance is revealed only when it is translated back into Latin tracto, a verb capable of signifying both “traffic” (i.e. trade) and “touch or feel with the hand” being used in the latter sense to refer inter alia to masturbation. At the same time the word traffiKE supplies the final letters of wanKE and thus completes and coincides with the sense of the operative English anagram. In Sonnet 14, the poet’s playful assumption of a tutorial role is specifically identified in hermeneutic ERASTES and EROMENOS anagrams:

N

Ot from the stars do I my iudgement plucke, And yet me thinkes I haue Astronomy, But not to tell of good, or euil lucke, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons quallity, Nor can I fortune to breefe mynuits tell; Pointing to [Each his] thunder, Raine And winde, Or Say with Princes if it shal go wel By oft predict That I in heauen finde But from thine [EiES] my knowledge I deriue, And constant Stars in them I Read such art As truth and beautiE shal tO|gether thriue If froM thy selfe, to storE thou wouldst coN|uert:

E-R-A S T ES E R O M-E-N

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Or else Of thee thiS I prognosticate, Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date.

O-S

The tutor-poet’s affected stance is that of one whose “iudgement” is important (line 1), one who is able to talk with authority of “my knowledge” (line 9), one who can “read such art”, and one who is able to reach philosophical conclusions as to the ultimate status of Truth and Beauty. His pedagogic elevation over his pupil is such that he is able to conclude, with the air of a schoolmaster delivering a caveat in an end-ofterm report, “Or else of thee I prognosticate, Thy end is …” The poet further affects to be particularly skilled in the art of onomancy, for the “eies” of which he speaks are inscribed in Henrie Wriotheslie. So long as the young earl shall live, the poet predicts, “truth and beautie shal together thriue”, for when the words truth and beautie are taken together, they are informed by his eies. But if he neglects to beget an heir, the eternal ideal that underwrites truth and beautie will eventually cease to exist. “Thy end”, the tutor concludes, referring also to the end of “Thy name”, will then be “Truthes and Beauties” end. In accordance with traditional practice, Shakespeare incorporates a hermeneutic ONOMANTIE anagram, one extensa of which ends in But from thine eies my knowledge I deriue” (where the word deriue is typically self-transactional in its derivation of the word-within-word eie): Not from the stars do I my iudgement plucke And yet me thinkes I haue Astronomy, But not to tell of good, or euil lucke, [Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons quality], Nor can I fortune tO breefe Mynuits tell; Pointing to each his thunder, raine ANd winde, Or say with Princes if iT shal go wel By oft predict that I in heauen findE. But from thine eies my knowledgE I deriue, [And constant stars] in them I read such [art As] truth and beautie shal together thriue If from thy selfe, to store thou wouldst conuert: Or else of thee this I prognosticate, Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date.

O N-O-M AN T I E

O NO-M AN T I-E

Sonnet 14 is therefore also of interest in that it refers to and defines Shakespeare’s own verbal art in terms of onomastic and anagrammatic legibility. To reiterate: the poet’s knowledge of his young patron is, he claims, derived from his eyes, a reference to the prior word-within-word

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devise that finds a pair of eyes or eies in the analysis of Henry Wriothesley’s names in their variant forms: Henrye Wriothesleye Henrie Wriotheslie

This sonnet’s Orphic verba certa take the form of MYSTERY, SINNE, SELFE ABUSE, and MASTURBATION anagrams, and Ovid’s cur solus fricas is again reiterated in WHY MASTURBATE ALONE anagrams: Not from the stars do I [MY iudgement plucke], [And yet me thinkeS I haue] AStronomy, BuT noT to telL of good, or Euil lucke, Of plag|Ues, Of dearths, oR seasons quallitY, NoR can I fortune to BreefE mynuits tell; Pointing to each his thunder, raine And [Winde], Or [Say] witH Princes If iT shal go weL BY] Oft predict that I iN HeaueN findE] But from thine eies mY KnowledgE I deriue, And constant stars in them I read such art [As truth and beautie] shaL together thriue If from thy selfe, tO store thou wouldst coN|uert: Or else of theE this I prognosticate, Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date.

M AS T U R-B A T E

A L O N-E W H Y

S-I N-N-E

A-L O-N E

Attributive ERASMUS and THOMAS WILSON anagrams are also included: Not from THe stars dO I my iudge|Ment plucke, And yet me thinkeS I haue Astronomy, But not to tell of good, or [Euil lucke, Of plagues], of dearths, oR seAS|ons quallity, Nor can I fortune to breefe Myn|UitS tell; Pointing to each hiS thunder, raine and winde, Or say with Princes if it shal go [Wel By oft predict that I in heauen] finde]. But from thine eies my know|Ledge I deriue, And constant Stars in them I read such art As truth and beautie shal tO|gether thriue If from thy selfe, to store thou wouldst coN|uert: Or else of thee this I prognosticate, Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date.

TH-O-M A-S E R-AS M-U S W I L S O N

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In Sonnet 14, as in many of the sonnets in the sequence, the words eie and eies are also used in their sexual sense. A tripartite reticulation is thus engendered in which ocular, literal, and sexual eies are simultaneously interlinked. In a somewhat similar threefold gesture, the words “Astronomy”, (line 2), “Stars” and “art” (line 10), are connected by reference to the ars divinationis (Latin ars invoking English arse) that is concealed in the words AStRonomy and stARS, and in the implied word ARS/ARSE).45 The poet’s knowledge of his beloved is thus derived from ars/arse. Line 10 invites an alternative reading in “stARS in them I read such ARS”, where the duplicitous deixis of “in them I read” is poignant. The onomastic theme of the sonnet is registered in the hermeneutic ONOMANTIE (sic) anagrams which are also present in the text. These anagrams are heralded by iconic letter-play in lines 1-2. The conspicuous NO-particle in the versal apparatus is reciprocally corroborative in relation to the Greek prefix ono which is concealed as in a word-within-word gesture in Astronomy. Playing on the idea that Greek onomen (“name”) is that by which we are known (and playing also on the sexual sense of the verb to know), Shakespeare transposes Greek ono in the form of the lettergroup ono. In the sexual vocabulary of the period, the letter-group eie is used to represent the male genitalia with penis erectus, and in complementary fashion ono is emblematic of the rear view of the buttocks and anal orifice.46 A selection (only) of the relevant anagrams is shown in the annotated version below:

N

Ot from the stars do I my iudgement plucke And yet Me thinkes I haue Astr ONO my, But not to tell of good, or Euil lucke, [Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons quality], Nor can I fortune tO breefe Mynuits tell; Pointing to each his thunder, raine ANd winde, Or say with Princes if iT shal go wel By oft predict that I in heauen findE. But from thine eies my knowledgE I deriue, [And constant stars] in them I read such [art As] truth and beautie shal together thriue If from thy selfe, to store thou wouldst conuert: Or else of thee this I prognosticate, Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date.

ONO O N-O-M AN T I-E AR-S A-RS E

For the original reader, the words Astronomy, lucke, fortune, predict, stars, and prognosticate will also have pointed to Erasmus’s remarks on the ars divinationis (“predicting and foretelling”) in De copia.47 It is also possible - and indeed probable - that Erasmus’s De recta latine graecique

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sermonis pronuntiatione dialogues (“The right way of speaking Latin and Greek: a Dialogue”) is another of Shakespeare’s source-texts in this context. Some extracts from De recta pronuntiatione may be helpful in this context. In this section of the dialogue, the Bear is explaining to the Lion his proposed method for selecting an educator: 48 Bear The man of perception … is likely to come to a better judgment by using his reason on the relevant evidence than an expert on augury or divination will arrive at from the flight or singing of birds, or from the appetite of chickens, or from the anatomy of entrails. Lion But what are you saying will serve as a basis for your brand of augury or divination? Bear I shall find out if he [the candidate] comes from a good family and if he has had a liberal education; I shall enquire into the sort of company he enjoys and whom he has as his friends and companions; I shall want to know if he prefers to read books or to drink and gamble; I shall observe his habits, his gestures, and his language to see that he is neither unresponsive or unspirited on the one hand, nor quick-tempered and arrogant on the other. Above all I shall examine his face, and especially his eyes. Lion Not augury, but physiognomy.

The Bear’s concluding words, “Above all I shall examine his face, and especially his eyes”, and the Lion’s rejoinder, “Not augury, but physiognomy”, are together capable of serving as one of the prior devises upon which the sonnet is ultimately founded. It is from the stars in the young earl’s physiognomic eyes, as distinct from the stars of astrological divination and other traditional indicators that the poet affects to derive his “knowledge”. The phenomena upon which the poet purports not to rely, as listed in lines 3-8 (as for example, “thunder, raine and winde”) are apparently based on Erasmus’s account of “prediction and foretelling” in De copia (77). 49 The formal establishment of inter-textual apposition is specifically marked by direct verbatim quotations in the usual way. For example, the collocation in “thunder, raine and winde” includes the verbatim quotation of ventos et imbres from Erasmus’s si quartam orbis rutilus cinget ventos et imbres praemonebit (“if there is a reddish ring around the moon on the fourth day, it will bring wind and rain”). In idiomatic English, the order of words in “wind and rain” (translating ventos et imbres) is more usual than “rain and wind”, as for example in Kent’s “groanes of roaring Winde and Raine” in King Lear. In the sonnet, however, the order of the words “ventos et imbres” is inverted and becomes “raine and winde”, thus fulfilling the customary requirements of inverse or chiastic quotation.50 It would be naïve to interpret this inversion in terms of the need to “find a rhyme” for the word finde.

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In accordance with established protocols, Shakespeare also includes attributive and hermeutic ERASMUS, ONOMANTY/IE, and ARS DIVINATIONIS anagrams: Not from the stars do I my iudgement plucke And yet me thinkes I haue Astronomy, But not to tell of good, or [Euil lucke, [Of plagues], of dearths, oR seAS|ons quality], Nor can I fortune tO breefe Myn|Uits tell; Pointing to each hiS thunder, raine ANd winde, Or say with Princes if iT shal go wel By oft predict that I in heauen findE. But from thine eies my knowledge I DerIU|e, [And constant stars] IN them I read such [art As] Truth and beautie shal together thriue If from thy selfe, to store thou wouldst cON|uert: Or else of thee thIS I prognosticate, Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date.

O M AN T I-E A-R-S

E R-AS M-U S

D-IU IN A-T I-O-N IS

The shared condensa has the effect of revealing the poet’s ulterior theme: EYES; ONOMANTIE; ARS DIUINATIONIS; ERASMUS: NOt from ThE StARS dO I My Iudgement pluckE / AND yet mE ThinkES I haUE AstronomY,

We have already examined one important aspect of Sonnet 16, but it is important to note in addition that this richly anagrammatic poem appears to have been composed to mark Henry Wriothesley’s twenty-first birthday on 6 October 1594, and to refer to a “coming of age” portrait by Nicholas Hilliard. It is to this aspect of Sonnet 16 that Vendler so perceptively responds when she talks of Shakespeare’s interest in “representation by drawing”.51 It seems likely that the portrait in question is the well-known miniature of the young Wriothesley in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The Fitzwilliam portrait bears the inscriptions “Ano dm 1594” and “Etatis suae 20”, while the sonnet incorporates concealed chronograms of the year MDLXXXXIIII in usual form. Attributive NICKE HILLYERDE (sic) anagrams are incorporated in the text. 52 It is Shakespeare’s habit to mark the date of composition of sonnets which refer to noteworthy events. In Sonnet 16 the 1594 chronogram (marking Henry’s twenty-first birthday) is marked overtly by the proemial deployment of the word “time” in line 2, and covertly by the TIME and

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DATE anagrams in lines 1-3. In the extract below, two (only) of the DATE extensae are indicated (my emphasis): But wherefore [Do not you A mighT|ier waiE] Make warre vppon this bloudie [Tirant time]? And fortifiE your selfe in your Decay With Meanes More blesseD then My barren riM|e?

D-A-T-E TI-ME

D-A T-E

In addition, the chronogram follows conventional protocols in that is also marked by the high frequency in the first quatrain of the higher-order numeral letters MD, which are closely clustered in acrostic positions in relation to words. The operative MD-matrix is comprised in the acrostically self-contained matrix - marked {thus} below - in “Meanes More blesseD”: But wherefore Do not you a Mightier waie Make warre vppon this bloudie tirant tiMe]? And fortifiE your selfe in your Decay With {Meanes More blesseD} then My barren riM|e?

M D

The remaining numeral letters are then incorporated incrementally and in due sequence as the sonnet proceeds. The numeral letter L is marked by the close clustering of acrostic instances in lines 7-10, the operative matrix being comprised in “Lines of Life”: With vertuous wish would beare your Liuing flowers, Much Liker then your painted counterfeit: So should the {Lines of Life} that Life repaire Which this (Times pensel or my pupiLL pen)

L

The XXXX-component is similarly marked and supplied by acrostic instances of the letter S in lines 12-14.53 The operative matrices are comprised (and marked by repetition and rhyme) in the epithets “Selfe Still” and “Sweet Skill”: Can make you liue your Selfe in eieS of men, To giue away your Selfe, keepS your {Selfe Still}, And you must liue drawne by your owne {Sweet Skill}.

S S

S S

The IIII-component (which in accordance with Horace’s protocols does not depend on the acrostic letters of words) is comprised in the welldefined locus of the couplet. The I-matrix is inaugurated by the prompt in

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“you liue … in eies of men”, where Shakespeare’s customary word-play on “in eies” and “in I’s” is again conventionally deictic: … liue your selfe in I’s of men. To gIue away your selfe, keeps your selfe stIll}, And you must lIue drawne by your owne sweet skIll.

II II

The chronogram is reiterated in condensed form in the couplet, where the emphatic entity “Must Liue Drawn” comprises the MDL-component: To gIue away your selfe, keeps your Selfe StIll, And you {Must LIue Drawne} by your owne Sweet SkIll.

Linking the acrostically identical but semantically opposite entities “MiniaturE” and “Mightier waiE”, the poet in effect says: yes, your miniature is beautiful, but why not take a mightier waie? In a gesture of aesthetic corroboration, the beginning of Shakespeare’s MINIATURE PORTRAYTE anagrams is so disposed as to coincide with the beginning of the phrase “mightier waie” (which is the forma of the MINIATURE anagram): But wherefore do not you a [MIghtier waie] Make warre vppoN this bloud|Ie tirant time? And forT|ifie yoUR selfE in your decay With meanes more blessed then my barren rimE? Now stand you on the top of [happie] houres, And manY maiden gardens yet vnset, With vertuous wish would beare your Liuing flowers, Much Liker then Your [Painted counterfeit: So should the lines Of life] that lifE repaire Which this (Times pensel oR my [pupill pEN) Neither in InwarD Worth nor ouT|ward fairE] Can make you liue youR selfe in eies of men, To giue AwaY yoUR selfe, keepe your selfe still, And you musT liuE drawnE by your owne sweet skill.

MI N-I A-T-UR E

P O R T R A-Y T-E

H Y L L-Y E R D-E

P I C T-UR E

The formulaic anagrams translating Ovid’s cur solus fricas are again present in Sonnet 17, the final sonnet in the basal level of the notional pyramid-triangle. The Orphic verba certa are again expressed in SINNE and SELFE ABUSE anagrams. Sequential WHY MASTURBATE ALONE anagrams are also found to span lines 1-1. For the sake of clarity of exposition, selected figurae extensae only are noted in the margin below:

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Chapter Four [WHo will beleeue mY] verse in time to come If it were fild with your [Most high deserts? Though yet heauen knowes it is but AS a Tombe] Which hides yoUR life, and shewes not halfe your parts: If I could write the Beauty of your eyes, [And in fresh numbers number alL your graces, The age] tO comE would say this Poet lies, Such heauenly touches NerE toucht earthly faces. So should my papers (yellowed [With their Age]) Be scorN’d, liKE old men of lesse truth then tongue, And your true rights be termd a Poets rage, And stretched miter of an Antique song. But were some childe of yours aliue that time, You should liue twise in it, and in my rime.

WH-Y

A-L O N-E

M AS-T UR B A T-E W-A N-KE

As will become clear, the shared figura condensa in lines 3-4 is also shared with indecent anagrams which specify the hidden parts of the young earl that are hidden in anagrammatic form: SINNE; SELFE ABUSE; WHY MASTURBATE ALONE: HeaueN Knowes IT As BUt As a ToMBe / Which hidES YoUR LifE, ANd SheweS NOt haLFE your partS

In the overt dimension of the text, the poet declares his desire to number the young earl’s parts (referring covertly to his private parts) and all his graces (i.e. his sexual blessings) in fresh numbers (i.e. in concealed anagrams). Accordingly FAVETE LINGUIS (“Be silent!”), HERMES, and ANAGRAMES anagrams are also incorporated in order to mark the poet’s anagrammatic re-writings in “fresh numbers”. A selection (only) of the relevant extensae is shown below: Who will beleeue my verse in time to come If it were [Fild with your most high deserts? F Though yet heauen knowes it is but as A tombe] A Vvhich hides your [LifE, and shewes] noT halfE your parts: L V-E-TE If I could writE the beauty of your eyes, I [ANd in fresh numbers] Number All your GRAces, N-G The Age to coME Vvould say thIS Poet lies, V-IS Such [HEauenly toucheS] nere toucht earthly faceS. HE So should my papers (yellowed with theiR age) R Be scorn’d, like old MEn of lesse truth then tongue, ME [ANd your truE rightS] be termd A Poets raG|e, AN-A-G S And stretched miteR of an Antique song. R-A

Sonnets But were soME childe of yourS aliue that time, You should liue twise in it, and in my rime.

241 ME-S

The second quatrain is of particular interest, for it is here that Shakespeare specifically defines “fresh numbers” in terms of concealed anagrammata, while also registering (in “If I could”) the poet’s conventionally assumed disengagement from the covert dimension of his text. In the annotated extract below, the plural extensae are emphasised in the text and one (only) of the extensae is noted in the margin: If I could write the beauty of your eyes, [ANd iN fresh Numbers] Number All your GRaces, The Age to coME would say thiS Poet lieS, Such heauenly toucheS nere toucht earthly faceS.

AN-A-GR A-ME-S

Shakespeare exploits the conventionally recognised affinity between the acrostically identical words AnuS and AnagrameS by associating the respective anagrams of the two words in the text: [And in fresh NUmbers] NUmber all your graceS,

AN-U-S

When the shared figura condensa of Shakespeare’s ANUS and ANAGRAMES anagrams is abstracted from the text and set in notional apposition to the theme-words, the sense in which “fresh numbers” signifies anagrammatic re-writing is revealed: ANAGRAMES; ANUS: And in fresh NumberS NUMber All your GRaceS A NU S A NU S

Wriothesley’s alleged graces are further defined in conventionally invoked PENIS, TESTES, ANUS, BALLES and ARSE anagrams: 54 Who will beleeue my verse in time to come If it were fild with your most high deserts? Though yet heauen knowes it is but as a tombe Which hides your life, and shewes not halfe your [Parts]: If I could write the [Beauty of your Eyes], B [And iN fresh numbers] NUmber ALL your graceS, A-LL [The agE to comE would Say thIS Poet liES], ES Such heauenly touches nere Toucht earthly facES. So should my papers (yellowed with their age)

P E N IS

242

Chapter Four Be scorn’d, like old men of lesse truth then tongue, [And your truE] RightS] be termd a PoetS ragE, [And stretched miteR of an [Antique] song, But were some childe of youRS aliuE that timE, You should liue twise in it, and in my rime.

A-R-S-E A-R S-E

A RS-E

The sceptical and cognitively biased twenty-first century reader may at first be unable to reconcile Shakespeare’s Hermetic truth-telling with common decency (on the one hand) or with the sublime verse of the Apollonian dimension of his sonnets (on the other). The words of Mercury are indeed harsh after the songs of Apollo. Such a reader may sympathise with those of Shakespeare’s contemporaries - puritanical critics and rivals - who are found to have covertly criticized and satirized the anagrammatic lewdness of Shakespeare’s verse. It is easy to understand why Sir John Davies in his Gullinge Sonnets (c. 1594) chooses the epithet “lewde gulleries” to describe Shakespeare’s early sonnets.55 That description speaks in particular to the character of Sonnets 1-17, in their generic adoption of a conventional programme of tutor-pupil seduction, with its equally conventional references to the relevant body-parts. Shakespeare appears to have been fully aware of the “low” character of Sonnets 1-17, for their eschatological insouciance is well suited to their notional location at the “base” of the penitential Mountain of Purgatory. So far as the overall project of Shake-speares Sonnets of 1609 is concerned, Sonnets 1-17 are not intended to be read in isolation, but instead as a preliminary to the incremental ascent to the ful noble wey of penitence in Sonnets 153 and 154, which conceal the poet’s ultimate prayer for the purging and cleansing of Holy Water. The full import of the basal sonnets is only recognised when, for example, they are seen in retrospect from the elevated viewpoint in the pyramid-triangle of Sonnet 146, with its penitential exhortations addressed to the poet’s “Poore soule”, the selfmurdered soul that he describes as “the center of my sinfull earth”. The base and basal nature of Sonnets 1-17 and of their covert anagrammatism is designedly left behind when Sonnet 18, the first of the transilition sonnets, is reached and read.

4.The first transilition An anagrammatic reading reveals that the contrast between (a) the physiologically specific lewde gulleries of Sonnets 1-17 and (b) the metaphysical character of Sonnet 18 is marked indeed and confirms the appropriateness of the latter as a transilitional marker in the incremental ascent of the pyramid-triangle. Sonnet 18 is also pivotal in that it

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incorporates for the first time in the sequence the triangle of desire which is found to involve the poet, his patron, and the poet’s potential rival, Christopher Marlowe. In contrast to Sonnets 1-17, Sonnet 18 invokes the concept of eternal love between and celebrates the preservation of abstract beauty. Instead of deploying anagrams based upon Ovid’s cur solus fricas, the author of Sonnet 18 adopts a quite opposite approach, founding his poem on Virgil’s seventh Eclogue. The contrast may best be appreciated when the typically Shakespearean word-play of line 1 is recognised: Shall I come, pair thee to a Summers die? Thou art more louely and more temperate.

The metrical ambivalence at the very outset encourages the subdivision of the word compare in the form of come pair. The phonetic resemblance in the period between day and die permits the poet’s reference to “a Summers die”.56 The variant version of line 1 is simultaneously and most importantly a conventionally veiled reference to the opening of Marlowe’s elegy “Come liue with me”. Shakespeare’s obligatory verbatim quotations are noted below: Come liue with me and be my loue, And we will all the pleasures proue…

come

Shall I come pair thee to a sumners die? Thou art more louely and more temperate…

come

my loue

more louely

That thematic concern is also opposed to the crudely overt or barely concealed homosexual overtures to the young earl that are found to be incorporated in Marlowe’s poetry of the period, as for example in the manuscript of the first part of Hero and Leander, and in the elegy ‘Come liue with me and be my loue’. Wriothesley is specifically identified in both poems in HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams, which are set in close association with anagrams of contextually apt body parts. Shakespeare is not to be accused of hypocrisy in this context, for his early sonnets are generically, decorously, and Classically apt to the received definition of the relationship between an older man and a younger, and his indecencies are always carefully deferred to the conventionally envisaged realm and responsibility of Hermes-Mercury. Marlowe’s elegy is based in part on Catullus’ elegy Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, in which CATULLUS, LESBIA, MENTULA, AND CUNNUS anagrams are suggestively associated in the text. In Classical and Renaissance erotic verse the act of sexual intercourse is customarily

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registered in terms of the expressive deployment in anagram of the aptly hidden names of the poet and of his mistress. It is thus that Catullus ensures that the extensae of his CATULLUS and LESBIA and MENTULA and CUNNUS anagrams are closely interwoven, in extended form, within the text of his poem. The shared condensa of all four anagrams is also selfreferentially apt in its figural depiction of the poet and his mistress (conturbabimus illa) in the act of love: CATULLUS; LESBIA; MENTULA; CUNNUS: CoN|TURBA|bIMUS ILLA NE

Catullus’ word-play on ne (“not” or “lest”) imports the sense in which ne is also the imperative form of neo (“weave together”), a reference both to anagrammatization in a textile text and to the sexual inter-twining that it imitates. The universal play in English verse in relation to the homonyms not and knot has already been described, and is comparable.57 A surprisingly large number of the sonnets in the sequence are found to comprise concealed responses to Marlowe’s poetic and erotic advances to Henry Wriothesley. It is thus that line 1 of Sonnet 18 refers to the direct physicality of “Come liue with me and be my loue, and we will all the pleasures proue”, and it is thus that line 2 repudiates it. The force of the rhetorical question in “Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?” depends upon Shakespeare’s parodic quotation of Marlowe’s double entendre in “come … with me” and upon the commonly found sexual word-play in relation to day and die. Here again, Shakespeare’s success in notionally setting Marlowe’s prior text in dialectical apposition to his own depends upon his strict adherence to the protocols of quasi-anagrammatic inter-textuality. The poet is first required to quote, as unobtrusively as possible, one or two key words verbatim from the source-text, as here in the word “come”, which is in context is metrically and semantically released in the potential enunciation of compare as come pair. Similarly, the merely sensual, merely physical “loue” that Marlowe indecorously offers is rebutted by Shakespeare in “Thou are more loue|ly and more temperate” – a textually transposed quotation of Marlowe’s word “loue”. At the same time the poet is obliged to mark his invocation of the prior text by incorporating an attributive anagram or anagrams. Shakespeare’s Christofre Marloe anagrams are shown in the annotated version of the sonnet below, together with the closely associated ECLOGUE and ELEGIE anagrams which indicate the poet’s aesthetic strategy. It will be recalled that Shakespeare adopts the variant spellings in Christofre (or Christophre) Marloe in

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anagrams throughout the sequence. The form ‘Marloe’ was an unexceptionable orthographical variant of Marlowe. The title page of George Chapman’s Hero and Leander (1600), for example, bears the inscription: “Hero and Leander: Begunne by Christopher Marloe”: Shall I compare thee to a Summers day? Thou art [More] louely And more temperate: M-A Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie, R And Sommers Lease hath all toO short a datE: L-O-E [Sometime] too hot the eye of heauen shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, And euery faire from faire some-time declines, By [CHance], oR natures chang|Ing course vntrim’d: CH-R-I But thy eternall Sommer shall noT fade, S-T Nor loose possession Of that FaiRE thou ow’st, O-F-RE Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade, When in [Eternall Lines to time] thou grow’st, E E-L So long as men Can breath or Eyes can see, C E So LOnG liues this, and this GIues lifE to thee. LO-G-E GI-E

Line 2 is found to contain an unobtrusive but particularly resonant verbatim quotation/translation from Virgil’s Eclogue 7. This has the intended effect of formally setting the Eclogue in revelatory apposition both to the sonnet and to Marlowe’s elegy. The Eclogue describes a singing contest between Corydon and Thyrsis, who at the outset are described as well-matched, and are epitomised as Arcades ambo. Corydon’s mild and mellifluous poetry is preferred to what Guy Lee rightly calls Thyrsis’ “less musical and sometimes cruder” offering.58 Corydon is declared the victor. In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare and Marlowe are also Arcades ambo (“Arcadians both”), but as in the Eclogue the mild and mellifluous Corydon-Shakespeare triumphs over the cruder ThyrsisMarlowe. It is thus that the prior devise informing Sonnet 18 is the conceit that finds an apt linguistic and conceptual affiliation between the acrostically identical words ElegiE and EcloguE. It will be recalled that Shakespeare uses the word elegie in the sense of “erotic poem”, when in As You Like It Rosalinde refers to “a man” who “haunts the Forrest”, carves “Rosalinde” on “barkes”, and “hangs Oades vpon Hauthornes, and Elegies on brambles”. The devise that compares and contrasts the alleged crudity of Marlowe’s ElegiE and Virgil’s more temperate EcloguE also permits the notional setting of a victorious Shakespeare-Corydon against a vanquished Marlowe-Thyrsis. Here again it is axiomatic that the poet’s formal recourse to quasi-anagrammatic inter-textuality (i.e the present re-writing

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of a prior text in order to bring the prior text into revelatory appostion to the present one) be marked by verbatim or near-verbatim quotation from the text that is thus invoked. It is in this way that a quasi-anagrammatic, trans-textual transposition of words is deemed to be effected in a gesture reminiscent of the binding together of ligatio. Typically, therefore, Shakespeare’s setting of the Eclogue in formal, quasi-anagrammatic apposition to the sonnet is marked by verbatim quotation/translation in the proemial opening lines of the sonnet. One of Corydon’s most beautiful gestures is that which conjoins the words formosior and mollior in phrasal repetitio and thus in chiasmus: hedera formosior alba (line 38) … somno mollior herba (line 45)

Shakespeare translates and quotes verbatim the coupling in formosior …mollior in line 2 of the sonnet: Thou art more louely and more temperate.

For Shakespeare the Eclogue serves a further and perhaps more important function in that it is informed by Virgil’s prior apprehension of the word-within-word trope that finds an inevitably destructive AETAS (“time”) concealed within AEsTAS (“summer”), a natural course that is countered by the AETernitAS of Corydon’s (and Virgil’s) eternal verse.59 That trope, of course, precisely reflects the logic and structure of Sonnet 18, which proceeds: “Sommers lease (aestas) hath all too short a date (aetas) … But thy eternall Sommer (aestas aternernitas) shall not fade … When in eternall lines thou grow’st (aeternitas)”. For those who have reread Homer’s Odyssey shortly before reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, the power and poignancy of Joyce’s consummately executed literary reiteration will have been obvious. Not only is the resonance thus engendered between the respective texts thrilling in itself, but the effect of rendering the ancient work anew is to endow the later text with a “newness” and “presence” that is otherwise unattainable. It is arguable that the apprarent newness of T S Eliot’s Waste Land (when first published) stemmed in large part from its reliance upon a similar effect. In this schema the young earl’s neo-Platonic emblem, beauties RoǕe, has an important, though unobtrusive, role to play. The hermeneutic ROSE anagram in “ROugh windes do Shake the darling buds of MaiE” corroborates the graphic leafe/leaǕe anagram which ensues in “And Sommers leafe hath all too short a date”. For Shakespeare and his age, the word leaf also signifies “rose petal”, and Wriothesley is thus implicitly represented in neo-Platonic terms as the emblematic Sommers RoǕe. In the

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context of the rose (as established in line 3 by the ROSE anagram), the implicitly invoked word leafe in line 4 has here the sense (OED 2) of “petal, especially in ROSE LEAF”. OED’s citations include: “SHAKESPEARE Henry VI, Pt.1 ... This Fellow … Vpbraided me about the Rose I weare, Saying, the sanguine colour of the Leaues Did represent my Masters blushing cheeks”. OED’s separate entry for rose leaf - “a petal or (now more usually) leaf of a rose” – is accompanied by the citation “1598 … Seest thou the Rose-leaues fall vngathered?” These early ROSE and LEAFE (= petal) aanagrams pave the way for what is perhaps the most beautiful of the sonnet’s gestures, the generous intimacy of the concluding words, “and this giues life/leafe to thee”, where leafe (then a homonym or near-homonym of life) is both the ever-living leafe of eternal summer (in the petal of the rose), and at the same time the leaf upon which the sonnet is written and which is notionally given (in “this gives leafe to thee”) by the poet into the hand of his beloved patron. These gestures (emphasised below) follow the Virgilian sequence in aestas … aetas … aeternitas: Shall I compare thee to a Summers day? Thou art more louely and more temperate: [ROugh windes dO ShakE] the darling buds Of MaiE, And Sommers leafe hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, And euery faire from faire some-time declines, By chance, or natures changing course vntrim’d: But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade, Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade, When in eternall lines to time thou grow’st, So long as men can breath or eyes can see, So long liues this, and this giues leafe to thee,

RO-S-E

The disposition of the eternalizing HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams in Sonnet 18 is found to be consonant with the overtly unstated aesthetic strategy of the poem, which in the octave deals with aestas and the untrimming of aestas by aetas, and then moves redemptively to aeternitas in the sestet. The eternal naming of Henry Wriothesley is accordingly deferred until the sestet, where the young earl’s anagrams coincide with the poet’s evocation of aeternitas. At the turn to the sestet, the metrically pivotal phrase “But thy eternall Sommer” marks the turn to the Platonic eternal. The textual extent of the HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams is marked in inclusio by the linked repetitions of Nor /Nor … So /So in the initial words of lines 10 / 11 and 13 / 14 respectively:

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Shall I compare thee to a Summers day? Thou art more louely and more temperate: [ROugh windeS dO ShakE] thE darling budS of MaiE, RO-S-E And Sommers lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, And euery faire from faire some-time declines, By chance, or natures changing course vntrim’d: But thy [eternall Sommer shall not fade, |Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow’st, |Nor shall death brag thou [WandR|’st In [His shadE]], H-E W-R-I |WheN in eternall lines tO time THou grow’st, N O-TH |So long as men can breath oR eYES can see, R-YE ES |So long LIues this, and this giues lifE to thee. LI-E

It would seem that singularity of gesture is anathema to Hermes, who by convention is deemed to reveal otherwise unstated truths by invoking linguistic affiliations, resemblances, translations, and transpositions. The word life, for example, may for the god also signify leafe (because leafe resembles life in the pronunciation of the day).60 But the covertly invoked word leafe means both “rose-petal” and “leaf of paper”. The beauty of the gesture lies precisely in the contextual aptness of that semantic plurality. In composing Sonnets 1-17 (for example) Shakespeare has taken care to compose his binary text in such a way that he is able to disclaim personal responsibility for his tutorial gestures. It is Hermes-Mercury who is deemed culpable in relation to the mutually corroborative linguistic ligatures that confer decorum upon potential indecencies and authorise the sonnets by reference to Ovid, Erasmus, Thomas Wilson, and others. In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare has permitted the god to construct a richly complex network of inter-textual contrasts, comparisons, and correlatives, a network that is capable of (over-simplified) diagrammatic representation: Shakespeare —— Marlowe This giues life to thee Come liue with me |

|

Virgil —— Catullus formosior … mollior mentula … cunnus

It is not a coincidence that the first (me-centred) words of Marlow’s elegy are thus contrasted with the last (thee-centred) words of Shakespeare’s sonnet. By framing the inter-action between the two poems in this way, Shakespeare is able to invoke the conventionally sanctioned

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boundary-marks of Hermes, the god of boundaries and boundary-markers. The poems are formally conjoined: || Come liue with me …

... this giues life to thee. ||

The reticular diagram above also exemplies the contrasting effect of the inter-connections established between Shakespeare and Virgil and Marlowe and Catullus. At the same time the Renaissance poet is able to create a contrastive link between the Virgil (the supreme Classical poet) and Catullus (a lesser poet and personage). The enlisting of the aid of Virgil, traditionally the greatest of Classical poets, is an apposite first step, but the consummate anagrammatist is by long-standing convention obliged to invoke a plurality of prior texts. It is for this reason that Shakespeare is found to epitomize the young earl in terms also (and simultaneously) of Ovid’s tu puer aeternus.61 Associated with the HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams, and marked also in inclusio by “Nor/Nor … So/So”, Shakespeare’s TU PUER ETERNUS anagrams are incorporated with apparently effortless ease: But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade, Nor loose [Possession of that faire [ThoU] ow’st, Nor] shall death brag [ThoU] wandr’st in his shade, When in [ETERrnall lines] to [timE thou] grow’st, So long as men can breath oR eyeS can see, So long liU|es this, and this giueS life to thee.

T P U U E ETER R N U-S

The shared condensa is aptly located: TU PUER ETERNUS: Nor looSE Possession of That faiRE thoU ow’sT

The gesture here is in part intended to set Ovid’s (then) well-known lines in Metamorphoses (4.18-19) in revelatory apposition to Shakespeare’s text: Tu puer aeternus, tu formosissimus alto / conspiceris caelo. In this, the second level of the pyramid, Henry Wriothesley is not only formosior and thus more lovely than “a Summers day” (i.e. the loveliest of temporal enitities); he is also puer aeternus and eternally and resonantly puer formosissimus. He is no longer the mere pupill of the seventeen firstlevel sonnets, and the poet is no longer his tutor. In accordance with the conventional protocols, Ovid’s key word aeternus is translated verbatim in Shakespeare’s “eternall”. Here again reticular inter-connections are

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established between the three texts in question and the underlying intertextual schema is again capable of simplified, summary description: Virgil Eclogue formosior \

____

Ovid Metamorphoses formosissimus /

Shakespeare Sonnet 18 Thou art more louely

In the historical and literary contexts, the achieved “natural” association of Shakespeare with both Virgil and Ovid has the effect of putting Marlowe’s elegy in the shade. We should feel no embarrassment or disquiet in thus seeking to violate the familiar and revered Sonnet 18 by reading it in terms which include its concealed anagrams and word-play and its concealed quasi-anagrammatic inter-textuality. It was composed and originally enjoyed as an example of verse composed within the Graeco-Roman tradition. It is precisely the notional role of Hermes to encourage the reader to take the merely human utterances of the poet “out of context” and to recombine them in relation to other linguistic contexts in ways that reveal ultimate truths. We are invited by the god to seize upon happy incidents in the overt text, to fragment and to re-assemble textual entities, to “cut and paste” (transpose) across textual boundaries, and to treat the poet’s (overt) contribution to the text as if it were an alphabetical abakos from and within which the revelatory interventions of Hermes are assembled in accordance with a strictly regulated syntax. In Sonnet 18, for example, the Cratylitic interconnections that are thus established between the text of the Eclogue and the Renaissance text are reinforced by the concealed AETAS and AESTAS anagrams with which the first quatrain of the sonnet is also imbued, and which corroborate the poet’s implied translations in terms of Sommer-time (aestas) and Some-time (aetas): Shall I compare thee to [A Summers] day? Thou art morE louely and morE temperate: Rough windes do Shake The darling buds of Maie, And SommerS lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines,

A E T AS

A E S-T AS

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Typically, the acrostically identical AestaS and AetaS figures are constructed in designedly twinned form: they share a common forma (and therefore a common point of departure) in the acrostically identical phrase “A SummerS”, and their respective condensae are located together within a potentially separable part of the text, situated on this occasion at the end of the extensae. The English epigram in line 4 forms the apt locus of the shared condensa, and thus effectively translates the expressive paronomasia of AESTAS and AETAS: AESTAS; AETAS: SommerS leASE hath All too ShorT A dATE

The transilition Sonnet 18 introduces the second level of the pyramidtriangle in Sonnets 18-62. This level is largely characterized by poems in which poet and patron are treated in as potential equals in love, if not in age and social position. The traditionally unresolvable hendiadys of what might now be called “love and sex” is explored in terms of quasi-dramatic triangulation in (a) poet, patron, and rival poet, and (b) poet, patron-lover, and mistress. Unlike the basal stratum of Sonnets 1-17, many of the poems in this longer sub-sequence are numbered in such a way as to subvert chronological order. Sonnet 59, for example, is found to have been written in 1600, and to have been composed around wittily disposed MDC chronograms in terms of the anticipated benefits and redemptions that have historically characterized what Frank Kermode describes as calendar apocalypse.62 Similarly, Sonnet 60 (with its “crooked eclipses gainst his glory fight”) is composed in 1600 (old-style), following the apocalyptic disconfirmation (again to borrow Frank Kermode’s terminology) of Essex’s execution in February of that year (old-style).63 Generally speaking, however, Sonnets 18-62 appear to belong to the years 15941595. A full reading (i.e. an anagrammatic reading) of Sonnets 1-154 reveals a markedly greater thematic interest in dramatic triangulation than is apparent from the overt dimension of the text of the sonnets. Shakespeare’s first substantive reference to Elizabeth Vere as his mistress (whether actual or merely conventional) occurs in Sonnet 40, and thereafter Elizabeth Vere becomes a significant participant in the sequence as a whole. Elizabeth Vere is first anagrammatized in the Sonnets 1-17, where in Sonnet 16 (for example) she is simply epitomized as a suitable wife for Henry:

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Chapter Four Now stand you on the top of happie houres, And many maiden gardens yet vnset, With [VErtuous wish would beaRE] your liuing flowers, VE-RE VE Much likER then youR painted counterfeit: R So should the lines of lifE that lifE RepaiRE E

It is a matter of historical record that Wriothesley publicly refused to marry Elizabeth Vere. In Sonnet 40 the poet alleges that Wriothesley has, since that public refusal and following the poet’s own liaison with her, betrayed the poet by enjoying Elizabeth’s favours privately. In Sonnet 40 the poet’s patron-lover is thus openly accused of “wilfull taste of what thy (public) selfe refusest”. The passive renunciation of the poet’s claims to Elizabeth Vere (and the receiving of her by Wriothesley) is figured in the self-referential Ovidian trope “thou my loUE REceiuest”, a device which is not to be confused with anagramma figuratum but which is typical of Ovid’s word-play at inter-verbal junctions. The adverb nave (“zealously”) is for example wittily interposed in Ovid’s ecce CorinNA VElata tunica recincta. Wriothesley’s “wilfull taste of what thy selfe refusest” is specifically identified as Elizabeth Vere by virtue of its close association with the conventional VERE anagram which is marked by the forma in Vvilfull tastE. When the acrostically identical entities are set in notional apposition, the “point” of the gesture becomes clear: Vvilfull tastE: VerE

The VERE anagram is shown in the annotated version of Sonnet 40 below. As is customary in the case of particulary significant identifications, the single anagram possesses a plurality of extensae. In the interests of clarity two (only) of the extensae are noted in the margin. The substitution of w (vv) for the infrequent initial v is usual in English anagrammatism: Take all my loues, my loue, yea take them all, [Vvhat hast thou then morE then thou hadst befoRE? No loue, my loue, that thou maist true loue call, All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more: Then if for my loue, thou my loUE REceiuest, I cannot blame thee, for my loue thou vsest, But yet be blam’d, if thou this selfe deceauest By [Vvilfull tastE] of what thy selfe Refusest. I doe forgiuE thy Robb’riE gentlE theefE Although thou stealE theE all my pouerty:

V-E-RE

UE-RE

V-E-R E

V-E R E

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And yet loue knowes it is a greater griefe To beare loues wrong, then hates knowne iniury. Lasciuious grace, in whom all il wel showes, Kill me with spights yet we must not be foes.

The then customary practice of casting Elizabeth I in reversed or upward-facing anagrams (in order to mark the elevation of Elisa Regina) is adopted throughout Q in relation to Elizabeth’s Vere’s forename, although anagrams of her surname are invariably forward-facing.64 Spenser is found to adopt a similar procedure in his anagrams of his beloved Elizabeth Boyle in Amoretti and Epithalamion, for example. In the annotated version of Sonnet 40 below, a selection (only) of ELISABETH, ELISA, and VERE anagrams is indicated. The forma of an elevated anagram is customarily set in reverse form (as in “Hates knownE” which serves as the reversed outline model of HtebasilE). The extensa is also constructed in inverse form, so that it appears to climb the page and thus to exhibit an elevating dynamic. In the annotated version below, the respective extenae are capitalized in the text, and the extensae of the VERE anagrams are additionally emphasised: Take all my loues, my loue, yea take them all, [Vvhat hast thou then morE] then thou hadst befoRE? No loue, my loue, that thou maist true loue call, [All mine was thine], before thou hadst this more: Then if for my loue, thou my loue receiuest, I cannot blame thee, for my loue thou vsest, But yet be blam’d, if [thou this selfe] deceauest By [Vilfull tastE] of what THy selfe refusest. I doe forgiuE thy RobB’riE gentle theefe Although thou Steale thee alL my pouerty: [And yet louE] knowes It is A greater griefe To beare LoueS wrong, then [hates knownE] Iniury Lasciuious grace, in whom [all IL wel showes, Kill mE] with spights yet we must not be foes.

A S V-E-RE Y L-E

TH E-B A-S I L-E

V-E-R E A S IL E

Helen Vender, all unwitting of anagramma figuratum, is therefore typically perceptive when she notes that “the word lascivious falls on the ear with such absolute rightness”. This is in part because the sonnet is imbued with localised figurae condensa which culminate in the phrase “lasciuious grace”:

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Chapter Four ELISA / ELYSA VERE: All mY LouES AlL mine was thinE before thou hadst thIS morE Steale theE ALl my pouertY

And Yet LouE knoweS LAsciu|IouS gracE …in whom All Il weL showES

There is onomastic irony, the poet suggests, in the fact that although Elizabeth is indeed both Vaire and Faire (in the paronomasia thus invoked), she is patently not as true as the Latin meaning of her surname Vere would suggest. In Sonnet 40 (and elsewhere in sonnets devoted to the love-triangle) Shakespeare further suggests that Elizabeth’s love can be definition never be true-love because it can never be trou-love (i.e. homosexual union as epitomized in French trou, or anus). As will become clear, the poet refers covertly and indecently to his beloved patron in Sonnet 105 as having been envisaged before his heterosexual infidelity as simultaneously The One True Lord and The One Trou Lord Shakespeare’s anagrammatic invocation of the name Elisa and the epithet lasciuious grace is thus thematically central to the occasion and the sonnet. The metaphysical love that is described in general terms in the overt dimension of the text is both socially and sexually contextualized in the covert dimension. The poem derives its aesthetic integrity (its ultimate unity) from the inherently binary nature of Shakespeare’s text. In other words, it achieves unity, not in spite of the anagrams with which it is imbued, but by virtue of them. The covert dimension of Shakespeare’s (and of all pre-Enlightenment text) should not, it is suggested, be apprehended as a mere adjunct to the Apollonian song of the overt dimension. It is important to note that although the regulatory system which governs the construction and and incorporation of anagram is based exclusively upon written signs, Shakespeare is thus able to integrate his anagrammatism within the metrical, phonetic, and anagrammatic totality of his poem, as evidenced by Vendler’s apprehension of the sound patterns which lead to lasciuious grace.

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To summarize, Shakespeare invokes the commonly found contemporary conceit which seeks to affiliate the surname VERE with Latin vere (“true”). In addition, here and in several other of the sonnets, “Lord Wriothesley” is specifically envisaged in biblical terms as the One True/Trou Lord, where in the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary, French trou signifies “hole”, and here anus. The gesture is conventional and usual enough in the sexual word-play of the period and in Sonnet 40 the phonetic resemblance between true and trou is exploited in the covert dimension of the text. The poet points out that, notwithstanding the propitious implications of the Latin of her surname, Elizabeth Vere is manifestly neither true nor capable of offering homosexual trou-loue. The required alternative reading is reflected in the paired TROU anagrams shown in the extract below (each involving the words thou … before): Take all my loues, my loue, yea take them all, What hast thou then more then [Thou] hadst befoR|e? No loue, my loue, that [ThOU] maist true-loue call, All mine was thine, befoR|e thou] hadst this more:

T-R OU

T R-OU

Several sonnets relating to Marlowe as rival are also present in the second-level poems. In Sonnet 23 Shakespeare envisages himself as a “Swan of Avon” who is rendered mute by “that tonge that more hath more exprest”. Responding to Marlowe’s covert insults in Hero and Leander (which contains homosexual advances to Henry Wriothesley and personal attacks on Shakespeare), Shakespeare epitomises himself as poetically put in “feare” by Christo-FEARE and rendered “vnperfect” by the MAR in MAR-loe. Too enraged by Marlowe’s solicitations of Wriothesley (“repleat with too much rage”) to speak out, he is driven to express himself in anagram in pursuit of a conventionally scatological invective based again on Classical precedent.65 Accordingly the sonnet is intended to be viewed in two unresolvable perspectives which reflect in their interaction the fear and rage that the poet seeks to express. On the one hand, he paints himself as the mute Swan of Avon: [As an] Vnperfect actor ON the stage, Who with his feare is put besides his part, Or [Some] fierce thing repleat With too much rage, Whose strengths Abondance weakeN|s his owN heart: So I for fearE [Of] trust, forget to say, The perfect ceremony oF loues right, [And in] mine owne loU|es strength seeme to decay, Ore-charg’d with burthen Of mine owne loues might: O let my books be theN the eloquence,

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Chapter Four And domb presagers of my [Speaking brest, Who pleade] for loue, ANd look for recompence, More theN that tongE that more hath more exprest. O learNE to read what silent loue hath writ, To heare with eies belongs to loues fine wit.

S W-AN N-E

On the other hand, his rage is such that he is forced into the adoption of Classical invective. Accordingly, associated thematic anagrams of MARLOE and INVECTIVE are incorporated in the text in order to mark the conventionally scatological language which he invites Henry Wriothesley to “learne to read”: AS an vnperfect actor on the stage, Who with his feare is put besides his part, Or some fierce thing repleat with too [Much rage], Whose strengths Abondance weakens his own heart: So [I foR fearE] of trust, forget to say, The perfect ceremoN|y of LOues right, And in minE owne loUE|s strength seeme to decay, Ore-Charg’d with burthen of mine owne loues might: O let my books be Then the eloquence, And domb presagers of my speak|Ing brest, Who pleade for loUE, and look for recompence, ` More then that tonge that more hath more exprest. O learne to read what silent loue hath writ, To heare with eies belongs to loues fine wit.

I N UE C T I UE

M A R LO E

The shared condensa of the MARLOE and INUECTIUE anagrams is comprised in lines 7-8, at the point where one extensa ends and the other begins: MARLOE; INVECTIVE: And In mine Owne LoUE|s STRength seeme to decay, Ore-Charg’d with burtHEN oF MIne owne loUE|s mighT

The poet’s response to the insults of his rival is typical of Classical invectio in its scatological expolitio: 66 As an vnperfect actor on the [stage, Who with HIs feare is puT besides his parT, Or [Some fierce thing repleat with too much rage, Whose strengths abondance weakens his own Heart:

S H-I-T S-H

S-HI-T

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So I for fears of trusT, forgeT to say, The perfecT [ceremony of loues] righT, And in mine owne loues strength seeme to decay, Ore-charg’d with burthen of mine owne loues might: O let my books be then the eloquence, And domb presagers of my speaking brest, Who pleade for loue, and look for recompence, More then that tonge that more hath more exprest. O learne to read what [Silent loue Hath wrIT], To Heare with eies belongs to loues fine wIT.

I T

[As an vnperfect actoR on the StagE], Who with his [Feare Is] put besides his part, Or some fierce thing repleat with too MUch rage], Whose strengthS abondance weakenS his own heart: So I for fears of trust, forget to say, The perfect ceremony of loues right, And in mine owne loues strength seeme to decay, Ore-charg’d with [burthen of mine owne loues] might: O let my [books be] then the eloquence, [And domb presagers of my speaking brest, Who pleade] for loue, and look for recompence, More then that tonge that more hath more [exprest. O] learne to read what [silent loue hath writ], To heare with ei|es belongs to loues fine wit.

A-R-S-E F-I MU S

S-H IT

S H-IT

B-OW EL-E B S O W E S-H-IT L ES

Here again, the words of Mercury are generically harsh after the songs of Apollo. Shakespeare’s conventionally incorporated EXPOLITIO anagram is marked by the phonetically apt forma in “Exprest O”: O let my books be then the eloquence, And domb presagers of my speaking brest, Who pleade for loue, and look for recompence, More then that tonge that more hath more [EXPrest. O] learne tO read what silent Loue hath wrIT, To heare with eI|es belongs tO loues fine wit.

EXP O-L-IT I-O

The hermeneutic EXPOLITIO anagram is conventionally corroborative in relation to the poet’s strategy of embellishing his text by means of the device of “repetition with variation” that is the mark of expolitio. The typically duplicitous couplet is important in that (as well as supplying an authorial clue to the existence and importance of the underlying silent invective) it lays emphasis on Shakespeare’s own sense of his absolute supremacy over Marlowe, a supremacy that is grounded in part in Shakespeare’s unrivalled virtuosity in the art of anagram. When

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Shakespeare exercises the authority that his own supremacy justifies, he exhorts the young earl to read him anagrammatically, because “To heare with eies/I’s belongs to loues fine wit”. In another perspective “to heare with I’s” is to pay heed to the letters of the alphabet that form the medium in which Shakespeare’s art is manifestly triumphant. At the same time, he implies, what silent loue hath writ is also the SHIT that is concealed in what Silent loue Hath wrIT. The poet’s expression of regard for his patron is intensified rather than diminished by that ambiguity. As is often the case, Shakespeare’s confessional verba certa are found to point to the aesthetic strategy of the sonnet and to its compositional motivation. The poet’s MARLOE and INUECTIUE anagrams are intended to be construed in the light of the SINNE, ANGER, WRATH, and IRE and scatological anagrams which accompany them. The poet’s sense of unexpressed anger is finely registered in the absolute distinction that is maintained between the overt and covert dimension of his text: AS [AN vnperfect actor] on the staGE, [Who with] his feaR|e is put besides his part, OR some fierce thing repleAT witH too [Much rage], Whose strengths Abondance weakens his own heart: So [I foR fearE] of trust, forget to say, The perfect ceremony of LOues right, And in minE owne loues strength [Seeme] to decay, Ore-charg’d with burthen of Min|e owne loues might: O let my books be theN the eloquencE, And domb presagers of my speaking brest, [Who pleade foR loue, and look for recompence, ` More then that tonge thAT more hatH more exprest. O learne to read what silent loue hath writ, To heare with eies belongs to loues fine wit.

AN-GE W R R-AT-H M A I-R-E R LO S E IN N-E W-R AT-H

As noted below, Shakespeare’s intense anger appears to relate in part to the insulting remarks addressed to him in Marlowe’s unfinished poem Hero and Leander. It was of course customary in the period for as yet unpublished verse to be circulated in manuscript. In his poem, Marlowe describes Leander-Wriothesley in terms of a distasteful homosexual sensuality. Worse, Marlowe implies that he has already personally enjoyed the young earl’s favours in this respect, claiming “I could tell ye, / How smooth his brest was, and how white his bellie, / And whose immortall fingers did imprint, / That heauenly path, with many a curious dint, / That runs along his backe”:

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Amorous Leander, beautifull and yoong, (Whose tragedie diuine Musaeus soong) Dwelt at Abydus, since him, dwelt there none, For whom succeeding times make greater mone. His dangling tresses that were neuer shorne, Had they beene [Cut, And vn|To Colchos borne], C-A-T Would haue Allu’rd the vent’rous youth of Greece, A To hazard More, than for the golden Fleece. M Faire [Cynth|Ia wisht, his Armes mighT bE] her spheare, IT-E Greefe makes her pale, because she mooues noT there. His bodie was As straight as Circes wand, Ioue MIght haue sipt out Nectar from his hand. Euen as delicious meaTE is to the tast, So [Was [His neckE]] iN touching, and suR|past H-E-N The white of Pelops shouldeR, I could tell YE, R-YE How smoOTH his brest was, and how white his bellie, And whosE immortall fingerS did imprint, That [HeauEN|LY] path, with many [a curious dint, H-EN That Runs along his backE], but mY rudE pen, R-Y-E Can hardly blazon forth the loues of men.

C-A T A MI TE W-R I OTH E-S LY E

The apparent nature of Marlowe’s interest in Wriothesley is indicated in his double CATAMITE anagrams (shown above), and in the body-part anagrams which corroborate the most salacious part of the overt text. A selection (only) of the latter is shown below: Euen as delicious meate is to the tast, So was his necke in touching, and surpast The white of Pelops shoulder, I could tell ye, How smooth his brest was, [ANd how Vvhite hiS] bellie, [ANd whose immortall fingers] did imprint, AN That heauenly path, with many [a curioUS dint, US That Runs along hiS backE], but my rude pen, Can hardly blazon forth the loues of men.

AN-V-S A R-S-E

Shakespeare’s stylistic objections to Marlowe’s use of anagram appear to relate (inter alia) to the latter’s lack of Classical decorum in failing to preserve an absolute distinction between the Hermes-derived truths of anagram (which are generically acceptable) and the overt dimension of his text, which offends in its specificity. The figura condensa of the HENRYE WRIOTHESLEYE (sic) anagrams is so disposed as to link “I could tell ye” with Wriothesley:

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Chapter Four HENRYE WRIOTHESLYE: So was His NeckE in touching, and suR|past THe WhitE Of Pelops ShouldeR, I could telL YE

Marlowe’s claim to personal knowledge of Wriothesely in purporting to write post-coitally (“I could tell ye”) stands in marked contrast to Shakespeare’s ostensibly pre-coital Sonnets 1-17. Elsewhere in his poem Marlowe delivers an equally distasteful attack on WILL (or GUILELMUS) SHAKESPEARE and his SONNETS: Murder, rape, warre, lust and trecherie, Were with Ioue clos’d in Stigian Emperie. But long this blessed time continued not, As soone as he his wished purpose got; He recklesse of his promise, did despise The loue of th’euerlasting Destinies. They seeing it, both Loue and him abhor'd, And Iupiter vnto his place restor’d. And but that Learning, in despight of Fate, [Will] mount aloft, and enter heauen gate, W And to the seat of Ioue It selfe aduance, I Hermes had [Slept in heLL witH ignorance]. LL S-H Yet as A punishment they added this, A That he and Pouertie should alwaies Kis. K And to this day is Euerie Scholler Poore, E-S-P GrossE gold from them runs headlong to the booRE. E-RE Likewise the angrie sisters thus deluded, To venge themselues on [HErmes], haue concluded HE That Midas brood shall sit in HonoR|s chaire, R To which the MusES [SONNes] are only heire M-ES SO And fruitfull [WIts that in aspiring arE, N WI SHALL] dis|Content run into regions farrE; SHA-C-E N-E LL And few great Lords in vertuouS deeds shal ioy, S T-S But be sur|Pris’d with Euery garish toy. P-E And still in|Rich the loftiE seruilE clownE, R-E Who with incroching [GUILE, keepes] Learning downE. GUIL-E-L Then MUse not CupidS sute no better sped, MU-S Seeing in their loues the Fates were iniured.

Shakespeare is epitomized as “the loftie seruile clowne, / Who with incroching guile, keepes learning downe”, and the wrath, and ire, of Sonnet 23 are now put in context. Marlowe’s comments on Shakespeare’s sonnets closely resemble those implied in Davies’ Gullinge Sonnets. 67

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The attack on Shakespeare’s lack of “learning” is also typical of other similarly framed criticisms of the time: And few great Lords in vertuous deeds shal ioy, But be surpris’d with euery garish toy. And still inrich the loftie seruile clowne, Who with incroching guile, keepes learning downe.

It is thus that Shakespeare’s overtly temperate and covertly vituperative response in Sonnet 23 should be read in the light of Marlowe’s stinging insults. In this context it would seem that the recourse to scatological invective is also onomastic-anagrammatic, in that Shakespeare finds the word MARLE concealed in the name MARLoE (sic). The rival poet MARLOE is thus envisaged as being defined by the apt combination of the word MARLE and the emblematic letter O (the latter here representing anus). OED defines marl as an “earthy deposit” and cites George Puttenham: The good gardiner seasons his soyle by sundrie sorts of compost: as mucke or marle.

Concealed Renaissance invective appears to be derived directly from Classical precedent. For example, Horace’s Epode 2, the “point” of which has eluded post-Enlightenment Classicists, contains concealed, recurrent FIMUS (“animal waste”) and other scatological anagrams. 68 It is to Shakespeare’s credit that the unusually high frequency of the emblematic letter o (here anal) in Sonnet 23 is scarcely noticeable to the post-Enlightenment reader. The supreme Swan of Avon, mute in the overt dimension of his text, ensures that the god’s notional interventions arise naturally, “silently”, and as if effortlessly within the text of his sonnet. His MARLOE, MARLE, and MUCKE anagrams are Hermetically mute, and here again the acrostic co-identity of MarloE, MarlE, MuckE, and MutE is invoked to expressive effect. In the version below, the anal letter O is emphasised in the text, and the closely associated MARLOE, MARLE, and MUCKE anagrams are indicated in usual fashion:69 AS an vnperfect actOr On the stage, WhO with his feare is put besides his part, Or sOme fierce thing repleat with tOO [Much rage], WhOse strengths AbOndanc|e weak|ens his Own heart: SO I fOR feare Of trust, fOrget tO say, The perfect ceremOny Of LOues right, And in minE Owne lOues strength seeme tO decay,

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Chapter Four Ore-charg’d with burthen Of mine Owne lOues might: O let my bOOks be then the elOquence, And dOmb presagers Of my speaking brest, ` WhO pleade fOr lOue, and lOOk for recOmpence, ` MOre then that tOnge that mOre hath mOre exprest. O learne tO read what silent lOue hath writ, TO heare with eies belOngs tO lOues fine wit.

Shakespeare does not overlook the protocol that requires verbatim quotations from the source-text. For example, Marlowe’s “Clowne” is quoted in the epithet “vnperfect actor” and in the CLOWNE anagram in the second quatrain. It becomes apparent that Shakespeare’s poem is also offered, in accordance with traditional practice, as an improvement upon the prior text to which it refers. It is typical of Shakespeare’s responses to criticism from his rivals that the sonnet becomes an exhibition space for the demonstration of artistic virtus or poetic virility: So I for feare of trust, forget to say, The perfect [Ceremony of LOues right, And in minE oWNE] loues strength seeme to decay, Ore-charg’d With burthen Of mine owNE loues might:

CL C-LO O WNE W-NE

Shakespeare’s mastery of poetic language (he rightly implies) is supreme. As already noted, the poet Horace points out that such mastery must also embrace the anagrammatic dimension of the poetic text. In addition to the almost miraculous multitude of concealed anagrams with which the sonnet is imbued, Shakespeare is also able to fulfil his conventional obligations by identifying his primary source-text by means of attributive anagrams: AS an vnperfect actor on the stage, Who with his feare is put besides [His part, Or some fiercE thing Repleat with toO] much rage, Whose strengths abondance weakens his own [HEart: So] I foR feare of trust, forget tO say, The perfect ceremony of loues right, [And] iN mine owne loues strength seeme to decay, Ore-charg’D with burthen of mine owne loues might: O [LEt my books be then the eloquencE, ANd Domb presager]s of my speaking brest, Who pleadE foR loue, and look for recompence, More then that tonge that more hath more exprest. O learne to read what silent loue hath writ, To heare with eies belongs to loues fine wit.

H E-R-O HE R-O A-N D L-E AN-D E-R

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While Sonnets 18-62 (the section of the pyramid marked in transilition by Sonnet 18) are in the main found to invoke a primary triangulation involving poet, patron, and mistress, several of these poems take the secondary triangulation of Shakespeare, Wriothesley, and Marlowe as their covert theme. At the same time, many of the second-level sonnets are in some sense critical of the young earl – occasionally quite duplicitously so. In such cases the question arises as to how the twenty-first century reader is to read text which cannot, as it were, be taken at face value. In arriving at an understanding of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55, for example, it would first seem advisable to adopt the original reader’s apparent tendency to read and re-read the poem, and then to copy it out in order to identify its concealed anagrams, and then to read it again. The process of what Jonson calls “exscribing” the sonnet (thus revealing its less obvious anagrams) will now perhaps involve the use of a computer screen and wordprocessing software, but the principle remains the same.70 It is then helpful to look in the overt dimension of the text for authorial clues as to the ultimate theme or themes of the sonnet, as for example in the conspicuous word-play on Since and Sins in line 3 of Sonnet 105, or in the play on reeleth from the day and reeleth from the die in Sonnet 7. We have seen also that the singular verb in Loue and Constancy is dead is aesthetically corroborative of the thematic hendiadys or one-in-two of ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’. It is also frequently found that syntactical and/or logical inconsistences in the text are exploited as prompts which mark and corroborate concealed themes. Other “clues” (hitherto hidden from post-Enlightenment readers) may involve the expressive use of the versal apparatus, letter-play in the text, repetition, or repetition-withvariation. All of these are indicators which do not (or need not) impinge upon the readability of the overt dimension of the text, which must be plausibly coherent, irrespective of events in the covert dimension. Typically, Stephen Booth’s commentary on Sonnet 55 reflects the most rigorous of modern readings.71 All unwitting of anagramma figuratum and of the notional division of text into its overt and covert dimensions, Booth is constrained to take the sonnet as he finds it. In particular, he discusses the apparently aberrant singular in Q’s “monument”in line 1, and relates it to ambiguities arising in relation to other “hazards to smooth reading” in the first quatrain.72 In his modernized version of the poem he follows usual editorial practice by amending monument to monuments. For obvious reasons an anagrammatic reading (which is a much as to say “a reading”) of an Elizabethan sonnet requires an un-modernized text, and Shakespeare’s role in the preparation of Shake-speares Sonnets is such as to suggest that “corrections” should be undertaken with great care. A

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reading of the NOT anagrams flowing from line 1 suggests that Q’s monument is authorial:

N

OT] marble, [NOr the guilded monumenT], Of Princes shall ouT-liue this powrefull rime, BuT you shall shine more brighT in these contents Then vnswept stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time. When wastefull warre shall Statues ouer-turne, And broiles roote out the worke of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne The liuing record of your memory. Gainst death, and all obliuious emnity Shall you pace forth, your praise shall stil finde roome, Euen in the eyes of all posterity That weare this world out to the ending doome. So til the iudgement that your selfe arise, You liue in this, and dwell in louers eies.

N O-T /T

NO-T

As already noted, in the Latin and Renaissance sexual vocabularies the letter-groups cc and oo are emblematic of testes, and the use of the versal apparatus for expressive purposes is widespread in Latin and vernacular manuscripts and printed texts. Here, therefore the versal apparatus, coupled with the inaguagural NOT anagrams, suggests a negative response to male sexual activity:

N

O O

It is the conventional function of the notional Hermes to permit such gestures to be “taken out of context” in this way. The obviousness of the aberrant singular in monument suggests a specific poetic purpose in the singular form, and in the context of a negative response to a sexual topic, the syncopic GUILT anagram will be obvious to the original reader on a first or second reading:

N

Ot marble, nor the [GUILded monument], Of Princes shalL ouT-liue this powrefull rime,

GUIL-T

GUI L-T

The somewhat bombastic line-endings in the quatrain also invite contrary or subversive readings. In this context the somewhat unidiomatic epithet “this powrefull rime” is capable of referring ironically to the mutually contradictory rhymes which straddle it. The rhymes in monument / contents and powrefull rime / sluttish time are designedly unsettling:

Sonnets

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Ot marble, nor the guilded monument, Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Then vnswept stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time.

265 monument | contents

Q’s variant spelling of guilded (as obvious then as now) is thus another example of what Booth calls a minor hazard to a smooth reading, and it also points to the existence of the GUILT anagram. A further syncopic MARLE anagram in line 1, reciprocally corroborative in relation to the GUILT anagram, and suggestive of invectio, is a further possibility. The commonly found authorial clue in the poet’s word-play on the versal Not and Knot (the latter a guiding enjoinder to anagrammatize what follows) is reciprocally corroborative also. The effect might be expressed in terms of the annotated extract below:

K

NOt! MARbLE, nor the GUILded monumenT, Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime,

MAR-LE GUIL-T

Even on a first reading, the barely concealed inconsistencies in the overt dimension of lines 3-4 should be obvious to any reader. You shall shine more bright, says the poet, then vnswept stone, besmeered with sluttish time. This is damning with faint praise indeed. To shine “more bright” than stone smeared with sluttish time is scarcely to shine at all. It is not, for example, to shine “more bright” than princely gold. The verb “to besmear” had the sense (OED, 1.a) of “To smear over or about; to cover the surface generally or largely with any greasy, viscous, or sticky substance; usually with the notion of soiling or staining: to bedaub”. In the context of a negative response to sexuality, and in relation to guilt, the envisaged greasy, viscous, or sticky substance is likely to be semen. This truth is revealed and corroborated by the aptly located SEMEN anagram in “ShinE MorE bright iN”:

N

Ot marble, nor the guilded monument, Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime, But you shall [ShinE MorE bright iN] these contents ThEN vnswept stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time.

S-E-M EN

In this context, Shakespeare’s usual sound-play on time and teeme is brought into play, where teeming or “pouring forth” refers to male (or female) sexual outpouring. The implied epithet “sluttish teeme” is thus suggestive of sexual intercourse with a promiscuous slut, while at the same time the overt version SLuttish tIME is imbued with slime (i.e. semen), and

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conceals a conspicuously syncopic SLIME anagram in “SLuttish tIME”. In his generally reliable book A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart England, Gordon Williams defines the sexual meaning of slime in the period as “(1) semen”, and “(2) vaginal emission”. In general use, the word slime had the sense (OED, 2.a) of “a viscous substance or fluid of animal or vegetable origin; mucus, semen, etc”. The (then) conspicuous syncopic SLIME anagram in “Sluttish tIME”is only one of three SLIME anagrams in the first quatrain. Two of the relevant extensae (only) are noted in the margin below: Not marble, not the guilded monument, Of Princes [ShalL out-LIue] this powrefull rIME, But you [ShalL shine] MorE bright In thesE contents Then vnswept stonE, besmeer’d with [SLuttish tIME].

S-L I ME

S-L-I ME

The full force of the SLIME anagram depends upon Shakespeare’s skill in creating a referential context to which a wide range of (now largely obsolete) pejorative senses can meaningfully speak. It will be recalled that slime is a favourite word of Shakespeare’s in sexual contexts, as for example in Othello’s reference to “the slime / That sticks on filthy deeds”. It is noteworthy also that the Orphic verba certa in Sonnet 55 include a plurality of SINNE, SHAME, GUILT, and PERIURY anagrams. A selection (only) is indicated below: Not marble, nor the guilded monument, GUIL-T Of [Princes shall out-liuE] this powrefull Rime, S P-E-R But you shall [Shine] more bright IN these contents IN I Then vnswept stoNE, besmeer’d with sluttish time. NE V When wastefull warR|e shall Statues ouer-turne, R SH And broiles roote out the worke of masonrY, Y A-M Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick firE shall burne E E The liuing record of your memory. Gainst death, and all obliuious emnity [Shall You [Pace]] forth, your praise shall stil finde roome, P Euen in the eyes of all post|ERity ER That weare this world out to the end|Ing doome. I So til the iudgement that yoUR selfe arise, UR You liuE in this, and dwell in louers eies. Y-E

The word periury is used in the now rare sense (OED, 1.b) of “The violation of a promise, vow, or solemn undertaking; a breach of oath”. The 1632 citation is helpful: “1632 P. MASSINGER & N. FIELD Fatall

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Dowry IV. sig. H4, No paine is due to louers periury. If Ioue himselfe laugh at it, so will I”. The compositional motivation for Sonnet 55 is the breaking of a lover’s vow or bond, and as in the opening exchange of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the bond in question is that between the poet Shakespeare and his beloved patron, and involves the latter’s alleged sexual enjoyment of the poet’s mistress, Elizabeth Vere. As in all of the sonnets which concern him, Wriothesley is identified in anagram, and as in all of the sonnets which concern or refer to the shared mistress, she is also identified in similar fashion. A selection (only) of the relevant anagrams is shown below: Not marble, nor the guilded monument, Of [Princes [SHall out]-liue] this powrefull rime, But you [SHall Ǖhine more bright] In these contenT|s Then vnswepT stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time. [W[HEN wastefull warre]] shall Statues oueR-turne, HEN And broiles ROote out THe workE of masonRY, RY Nor MarS his sword, nor warres quick fire shalL burne ThE liuing record of your memorY. Gainst death, and all obliuious enmity Shall you pace forth, Your praise shall stil finde roome, Euen in the eyes of All posterity A That [VvearE thiS world out to the ending doomE. S So tIL the iudgement that youR selfe arisE], IL-E You liue in this, and dwell in louers eies.

W RO-TH ES-L E-Y

V-E R-E

Shakespeare is frequently found to follow traditional practice in locating the respective formae of the associated WRIOTHESLEY and HENRY anagrams within a single word, in which (as here for example) the H of HENRY is provided by a “non-acrostic” letter which is adjacent to an initial W. The condensa is apt, associating Wriothesley with the poet’s mistress in a judgmental context: HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; ELISA VERE: SO til thE iudgement that YouR selfe ARisE, You liue iN THis, and dWELL In louers eiES.

The implication of the condensa is that a living record of Wriothesley’s sinful liaison with the poet’s mistress will be preserved in the poet’s eternall lines (as for example in this sonnet) for ever, and the sonnet will serve as an advertisement to the world at large during historical time, and

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will further be adduced in evidence at the general rising of the dead at the Last Judgement (“the iudgement that your selfe arise”). Sonnet 55 is one of the many sonnets in Q which purport to reproach Henry Wriothesley for two distinct faults: first, and allegedly more important, is the betrayal of the Platonic bond of love between the poet and his young patron (the betrayal of the homosexual ethic of erastes and eromenos); and secondly, the ancient Roman affront of wife-stealing or mistress-stealing. These sins are not presented as in any sense mutually exclusive, although throughout the sequence the love between poet and patron is ostensibly given priority over that between poet and mistress. In Sonnet 40 (as already noted) the young earl is only mildly upbraided for having allegedly betrayed himself and the poet by “wilfull taste” of Elizabeth Vere. In Sonnet 55, however, Henry’s SHAME in this context is recorded and advertised in an ironical gesture which duplicitously translates the concept of immortalization in terms of the poet’s publication of Henry’s shameful misdemeanours in perpetuity. As in Sonnet 129, the expenditure of semen in Elizabeth Vere is seen as a waste that leads to shame, a shame that will carry the mark of sluttish time/teeme (where the implied word teeme refers to sexual outpourings). In this context, and by virtue of Shakespeare’s word-play, the depredations of “wastefull warre” are those of a “waist-full whore”, a process of moral attrition which the poet’s ominous sonnet will – he suggests - eternally advertise.73 As will become clear, the aesthetic strategy of the similarly ironic Sonnet 81 is directly comparable. Surprisingly, neither Booth nor Vendler respond to the somewhat anomalous diction in “Shall you pace forth” in line 10 of Sonnet 55. On this occasion it is Katherine Duncan-Jones who is alert to the “unexpected” diction of Shakespeare’s verba perplexabilia. Her gloss on the word pace is apt: “a surprisingly gentle word, where we might expect something more assertive, such as ‘stride’; perhaps chosen for its similarity to ‘peace’….” This comes very close to the truth, for pace is in fact chosen for its closeness to pisse (a near-homonym in the period to peace), a word conventionally deployed to mark the onset of concealed scatological invective in the Classical mode.74 In Sonnet 55, semen “wasted” in sin is covertly likened to the bodily waste of “pisse” and “shitte”, and is identified thus in the PISSE and SHIT(TE) anagrams with which the sonnet is imbued. It is usual for concealed scatological invective to be marked and aesthetically corroborated by sound-play and word-play in the ambient text. In line 2, for example, the word pisse is marked phonetically and anagrammatically in “Princes … this” and shit(t)e in “shine more bright”. The relevant anagrams are set in “paired

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pairs”, a device which both intensifies the invective and ensures that the indecencies are not construed as accidental solecisms of the kind illustrated by Horace in the Ars poetica. In line 10, the contextually anomalous diction in “pace forth” serves as an attention-seeking conventional marker in relation to “pisse forth”: Not marble, nor the guilded monument, Of [Princes [SHall out-liue]] thiIS powrefull rime, But you Shall shinE more bright In these contents Then vnswepT stonE, besmeer’d with sluttish time. When wastefull warre shall Statues ouer-turne, And broiles roote out the worke of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne The liuing record of your memory. Gainst death, and all obliuious emnity Shall you [Pace] forth, your praise] [SHall stil finde] Euen In the eyeS of all posterity /roome That weare thiS world ouT to The ending doomE. So til the iudgement that your selfe arise, You liue in this, and dwell in louers eies.

P-IS S-E

SH I T-T-E

P I-S S-E

SH I T-T-E

It is now possible to return to Booth’s valuable commentary on contents and vnswept stone and to propose an interpretation of the semantic inconsistencies that he detects in the quatrain. The duplicity of the sonnet is reflected in the syntax of lines 3-4, where “besmeer’d with sluttish time” is capable of referring either to “vnswept stone” (line 4) or to “you” (line 3). Two possible alternative readings are compared below, where Shakespeare’s customary play on time and teeme (in the sense of semen) is invoked:75 Not marble, nor the guilded monument, Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Then vnswept stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time. Not marble, nor the guilded monument, Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime, But you (besmeer’d with sluttish teeme) shall shine More bright in these contents then vnswept stone.

The second of these readings brings out the sense in which (it is alleged) Wriothesley will indeed “shine more bright”. He will shine because he is metaphorically besmeared with the viscous residues of his carnal sin. Shakespeare upbraids his mistress in much the same fashion in

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Sonnet 150 in which Wriothesley’s semen is envisaged as the very refuse or residue of Elizabeth sexual “deeds”, and where the SLIME anagram is comparable: Whence hast thou this becomming of things il, That in the [VEry RefusE] of thy deeds, There is such strength and warrantise of [SkilL, That In My mindE] thy worst all best exceeds?

VE-R-E S-L I-M-E

Here again, the very refuse of thy sexual deeds is defined in terms of slime. The sonnets of the second level, inaugurated by Sonnet 18, are thus markedly different from the first-level sonnets (1-17). As a group, the second-level poems are found to be heterogeneous in character when compared with the homogeneous basal sonnets, all of which pursue the theme of cur solus fricas. Sonnets 18-62 are characterized by the poet’s relatively mature treatment of the triangulation of desire (in relation to both Elizabeth Vere and Christopher Marlowe) and by the poet’s relatively enhanced awareness of the moral implications of the situations that he describes. It is thus that Sonnet 62, the concluding sonnet of this section, announces the consummation of an important first stage in the penitential ascent. On this occasion the sin of self-love specified in the Orphic verba certa (here manifested in MYSTERY, SINNE, and SELFE LOUE anagrams) is openly invoked as the poet’s ostensible theme: [SINne] of selfe-loue possesseth al miNE eie, And all [MY] Soule, and al my euery part; And for This [SINne] therE is No RemediE, It is so grounded inward in mY heart. Me thinkes no face [So gratious Is as mine], No shape so true, No truth of such account, And for my [selfE] mine owne worth do define, As I all other IN all worths surmount. But wheN my glasse shewes me my [SelfE] INdeed Beated and chopt with taN|d antiquitie, Mine owNE selfe loue quite contrary I read Selfe, so selfe louing were iniquity, T’is thee (my selfe) that for my selfe I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy daies,

SIN-NE SIN-N-E S-I N-N E S-IN N NE

MY-S T-E-R Y

S IN N-E

The underlying insouciance of Sonnets 1-17 has been left behind, and the poet’s situation is now explored in a poem that is founded upon Plato’s account of the mirroring of loved and beloved, and which explores the related themes of self-knowledge and self-improvement. The relative

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seriousness of the second-level sonnets is advertised in the proemial statement comprised in the versal apparatus of Sonnet 62. The single word Sinne (isolated in the manner of Hermes) comprises a conspicuously overt correlate of the covert verba certa of the Orphic confessional. The poet’s confession of the sin of self-love is also a conventional confession of the sin of masturbation in the absence of the beloved – a Classical topos adopted inter alia by Petrarch in the Rime sparse. In the sexual vocabulary of the period a close-clustering of the letter s is capable of referring to the flow of semen.76 The versal S acts as an intensifier in this respect:

S

Inne of Selfe loue poSSeSSeth al mine eie, And all my Soule

The thematic glasse to which the poet refers in line 10 is also the glass or mirror of Plato’s Phaedrus, and is specifically identified as such in PLATOE (sic) and MIRRORE (sic) anagrams (both variant spellings commonly found in the period).77 The PLATOE anagram is emphasised by virtue of the plurality of its figurae extensae, three of which (only) are noted in the margin of the annotated version below. The forma of the MirrorE anagram is designedly comprised in the periphrastic epithet “My glassE”, an indicator of the co-identity of my glasse and Plato’s Mirrore: SInne of selfe-loue [Possesseth aL mine eie], And All my soule, and aL my euery parT; And for this sinne There is nO remediE, IT is sO grounded inward in my heart. Me thinkes nO facE sO gratious is as minE, No shapE so truE, no truth of such account, And for my selfe mine owne worth do define, As I all other in all worths surmount. But when [My glasse] shewes me my selfe indeed Beated and chopt with tand antiqu|Itie, MIne owne selfe loue quite contrary I Read Selfe, sO selfe louing weR|e iniquity, T’is thee (my selfe) that fOR my selfE I praise, Painting my agE with beauty of thy daies,

P L A T O-E

P-L A-T O-E

M I R R OR E

P L-A T-O-E

MI-R O-R R-E

When line 11 is abstracted from the ambient text and read (in the manner of Hermes) in isolation, an authorial clue is revealed in which the poet states in effect that in the covert dimension of the text “mine owne selfe” is to be read in contrary fashion: Mine owne selfe, loue, quite contrary I read.

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This prompt has the effect of marking the poet’s shadowing of the first-person pronouns me, my, and mine by figuratae controversiae (see below) in the form of anagrams of the pronouns THEE, THY, and THINE. A selection (only) of the relevant extensae is indicated in the marginal notes: Sinne of selfe-loue possesseth al mine eie, And all my soule, and al my euery part; And for [THIs sinNE] [THerE is No remediE], THI-NE It is so grounded inward in mY] heart. Me [THinkes no facE] so gratious is as minE], TH-E-E No shape so true, no [Truth of sucH account, And for My] selfe mine owne worth do define, As I all other in all worths surmount. But when my glasse shewes me my selfe indeed Beated and chopt with tand antiquitie, Mine owne selfe loue quite contrary I read Selfe, so selfe louing were iniquity, T'is thee (my selfe) [THat for mY] selfE] I praisE, TH-E-E Painting mY age with beautY of thy daies,

TH-E-E

T-H Y

TH-Y /Y

It is thus that Shakespeare invites the reader to “read” the sonnet in a “quite contrary” fashion, substituting (in the manner of Hermes) thee for me, thy for my, thine for mine, and Th’thinkes for Me thinkes. The notional alternative reading is shown in the amended version of the sonnet below. Typically, this contrary reading is complemented by Shakespeare’s HENRY WROTHESLEY anagrams, the textual extent of the extensae of which is marked in inclusio by apt phrasal repetition in “It is so … T’is”: Sinne of selfe-loue possesseth al thine eie, And all thy soule, and al thy euery part; And for this sinne there is no remedie, It is so grounded inward in thy [Heart. Th’thinkes no facE so gratious is as thine], No shape so true, No truth of such account, And foR thY selfe thine owne [Worth do define], As thou all otheR In all worths surmount. BuT when my glasse shewes me my selfe indeed Beated and chopt witH tand antiquitie, Mine owne selfE loue quite contrary I read Selfe, so Selfe Louing were iniquity, T’is thee (thy selfe) that for thy selfe I praisE, Painting thy age with beauty of thy daies,

H E N R-Y

It is

W R-I T H E S-L I-E

| | | | | | | | T’is

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Wriothesley is supposed to “define” (line 7) his own WORTH in terms of the onomastic legibility of the name WROTHesley. Here, however, the extensa of the young earl’s surname must be constructed without the letter o, and he is thus revealed - in contrary fashion - as “worthless”. Having found that Henry’s self-love is so excessive as to imply iniquity in him (as in “so selfe louing were iniquity”), the poet implies (inter alia) that the worth he has found in his patron-lover may perhaps simply amount to the perception of his own worth mirrored in Henry. Robert Lanier Read, all unwitting of anagramma figuratum, is thus remarkably perceptive in this context: The critique of self-love in Sonnet 62 seems intended partly as a lesson for the beautiful youth: the opening line thus indicates the poet’s fascination with the youth’s, as well as the poet’s “sin of self-love” …. In Phaedrus 255D Plato emphasizes self-fulfillment by means of reflections in the beloved. 78

In Sonnet 62 Shakespeare has invoked the device described covertly by Quintilian as figuratae controversiae (“figured contrary themes”). He is thus obliged by the protocols of the Classical poetic to incorporate hermeneutic FIGURATAE CONTROVERSIAE anagrams in the covert dimension of his text: Sinne of selfe-loue possesseth al mine eie, And all my soule, and al my euery part; And [For this sinne] there is no remedie, It is so grounded inward In my heart. Me thinkes no face so Gratious is as mine, No shape so trU|e, no truth of such account, And foR my selfe mine owne worth do define, As I all other in all worths surmount. BuT when my glasse shewes me my selfe indeed Beated and chopt with tand AntiquitiE, Mine owne selfe loue quite [CONTrary I Read Selfe], so selfe loU|ing were iniquity, T'is theE (my selfe) that foR my Selfe I praise, Painting my AgE with beauty of thy daies,

F I G U R A T A-E CONT-R O-U E-R-S-I A-E

When the forma of the CONTROVERSIAE anagram (in “Contrary I read / SelfE”) is set in notional apposition to the theme-word, the poet’s aesthetic strategy is revealed – i.e. for my selfe read thy selfe:

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The transition to the third level of the pyramid-triangle is marked by numerologically by the climacteric of Sonnet 63, in which the general tenor of the third-level sonnets is manifest.

5. The second transilition Sonnet 63 marks the epoch of the third of the pyramidal sections of the pyramid, marking the halfway point between Sonnet 1 and Sonnet 126. In general, Sonnets 63-98 are found to take as their theme the increasing distance between the poet and his patron, a distance again associated with triangulations involving the poet’s mistress Elizabeth Vere and the rival poet Christopher Marlowe. In addition, the tendency in this level is for the scope of the sonnets to be widened, to include thematic reference to other poets and their adverse literary comments on Shakespeare’s work and character. The third-level group ends with two sonnets (97 and 98) which take as their theme Wriothesley’s rescue of the Danvers brothers during a long absence from the poet.79 The textual extent of the combined figurae extensae of the HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams in Sonnet 63 is marked in inclusio by the euphonious phrasal repetition of “his brow … His beautie” (lines 3, 13): Against my loue shall be as I am now With times iniurious hand chrusht and ore-worne, When houres haue dreind his blood and fild his brow With lines and [WRIncles, when his youthfull morne] Hath trauaild On to Ages steepie night, And all THose beauties whereof now he’s King ArE vanishing, or vanisht out of sight, SteaL|ing away the treasure of his Spring. For such a time do I now fortifiE Against confounding Ages cruell knife, That [HE shall Neuer cut from memory My sweet loues beauty, though my loueR|s life. His beautIE shall in these blacke lines be seene, And they shall liue, and he in them still greene.

WRI O TH E L I-E

his brow

| | | | | | HE-N | R | his I-E beautie

All unwitting of the sonnet’s covert dimension, Booth is all the more perceptive when he points out that the “key word in this poem” is the word “Against”. Notwithstanding the apparent lovingkindness of the surface of

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the sonnet, its first three words are designedly capable of functioning as a concealed title which runs counter to the tendency of the overt dimension of the text. The sonnet is also a poem written “Against my loue”:

A

Gainst my loue

This proemial gesture in the versal apparatus is capable of invoking a plurality of potential thematic contexts. It is typical of Shakespeare’s poetic practice and of his supreme linguistic virtuosity that all of the (many) then current senses of the word against (as rehearsed in OED) are brought into play. An ideal reading would embrace all of these meanings, mediated inter se, and differentially contextualized, as the sonnet proceeds. A few examples must suffice. The sonnet might for instance comprise another diatribe against the young earl, consonant with the poet’s commonly found word-play in “When HOuRES haue dreind his blood” and “When whores haue dreind his blood”. Or the word “loue” in “Against my loue” might instead refer to the love of the poet for his young patron, and the sonnet might take effect as a homily against the folly of that love. Or again, the phrase “Against my loue” might speak to the physical closeness of lovers, set in loving intimacy one against against the other. All of these themes are in fact reflected in the aesthetic strategy of the sonnet, but the optimally relevant motif is that which exploits the ambiguity of Latin versus (“poem”) and versus (“against”). As will become clear, Sonnet 63 is designedly a “poem against”, a concept derived from Latin word-play in versus adversus. The antagonistic sense of the word “Against” is also reflected in the authorial clue in the sequence “cruell knife … cut … my louers life”, the violence of which exceeds poetic necessity if the sonnet is read at face value. Shakespeare indicates that this tell-tale utterance is of covert significance by disposing its three elements in such a way as to form the V-shaped mark of Hermes within a notional carmen cancellatum: For such a time do I now fortifie Against confounding Ages cruell knife, That he shall neuer cut from memory My sweet loues beauty, though my louers life. His beautie shall in these blacke lines be seene, And they shall liue, and he in them still greene.

The proemial word “Against, coupled with an ensuing violence that exceeds requirements, suggests to the original reader the Latin words

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contra, versus, and adversus and here in particular Quintilian’s epithet controversiae figuratae (in the sense of “figured contrary themes”). It is customary for CONTROVERSIAE FIGURATAE anagrams to be incorporated in texts in which the tendency of the covert dimension runs directly counter to that of the overt, and in which controversiae (in the sense of “contrary themes”) are explored. Shakespeare opts for the variant form of figuretae (substituting e for a):

A

Gainst my loue shall be as I am now With times iniurious hand chrusht and ore-worne, When houres haue dreind his blood and fild his brow With lines [and wrinkles], when his youthfull morne Hath trauaild on to Ages steepie night, [And all those] beauties whereof Now he’s King Are vanishing, or vanisht out of sight, Stealing away the treasure of his SprinG. FoR such a time do I now fortifie F-I Against [CONfounding Ages cruell knife], G-U That he shall neueR cut from Memory R My sweet louES beauty, though my lOUERS life. E His beautie shall In these blacke lines be seene, T And they shall liuE, And he in them still greenE. A-E

CON T-R OUERS I A-E

Quintillian illustrates his controversiae figuratae (covertly) in terms of concealed anagrams, and Shakespeare follows customary practice by including anagrams of the English word ANAGRAMES in close association with the primary indicators: Against my loue shall be as I am now With times iniurious hand chrusht and ore-worne, When houres haue dreind his blood and fild his brow With lines [ANd wrinkles], when his youthfull morne Hath trauaild on to Ages steepie night, [ANd all those] beauties whereof now he’s KinG Are vanishing, oR vanisht out of sight, Stealing Away the treasure of his SprinG. FoR such a tiME do I now fortifie Against confounding AgeS cruell knife, That he shall neueR cut from Memory My sweet louES beauty, though my louers life. His beautie shall In these blacke lines be seene, And they shall liue, and he in them still greene

AN A G R A M ES

AN A G R A M-E S

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The shared condensa of the ANAGRAMES and FIGURETAE CONTROVERSIAE anagrams is located at the beginning of the correlative extensae, in that part of the text which contains the cruell knife. ANAGRAMMES; FIGURETAE CONTROVERSIAE: FOR SUch A TiME do I NovV fortifiE AGainsT CONfoundING AgeS cruell knifE

Once again the source of the poet’s antagonism is to be found in Wriothesley’s alleged sexual betrayals. In addition to the obligatory HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams, ELISABETH and ELISA VERE anagrams are incorporated in usual form. A selection only of the many such anagrams is shown below: Against my loue shall be as I am now With times iniurious Hand chrusT and ore-wornE, When houres haue dreind his Blood And fild his brow With lineS and wrincles, when his youthfull morne Hath trauaild on to Ages steep|Ie night, And AlL [those beautieS whereof now hE]’s King A-S Are vanish|Ing, or [Vanisht out of sight, I SteaL|ing [Away thE treasuRE] of hiS Spring. L-E For such a time do I now fortifie [Against confounding Ages cruelL knifE], That he shall neuer cut from memory My sweet loues beauty, THough my louers lifE. His beautie shall in these Blacke lines be seene, And they Shall liue, [and he In them stilL greenE].

H-T-E B-A S I L-E V E-RE

TH-E B A-S-I-L-E

As already noted, it is Shakespeare’s custom throughout the sequence to identify Elizabeth Vere in any given sonnet by means of a single VERE anagram and a plurality of ELISABETH and/or ELISA anagrams. It is also his custom to incorporate corroborative word-play in relation to the surname Vere. Here the complexly evocative last word of the sonnet greene is also to be construed in the sense (OED, 2.c) of “spring-time”, as in the OED citation “1597 T Middleton … in the spring-time of his greene”. In this context Shakespeare invokes the now obsolete English words Vere (“the season of spring”) and Vere-time (“spring-time”) in order to preserve in these blacke lines Wriothesley’s illicit liaison with Elizabeth Vere. More fundamentally, perhaps, French vert (“green”) and Latin ver (“spring”) have their own parts to play in relation to Vere.

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The verba certa are again helpful, indicating that the SINNE of THEFT is in question - and in particular the sin of mistress-stealing: Against my loue shall be as I am now With [Times inurious Hand chrusht] and ore-worne, When houres hauE dreind his blood and fild his brow With lines and wrincles, when his youth|Full morne Hath trauaild on to Ages steepie nighT, And all [THosE beauties whereof now he’s King TH-E Are vanishing, or vanisht] out oF sighT, F-T Stealing away [THe treasurE of his Spring. For such a time do I now Fort]|ifie AgainsT confounding Ages cruell knife, That he shall neuer cut from memory My sweet loues beauty, though my louers life. His beautie [shall in these] blacke lines be seene, S-IN And they shall liue, and he in them still greene. NE

T-H E F T

TH-E F T

S-IN-NE

According to Horace the potential punishments for wife-stealing included “being beaten to death, being raped by the husband’s slaves, and being castrated”. As Jonathan Walters points out, “Plautus stages a scene in which an adulterer is beaten and threatened with castration (Miles gloriosus, 1395-1426)”. 80 Amongst the verba perplexabilia of the sonnet, the slightly unusual declaration in “I … fortifie” is relevant in this context, since Latin castro serves both as a noun (in the sense of “with fortification”) and a verb (“I castrate”). The precise “point” of the veiled threat in “cruell knife … cut … my louers life” is revealed when it is recalled that in the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary the word life (Latin vita) is commonly used to signify the male sexual function, and hence penis.81 The use of the expression arbor vitae (tree of life) to signify the male member is comparable. Here “my louers life” is specifically defined in controversiae figuratae in the form of clear, well-marked, and concise COCKE and BALLES anagrams. These anagrams coincide in the text with (a) the poet’s CONTROVERSIAE FIGURETAE anagrams and (b) the Vshaped intexta in the form cruell knife … cut … my louers life: FoR such a time do I now fortifie Against [CONfounding Ages Cruell KnifE], That he shall neueR cut from Memory My sweet loues beauty, though my louers life. His [Beautie shALL in these blacke linES] be seene, And they shall liue, and he in them still greene.

CO-C-KE

B-ALL-ES

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When the second of these anagrams is substituted for its textual matrix, the resulting hybrid formulation is corroborative of authorial intent: His BALLES be seene, And they shall liue, and he in them still greene.

It seems likely, therefore, that the poet’s ostensibly compassionate demeanour is to be contrasted with a controversus wish to castrate his patron. In the octave (which is introduced by the statement of intent in “Against my loue”) the poet defines the injurious time/teeme that is inherent in the young earl’s illicit sexual enjoyment of the poet’s mistress. At the turn to the sestet (line 9), the poet describes in the Roman manner how he would propose to respond to the “teeme” of semen which has so affronted him. Covertly, and overtly (in “fortifie”), he adopts a military and adversarial stance which corresponds to the contra and versus in the word “Against”. Exploiting Hermes’ conventional jurisdiction over text and textual boundaries, the poet in effect issues a declaration of war: “For such a teeme do I now fortifie/castrate / Against”. The offending entities, the young earl’s COCKE and BALLES (his life in the vernacular of the period) will be cut from him by the cruell knife of con-founding Age, where Age refers inter alia to the older lover. Shakespeare’s CASTRATE and FORTIFIE/YE anagrams should therefore be read in concert with the elevated ELISA anagram that has its forma in “Ages cruell knifE”: Against my loue shall be as I am now With times iniurious hand [Chrusht and ore-worne], When houres haue dreind his blood And fild his brow With lineS and wrincles, when his youthfull morne Hath TRAuaild on to Ages steepie night, And all ThosE beauties whereof now he’s King Are vanishing, or vanisht out of sight, Stealing Away the treasure of his Spring. A-S For such a time do I now [fortifie] I Against confounding [Ages cruelL knifE], L-E That he shall neuer cut from memory My sweet loues beauty, though my louers life. His beautie shall in these blacke lines be seene, And they shall liue, and he in them still greene.

C A S TRA T-E

FOR T-I F-Y E

Shakespeare also appears to conceive of the ambiguity in Latin versus in terms of the English equivalent in verse and adverse. His VERSE AND ADVERSE anagrams are inaugurated in concert with VERE:

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Chapter Four Against my loue shall be as I am now With times iniurious hand chrusht and ore-worne, When houres haue dreind his blood and fild his brow With lines and wrincles, when his youthfull morne Hath trauaild on to Ages steepie night, And all those beauties whereof now he’s King Are vanishing, or [Vanisht out of sight, V Stealing away the treasurE] of his Spring. E FoR Such a timE do I now fortifie R-S-E [Against confouND|ing Ages cruell knife], A-ND That he shall neUER cut from memory My Sweet loues beauty, though my louers lifE. His beautie shall in these blacke lines be seene, And they shall liue, and he in them still greene.

V E-RE A-D UER S-E

When the poet’s veiled threat “against” his lover’s “life” in Sonnet 63 is compared with his gift of eternal “life” in Sonnet 18, the appropriateness of Sonnet 63 as a transilitional marker becomes clear. Just as the character of the transilitional Sonnet 18 is quite different from that of 1-17, so the transilitional 63 is significantly different from 18. The pivotal difference between Sonnets 62 and 63 is also notable. In the former, Wriothesley is accused of self-love, but in the latter he is threatened with castration. Sonnet 63, corresponding in numerology to the climacteric (etymologically, a step marking a stage in an upward progress), is a striking marker of crisis in the relationship between poet and patron. The general character of this, the third level of the pyramid, is typified by the epitaphic Sonnet 81, the numbering of which is doubly significant. First, the eighty-first year of life was traditionally associated with fatality, (and in particular with the reputed death of Plato at the age of 81).82 Secondly, the adversarial Sonnet 81 is numerologically and thematically contrasted with Sonnet 18 in terms of the chiastic relationship between the numbers 18 and 81. We have seen that appositional inter-textuality is frequently marked and formally instituted by chiastic quotation of this kind.83 Superficially (and as with Sonnet 63), Sonnet 81 appears to satisfy the conventional requirements of an immortalization sonnet in the Petrarchan tradition, the name of the poet’s patron being incorporated in concealed anagrams in usual form. The forma of the primary HENRY/IE anagram is comprised in the deictic word “hence” in line 3, and the textual extent of its plural extensae is conspicuously marked in inclusio by apt phrasal repetition in “your memory … Your name”. In the annotated version below, the gesture of inclusio is separately indicated, and one (only) of the extensae is noted in the margin:

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OR I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, your memory From [HEnce] youR memorY death cannot takE, HE Although iN mE each part [Will bE] forgotteN. N | YouR name from hence Immortall lifE shall hauE, R-I-E Your name Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, The earth can yeeld me but a common graue, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

Experience teaches that the marking of the HENRY/IE anagram in this instance is unusually, even excessively strong and exact. It includes the most explicit of all of Shakespeare’s prompts to the existence of concealed anagram: “Your name from hence immortall life shall haue”. The associated WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagram follows in due order and is again marked assiduously in inclusio by apt phrasal repetition in “your memory …Your name … Your monument”: OR I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part [Will be] forgotten. W YouR name from hence Immortall life shall haue, R-I Though I (once gone) tO all THe world must dye, O-TH The Earth can yeeld me but a common graue, E When you intombed in mens eyeS shall Lye, S-L E-Y Your monument shall bE mY gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

your memory

| Your name

| | | Your monument

The poet’s promise in “Your name from hence immortall life shall haue” is thus fulfilled. In especially honorific or thematically significant contexts it is also customary for the relevant anagrammatism to be marked by “concealed” chiasmus in the ambient text. Here, for example, the underlying structure of the text in lines 3-5 is revealed as partaking of a

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chiastic trope that is specifically designed to comprise a “showy nonshowing” of the name Henry: From hence your memory

:

Your name from hence

Chiasmus is also occasionally used in order to intensify the double figurae condensae of an anagram. Here, for example, each term of the chiastic equation comprises a particularly “perfect”, self-referential condensa of the HENRY anagram: HENRY: HENce your memoRY

HENRY: YouR Name from HencE

When the sonnet is read, re-read, exscribed, and read again, three distinct HENRY/IE anagrams become apparent, with effect that lines 3-5 become imbued with anagrammatic manifestations of the name Henry/ie: From [[HENce] YouR memoRY] death cannot takE, Although IN me each part will be foR|gotteN. YouR Name from [HENce ImmoR|tall life] shall hauE,

HEN-R-Y

.

HEN-R-I-E

Plainly, the poet (a) intends the identity of Henry Wriothesley to be clearly specified in the overt dimension of his text, and (b) ensures that the reader is aware of the single-mindedness of that strategy. The experience of reading the overt and covert dimensions of the text of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets suggests that the intended effect of the anomalously mannered and un-idiomatic gesture is to suggest ironical hyperbole: HENRY WRIOTHESLEY: “your memory … Your name … Your monument”.

The figura condensa in lines 8-9 is also strongly self-referential: HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE: WHen you INtombed In mens Eyes shall Lye, YouR monumenT shall bE mY gentlE verse

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An anagrammatic reading reveals that it is in fact the poet’s intention to advertise - for eternity - the young earl’s immoral enjoyment of the poet’s mistress, Elizabeth Vere, in this world and the next. Accordingly, the condensa in lines 8-9 is shared by the guilty parties, and Henry’s immorall lie with Elizabeth is thus given immortall life, and is preserved for judgmental scrutiny in this world and the next: HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE; ELISABETH VERE: WHen you INtombed In mens Eyes shall LyE, YouR monumenT SHAlL BE mY gentle VERSE

In a markedly Ovidian gesture, Shakespeare adopts the revelatory metathesis of the words immortall and immorall as the linguistic devise upon which the sonnet is primarily based. In the context of the writing of Wriothesley’s “Epitaph”, and in the context of the poet’s ELISA VERE and WHORE anagrams, the aesthetic strategy is clear. The sonnet is designed to be read in the alternative. Shakespeare’s complementary play on Which and Witch is also noted below: Or I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immorall lie shall haue, Though I (once gone) to [all the world must dye], The earth can yeeld me but a common graue, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, Your monument shall be my gentle [VERsE], [Vvhich Eyes not yet created shall oRE]-read. | Witch

A S I-L-E

VER-E WH-ORE

Here again Shakespeare’s exploitation of the resemblance between the words Which and Witch is reciprocally corroborative in relation to the WHORE anagram in “WHich … ORE”. In these ten lines, the poet’s measured entombment of his rival in love (“you intombed”) and the conspicuous prompt in “your Epitaph to make” are reciprocally corroborative in relation to the lapidary HENRY condensa in line 3:84 HENce your memoRY

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Taken out of context (at the notional behest of the god), this selfreferential inscription is not unlike the anagrammatic epitaphs to be found on tombstones of the period.85 Here it is placed, with etymological exactitude, above the textual tomb. If lines 1-10 are thus intended in an alternative perspective to represent the young earl’s monumental tomb, this section of the text would correspond to the carmen figuratum that Puttenham in Chapter Eleven of The Arte of English Poesie calls “the square”: Of Proportion in figure. Your last proportion is that of figure, so called for that it yelds an ocular representation, your meeters being by good symmetrie reduced into certaine Geometricall figures, whereby the maker is restrained to keepe him within his bounds, and sheweth not onley more art, but serueth also much better for briefenesse and subtiltie of deuice. Of the square or quadrangle equilater. The square is of all other accompted the figure of most folliditie and stedfastnesse, and for his owne stay and firmitie requireth none other base then himselfe, and therefore as the roundell or Spheare is appropriat to the heauens, the Spire to the element of the fire: the Triangle to the ayre, and the Lozange to the water: so is the square for his inconcussable steadinesse likened to the earth,

In the context of the poet’s (designedly) sequential “earth … / … to … / … earth” and his monumental “verse”, the “Geometricall figure” known as the “square” are entirely apt. In this case “your meeters” are by “good symmetrie” based upon a square that is ten metrical syllables wide and ten metrical lines deep. The plural extensae of Shakespeare’s attributive GEORGE PUTTENHAME anagrams (one only of which is shown below) span the central lines of the metrical square:

O

R I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each [Part Vvill be] for|[goTT|EN. Your name] from Hence immOR|tall life shall haue, Though I (once GonE) to All the world must dye, The earth can yeeld Me but a common grauE, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read,

G-E OR GE

P-V-TTEN H A M-E

The shared condensa is located in lines 4-5 at the beginning of the respective extensae, and once again Shakespeare ensures that the

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attribution is capable of being re-contextualized and construed as reverential and deferential in relation to his source-author: GEORGE PUTTENHAME: AlthoUGH in me Each ParT vvill be for|GOTten. YouR Name froM hence immortall lifE shall hauE

The notional position of the young earl’s dead body at the base of the ten-line monument is marked by the prompt in “you intombed in mens eyes shall lye”. In another perspective, Wriothesley’s immorall lie is advertised to the world in mens eyes in the condensa that is shared with the ELISA/BETH VERE anagrams: HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; ELISABETH VERE: When you Intombed In mens Eyes SHAll LyE, YOuR monumENT Shall BE mY gentLE VERsE

In yet another perspective, lines 1-10 are found to incorporate a diagonal figura intexta in the form of “O from hence ore-read”. The constituent elements of this figura are so disposed as to trace a rectilinear path from top left to bottom right across the metrical field of the notional square (in the manner of a “labyrinth poem”):

O

R I shall liue your Epitaph to [make],

MA

Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten,

S-E

From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortall [life shall haue,

L

Though] I (once gone) to all the world must dye,

A

The earth can yeeld me but a common graue,

B

When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye,

Y

Your monument shall be my gent|le verse,

R-Y-NT

Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read,

H

Shakespeare’s hermeneutic MASE (sic) and LABYRYNTH anagrams corroborate (and are corroborated by) the sense in which the metrical square is also intended as a notionally separable maze poem. The square or

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cubus has from ancient times been associated with labyrinth poems, which share certain characteristics with the Proteus poems, and are known to have taken many forms. One such form invites the reader to begin at an indicated point in the text of an “abacus or square” of text, and to follow, with a conventional modicum of difficulty, a pre-determined path. A specific instance is described by Piotr Rypson: “Moschion instructs the reader to begin in the middle of the ‘plinthis’ (abacus or square) and to follow the ‘conducting line’. The texts around the letter diagram amplify the mysterious character of the inscription and its qualities, which cause the reader to err and to wander about”.86 In Shakespeare’s labyrinth poem, the reader is similarly instructed to begin in the middle and to follow the diagonal path indicated by the conducting line in “O from hence oreread”. The point of entry is aptly marked in the strong deixis of “from hence”. Conducted by the diagonal, the notional reader (who is Wriothesley himself) is conducted around the text in such a path as to assemble the increments of a sequentially coherent and thematically relevant intextus. First, following the primary diagonal down to the bottom right, he constructs the injunction in “From hence ore-read”. Secondly, he continues to follow the path of the intextus by taking up the thread at the top right in “to make” and then by following the diagonal from there to the words “from hence” again, and from there to “Your momument” at the bottom left. Thus far, the full intextus is coherent, revelant, and meaningful: “O from hence ore-read, to make from hence your monument”. The first “from hence” refers to the entry point of the labyrinth, while the second refers to the memorial lines 1-10 which form the monumental square. Thus crafted, the textual trace reads “O FROM HENCE ORE-READ, TO MAKE FROM HENCE YOUR MONUMENT”:

O

R I shall liue your Epitaph to make,

Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten,

From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortall life shall haue, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, The earth can yeeld me but a common graue, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read,

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But Wriothesley is not permitted to stop there, for the relative clause in line 10 now makes its presence felt. It leads Wriothesley, like the sexually aberrant Minotaur, along a path to eternal incarceration within the labyrinth: O from hence ore-read, To make from hence your monument, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, To make from hence your monument, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, To make from hence etc. etc.

The consignment to earth, the entombment, and the everlasting immuration of lines 1-10 is followed (as Booth comes close to understanding) by the general rising of the dead at the Day of Judgment in lines 11-14.87 This is traditionally the region of eternal air, the air that is breathed when “all the breathers of this world are dead”. The transition from earth to eternal air is marked in the immediately ensuing line 11, which begins with the disconnecting word “And”, and is spanned by a symmetrically disposed AYRE anagram: And toungs to be, YouR beeing shall rehearsE,

A-Y-R-E

When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

Shakespeare’s hermeneutic ETERNALL AYRE anagrams specifically identify the nature of the thematic transition: Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which [Eyes noT yet created shall] ore-read,

E-T

[And toungs to be], YouR beeing shall rehearsE,

E-R

WheN ALL the breathers of this world are dead,

N-ALL

A-Y-R-E

You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

This interpretation is corroborated when a cross-bearing is taken from George Herbert’s ten-line Proteus poem ‘My heart is hid in him that is my treasure’, which appears in part to follow the form of Sonnet 81. As

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Matthew Bauer has shown, Herbert’s poem is firmly based on Puttenham’s metrical “square”, the Figure of Proportion that is appropriate to earth.88 In addition, the ten-line poem contains a diagonal figura intexta beginning at the top left of the metrical field and ending at the bottom right, where the transition to the life eternal ensues. The words forming the figura are selected by reference to a system of metrical progression.89 The poem has traditionally been printed in typographically adjusted form (as below) in order to translate the rectilinear form of the metrical diagonal into a visual image: MY words & thoughts do both expresse this notion, That LIFE hath with the sun a double motion. The first IS straight, and our diurnall friend; The other HID, and doth obliquely bend. One life is wrapt IN flesh, and tends to earth; The other winds towards HIM, whose happie birth Taught me how to liue here so, THAT still one eye Should aim and shoot at that which IS on high: Quitting with To gain at

daily labour all MY pleasure, haruest an

eternal TREASURE.

Bauer’s interpretation is confirmed by Herbert’s SQUARE anagram: The other winds towards him, whose happie birth Taught me how to liue here so, that still one eye [Should aim and shoot at that which is on high: QUitting with daily labour All my pleasuRE], To gain at haruest an eternal treasure.

S QU-A-RE

The transition to the life eternal is marked by an AYRE anagram: The other winds towards him, whose happie birth Taught me how to liue here so, that still one eye Should aim and shoot at that which is on high: QUitting with daily labour [All mY pleasuRE], To gain At haruest An eternal treasuRE.

A-Y RE

It is axiomatic that both the notional square and the notional diagonal are composed by reference to metrical criteria.90 In the absence of

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typographical reconfiguration, neither the square nor the diagonal is visually apparent. Instead, a surprisingly marked curvature is revealed in the silhouette created by the rhyme-words: My words & thoughts do both expresse this notion, That life hath with the sun a double motion. The first is straight, and our diurnall friend; The other hid, and doth obliquely bend. One life is wrapt in flesh, and tends to earth; The other winds towards him, whose happie birth Taught me how to liue here so, that still one eye Should aim and shoot at that which is on high: Quitting with daily labour all my pleasure, To gain at haruest an eternal treasure.

The curved path traced by the rhyme-words suggests that the poem is capable of being read in yet another way, and that a concealed technopaegnion in the manner of a Proteus poem is intended. When the text is notionally centred, the fore-and-aft (acrostic) letters of each metrical line are now found to trace the shape of an ancient krater or drinking cup: My words & thoughts do both express this notion, That life hath with the sun a double motion. The first is straight, and our diurnall friend; The other hid, and doth obliquely bend. One life is wrapt in flesh, and tends to earth. The other winds towards Him, whose happy birth Taught me how to live here so, that still one eye Should aim and shoot at that which is on high; Quitting with daily labour all my pleasure, To gain at harvest an eternal treasure.

Herbert’s covert references to Matthew’s Gospel would tend to suggest that the labourers are those in the vineyard (20.1-16) and that the clericpoet’s drinking cup is intended to represent Christ’s cup of the Last Supper (26.27-29): “And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood … But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it

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new with you in my Father’s kingdom”. In everyday terms, the poem has assumed the themtically apt form of a Communion cup, and Horace’s archetypal urceus has thus been absorbed into Christian iconography. As one might expect of a Proteus poem, Sonnet 81 is also capable of being read, line by line, in inverted form. The perfect reversibility (ad infinitum) of lines 1-2 serves as an inaugural prompt in this context: Or I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, Or I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten,

When the comma at the end of line 1 is exchanged with the stop at the end of line 14, the sonnet makes nearly perfect sense when it is read, line by line, “upside down”.91 The extreme flexibility of the punctuation in Q is helpful here: Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, The earth can yeeld me but a common graue, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, Your name from hence immortall life shall haue, Although in me each part will be forgotten. From hence your memory death cannot take, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, Or I shall liue your Epitaph to make.

A further Protean permutation becomes apparent when the sinuous curves formed by Shakespeare’s careful adjustment of the respective linelengths of the sonnet are recognised as metrically deliberate. The inverted sonnet now assumes the generic status of a carmen figuratum in the shape of Nestor’s Cup, adapted to the contextually apt form of a burial urn. Shakespeare’s hermeneutic ASHES TO ASHES anagrams ensure that the sonnet is self-interpreting in this respect. When the text is notionally centred, Wriothesley’s shape-shifting is seen to be represented in yet

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another perspective. In the version below, the respective extensae of the poet’s ASHES TO ASHES anagrams are emphasised in the text, but not otherswise marked: Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, The earth can yeeld me but a common graue, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, Your name from hence immortall life shall haue, Although in me each part will be forgotten. From hence your memory death cannot take, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, Or I shall liue your Epitaph to make.

With the incorporation of the word ashes, Shakespeare’s concealed quotations from the Order for the Burial of the Dead in the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer (1559) are now complete: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great Mercy to take vnto himselfe the soule of our deere brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life…”. The anagrams are poignantly clear: When [All the breathers] of this world are dead, You still SHall liuE (such vertue hath my Pen) [And [ToungS tO be, your beeing SHall rehearse, Which eyES not yet created shall ore-read,

A SH-E S T-O A-SH ES

In turn, the words “earth … to … earth” form a textual concatenation in the manner of Hermes in the metrical field of the square of lines 1-10 (to which, according to Puttenham, they are appropriate), while the words “ashes to ashes” are aptly rehearsed in the Protean burial urn. The phrase “earth to earth” is also spelt out in an additional verbal figura intexta that traces the path of the arc of a circular orbit whose centre is the ORO (“I pray”) anagram in the versal apparatus. The figura intexta thus formed enacts the dynamic of the eternally recurrent cycle suggested

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by the prayer’s phrase “earth to earth”, and like the Protean word ORO it may be read in either direction:

O

R I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten,

From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortall life shall haue, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, The earth can yeeld me but a common graue, When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read,

Thus Sonnet 81, a typical poem of the third level of the pyramid (6398), is found to be composed in the form of a Proteus poem – a poem generically capable (as Julius Scaliger had demonstrated) of being read in a number of different ways and in different perpsectives.92 Representing a poignantly ironical response to Henry Wriothelsey’s allegedly fickle sexual behaviour, the sonnet is designedly capable of being read in a multitude of different ways. To reiterate, the poet’s carefully composed exercise in Petrarchan immortalization is in fact designed to confer immortall life not upon Henry but upon the Ovidian metathesis of Henry’s immorall lie (in at least three senses of the word lie). It is thus that (as already noted) the condensa of Shakespeare’s ELIZABETH VERE anagrams in Sonnet 81 is shared with that of the HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams, depicting and immortalizing their sexual immorall lie for all time and beyond historical time to the Last Judgment. At that moment beyond historical time, the sins of the arisen Wriothesley, immortalized by the poet, will be judged. The couplet of the equally eschatological Sonnet 55 is directly comparable: “So til the iudgement that your selfe arise, / You liue in this, and dwell in louers eies”. In accordance with Classical protocols, Shakespeare specifically identifies Julius Scaliger as the author of the primary source-text of his Proteus poem. The anagrammatic attribution is conventionally deferential, and is expressed in such a way as to match the thematic concerns of the present work. Here, attributive SCALIGER and PROTEUS anagrams are so disposed as to suggest (in one of many such different perspectives) that

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the sonnet is addressed exclusively to the distinguished scholar. At the time of writing (presumably circa 1594) Scaliger was still living, and in this further perspective there is nothing in the overt dimension of the text to suggest that any person other than Scaliger is being addressed. In the manner of a Proteus poem, the sonnet makes perfect sense in this further alternative reading: Or I shall liue your Epitaph to make, Or you [Sur]|uiue when I in earth am rotten, From hence your memory death Cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortalL life shall haue, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, The earth can yeeld me but a common Graue, When you intombed in mens Eyes shall lye, YouR monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read, And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen) Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

S C A L I G E R

P R O T-E U-S

The sonnet as a whole is thus capable of being read (in the manner of a Proteus poem) as concerned exclusively with Julius Scaliger. In this context the phrase “a common graue” refers duplicitously to the generic “engraving” or inscription that is shared by Scaliger and Shakespeare. The figura condensa of the SCALIGER anagram in lines 4-5 is shared with the PROTEUS anagram, and would be entirely apt in the context of an adulatory sonnet addressed to the Dutch theologian: PROTEUS POEM, SCALIGER Although In me Each Part wilL be forGOtten. YoUR naME from henCE ImmoRTall life Shall hauE,

The primary reference in this context is, of course, directed to the errant Henry Wriothesley. Lines 4-5 also serve as one of several shared figurae condensae of Shakespeare’s HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams. As already noted, one perhaps optimally relevant form taken by the sonnet is inherent in its division between lines 1-10 (the square that “for his inconcussable steadinesse” is “likened to the earth”) and lines 11-14 (the region of eternall ayre). It will be recalled that Puttenham states that “as the roundell or Spheare is appropriat to the heauens, the Spire to the

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element of the fire: the Triangle to the ayre, and the Lozange to the water: so the square … is likened to the earth”. Decorum requires that lines 1114 should incorporate (in the Protean mode) some textual shape corresponding to “the Triangle”. It is thus that, incorporating yet another generic form of the technopaegnia, Shakespeare marks lines 11-14 as the region of eternal ayre by means of a triangular figura intexta based on the pyramidal triangle in Ovid’s envoi to Metamorphoses. Ovid’s envoi is now discovered to take the form of a sphragis appended to the main body of the poem. The traditionally ludic character of the sphragis is reflected in the triangular or meta-shaped figura intexta which marks the poet’s triumphant post-mortem journey to the stars (Shakespeare’s eternal air). The verbal device takes the form of the contextually apt textual concatenation in astra spatium nostrum (“My course the stars”): Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas. cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi: parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum, quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam.

Ovid’s meta-shaped figura intexta is reciprocally corroborated by the META anagrams which bisect it. Here the word meta (in the sense of “goal” or “end point”) refers to the pyramid-shaped finishing post for races in the Circus Maximus. The “point” of the gesture is implicit in the prior word-within-word devise that finds Meta (“end point”) concealed within the word Meta|morphoses. The sphragis marks the poet’s triumphant achievement of his ultimate goal, the end point of his great work: ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi: parte tamen [MEliore [MEi super alTA] perennis ME-TA astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum,

ME-TA

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To reiterate, when the sphragis is read in the manner of a carmen cancellatum, the gesture assumes the form of the pyramidal triangle or meta which marks the end or meta of the poet’s morphoses. Ovid’s culminating linguistic shape-changing is thus entirely appropriate to the word Metamorphoses, which here becomes sef-referential as to the morphosis of the meta: Spatium META astra

nostrum

Shakespeare adopts Ovid’s iconic registration of eternal air and adapts it to his own purposes. In lines 11-14, following traditional protocols in relation to triangular figurae intextae, the Renaissance poet exploits the rhetorical device of polyptoton. A triangle of eternal air is formed from the metrical triangulation of the word breath, and a conventionally incorporated PENION anagram is so disposed as to form a complementary triangular figura intexta within the closing words of lines 13-14: And toungs to be, YouR beeing shall rehearsE,

A-Y-R-E

When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen)

P

Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

E-N-I-O-N

The primary gesture can again be represented in the form of a carmen cancellatum which associates Shakespeare’s ETERNALL AYRE anagrams with the triangular figura: ETERNALL AYRE breath

breath

breath

Shakespeare’s pyramidal PENION anagram is also significant in its adoption of a further theme of Ovid’s sphragis:

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/

\

EueN In the mouths Of meN

The generically licentious nature of the sphragis leads Ovid to invoke his achieved dominance over critics and rival poets in the typically phallic and typically Roman form of irrumatio or enforced fellatio.93 Accordingly, proemial IRRUMO and ORO anagrams are incorporated in the immediately preceding text, and in the envoi itself a PENIS anagram is set centrally in boastfully ithyphallic form. Its forma is unusually long, and the space between the consecutive letters of the extensa increases as the line proceeds, suggesting an eternal tumescence: tarda sit [Illa dies et nostro seR|ioR aevo], qua caput AugustUM, quem temperat, ORbe relictO accedat caelo faveatque precantibus absens! Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas. cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi: [PartE tameN meliore meI super alta perenniS] astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum, quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam.

I-R-R UM-O OR-O

P-E-N-I-S

Shakespeare, conscientious as always in this respect, again takes care to mark the setting the envoi in formal apposition to his own text. His clear, proemial ORO anagram translates Ovid’s clear, proemial ORO anagram in ORbe relictO. The proemial prevarication in lines 1-2 of the sonnet, as to which of the poet and the patron will die first, translates Ovid’s dangerous proemial prevarication as to the date of Augustus’ death (as in tarda sit). Ovid’s ore populi (“in the mouths of men”) and vivam (“I shall live”) are translated verbatim and in inverse order in “I shall liue” (line 1) and “in the mouths of men” (line 14). Literary decorum, in a context of the revival of Classical irrumatio, requires that Ovid’s PENIS anagram be incorporated in some apt fashion in the Renaissance sonnet. Shakespeare’s linguistic virtuosity (“such vertue hath my Pen”) is

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such that he is able to set the requisite PENIS anagram symmetrically within the PENION anagram that (in yet another perspective) marks it out as a deliberate gesture: PEN /

\

EueN In the mouthS Of meN

The gesture is corroborated by the word-play which finds virility in “vertue” and the straightness of penis erectus in “euen”. The phallic innuendo in “Loue … beares it out euen to the edge” in Sonnet 115 is comparable. Ovid’s invocation of literary irrumatio (which links pen and penis) is also neatly encapsulated, both in the inset figura and in the boastful declaration in “such vertue hath my Pen”. It is now possible to return to the sonnet and to trace within it the motif of crime and punishment that underlies it. As already noted, Wriothesley’s crimes are twofold. His wilfull taste of the poet’s mistress is envisaged (a) in terms of the sin of heresy in relation to “heauenly” homosexuality, and (b) in terms of the sin of mistress-stealing. In ancient Rome, the punishment envisaged (if not actually carried out) for the latter was irrumatio, while in the more recent Christian tradition, the punishment envisaged (and actually carried out) for heresy was permament immuratio. The sonnet is thus further informed by the prior devise that finds an apt conceptual affinity in the metathesis of immuratio and irrumatio. That motif is closely associated with the prior devise that detects a revelatory IMMORALL LIE concealed within Wriothesley’s IMMORtALL LIfE. Both prior devises are specifically identified in hermeneutic anagrams. The formae of the IMMORALL LIE anagrams are comprised in the words IMMORTALL and LIFE respectively: Your name from hence [IMMORtall] life shALL haue, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye,

IMMOR-ALL

Your name from hence immortall [LIfe] shALL hauE, Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye,

LI-E

The thematically conjoined IMMURATIO and IRRUMATIO anagrams are closely associated in the text, and share a common forma in “[I shall liue our Epitaph tO]”:

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Or [I shall liue youR Epitaph to] Make, OR yoU suruiue when I in earth aM rotten, From hence yoUR Memory death cannot take, Although in me each parT will be forgotten. Your name from hence Immortall life shall haue, Though I (once gone) tO all the world must dye,

I-M M UR A-T I O

I-R R-U M A-T I O

While Shakespeare’s theme in this stage of the penitential ascent is primarily the Eternall Triangle of poet, patron-lover, and shared mistress, this section of the sequence (63-98) is also noteworthy for the sonnets which take as their theme the generic triangle that is inherent in Shakespeare’s inter-linking of poet, patron-lover, and literary rivals. Many of the sonnets in this section are devoted exclusively to the further elaboration of the triangle of desire formed by the apparently liberal patron Henry Wriothesley and a number of rival poets, including Henry Constable, Christopher Marlowe, Barnabe Barnes, and Thomas Nashe. Of these, it is Constable who appears to have been the first in the field. As we shall see in relation to the transilitional Sonnet 99, Henry Constable’s sonnet sequence Diana: The praises of his Mistres, in certaine sweete Sonnets. By H.C. (dated 1592) is in fact found to be addressed to the young earl, the homoerotic dimension of the sequence being screened behind the poet’s ostensible contemplation of a female “Diana”. In Sonnet 83, Shakespeare names Constable (among others) as symptomatic of “the filching age” that would “steale his treasure” in Wriothesley. For the sake of clarity, the HENRY CONSTABLE anagrams (only) are shown below: So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet season’d shewers are to the ground: And for the peace of you I hold such strife, As twixt a miser and his wealth is found. Now proud as an inioyer, and anon Doubting the filching age will steale [His treasurE], Now [COunting best to be] with you alone, TheN betteR|d that the world maY See my pleasure, Some-time all ful with feasting on your sighT, And by And By cleane starued for a LookE, Possessing or pursuing no delight Saue what is had, or must from you be tooke. Thus do I pine and surfet day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away,

H-E CO N N-S R-Y T A-B-L-E

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The figura condensa of the HENRY CONSTABLE anagrams is shared with anagrams of the other three poets. Again, for the sake of clarity, the Constable condensa (only) is indicated below: HENRY CONSTABLE: Now COunting best to Be witH you ALone, TheN betterd that the world maY See my pleasuRE

In the couplet of Sonnet 86, for example, Shakespeare refers overtly to the literary intervention that has apparently alarmed him most, namely the concealed anagrammatic naming of “Henry Wriothesley” in Marlowe’s “great verse” (where verse is also staff, and hence penis). As a result, the poet candidly complains, “Then lackt I matter” and “that enfeebled mine”. Shakespeare’s poetic response, ostensibly modest, is in fact supremely self-confident, unobtrusively parodying and criticising Marlowe’s over-blown diction, and stigmatizing him by association with Iohne Dee and the Scole of Night. The latter epithet is conventionally inverted in the sequence NIGHT OF SCOLE: Was it the proud full saile of his great verse, Bound for the prize of (all to precious) you, That did my ripe thoughts in my braine inhearce, Making their tombe the wombe wherein they grew? Was [It his spirit, by spirits taught tO write], Aboue a mortall pitcH, that struck me [DEad? DE No, neither hE], nor his compiers by night E Giuing him aydE, [My verse] Astonished. M-A He noR that affable familiar ghost R Which [NIGHt]|ly gulls him with intelL|igence, L As victors [Of my silencE cannot boasT, O-E I was not [Sick oF] any feare] from thence. But when your COuntinance fild vp his LinE, Then lackt I matter, that infeebled mine.

I-O H N-E

NIGH T O S F CO-LE

The disposition of the “of …/… of” sequence in lines 11-12 is typical of Shakespeare’s approach to the construction of the OF anagrams that are required to complete an anagrammatic utterance in the form “x of y”. Both Barnable Barnes and Thomas Nashe are found to have addressed covertly indecent sonnets to Wriothesley in pursuit of conventional modes of literary seduction. Appended to Barnes’ Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593) are seven dedicatory sonnets addressed respectively to the Earls of Northumberland, Essex, and Southampton, and to “the Lady Marie

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Countesse of Penbroke”, “the Lady Straunge”, and “the Lady Brigett Manners”. In addition, a covert address to Wriothesley is found to be concealed in the showy non-showing of Barnes’ Sonnet 51. Barnes bases this sonnet on an anagrammatic analysis of Shakespeare’s emblematic epithet “beauties Rose”. As a complete word, Rose is capable only of producing the grievous Petrarchan SORE of SORrowE (the SORE conventionally associated in anagram with the inevitable pain of EROS). But the poet purports to be satisfied when the Rose is robbed of its vowels, producing Rs or arse. In the sound-play of the period, a vowell is also a contextually apt bowell: Lame consonants of member-vowells [RObbed [What peR|fect-sounding wordes can you compoSE] Where|In you might my sorrowes flame disclose? Can you frame mamed wordes as y(Ou) [Had throbbed? Can you wiTH sighes makE] signes of passions sobbed? Or caN youR characters make sorrowES showes? Can Liquids make them? I with teares makE thosE, But for my teares with taunts and frumpes am bobbed. Could mutes procure good wordes mute would I bee, But then who should my sorrowes image paint? No consonants or mutes or liquids will Set out my sorrowes, tho with greefe I faint: If with no letter [But One voWELL] should bee, An A. with H. my Sonnet would fulfill.

W-R I O TH ES L-I-E

RO SE H E N-R I-E

B-O-WELL

In the concluding line, the initial H. signifies both Henry and (in the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary) anus. An alternative reading is therefore offered in the form of “An A. with H. (i.e. Henry’s anus), my Sonnet (i.e. verse, staff, penis) would fill full”. HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; ROSE: WHAt peR|fect-sounding wordeS can You composE WheREIN you migHT mY SORROwes flamE discLosE?

“Sorrowes”invokes the Petrarchan association of tears with semen. Shakespeare responds to Barnes in several sonnets in the third level of the pyramid-triangle (Sonnets 63-98). In Sonnet 83, for example, Barnes, Marlowe, and Nashe are identified as representing “the filching age” that would “steale his treasure”:

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So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet season’d shewers are to the ground: And for the peace of you I hold such strife, As twixt a miser and his wealth is found. [Now proud as an inioyer, and anon Doubting the filching age] will steale his treasure, Now counting [Best to be] with you Alone, Then betteR|d that the world may see] my pleasure, Some-time all ful with feasting oN youR sight, And [By and By cleanE starued for a LookE, B-A-R Possess|ing or pursuing No delight N Saue what is had, or must from you be tookE. E ThuS do I pine and surfet day by day, S Or gluttoning on all, or all away,

N-A-S H-E B-A R MA N R A-B-E LO-E

The condensa of the BARNABE BARNES anagrams is conventionally located at the end of the first extensa and the beginning of the second: BARNABE BARNES: By ANd By cleaNE Starued foR A lookE

Thomas Nashe’s manuscript poem known as ‘Choosing Valentines’ is prefaced by a dedicatory sonnet (‘To the Right Honorable the Lord S.’) which is again permeated with indecent anagrams. Like Barnes, Nashe begins by focusing on the homosexual implications of Shakespeare’s “beauties Rose”: Pardon, sweete flower of Matchles poetrie, [And fairest bud the Red RoSE] euer barE; A-R-S-E [Although my MuSE], deuorst from deepeR carE, PresentS theE with a wanton ElegiE.

A-R S-E

When the anagram is substituted for its textual matrix, it becomes clear that Nashe’s opening remarks are, in the alternative, conventionally addressed to Wriothesely in homoerotic terms: Pardon, sweete flower of Matchles poetrie, ARSE euer barE;

The identity of “Lord S.” is specified in usual form: Pardon, sweete flower of Matchles poetrie, [And fairest bud the Red RoSE] euer barE;

A-R-S-E

A-R

302

Chapter Four [Although my MuSE], devorst from deepeR carE, PresentS theE with a wanton ElegiE. Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitie For painting forth the things that hidden are, Since all men acte [What I in speache declaR|e], W-R Onlie Induced with varietie. I Complants and praises euery One can write, O [ANd passion out THeir pangU’S] in statlie rimes; TH But of louES pleasures none did euer write, ES That [HavE] succeeded iN theis Latter times. L Accept of it, Deare Lord, In gentle greE, I-E [And betteR lyneS, erE] long, shall honor thee.

S-E

AN-U-S H-E-N R-I-E

An attack on Shakespeare is again combined with the rival poet’s overtures. Parodying Shakespeare’s dedication to Venus and Adonis in the sestet, Nashe seeks to demean his rival and to deny his marked success in composing that poem, saying: “of loues pleasures none did euer write, That haue succeeded in theis latter times”. There is also a veiled implication of Shakespeare’s lack of success in relation to “loues pleasures”, and hence an accusation of impotence that is typical of Classical invective. Nashe incorporates SHACESPERE and IMPOTENCIE anagrams in close association: Pardon, sweete flower of Matchles poetrie, And fairest bud the red rose euer bare; Although my Muse, devorst from deeper care, Presents thee with a wanton Elegie. Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitie For painting forth the things that hidden are, Since all men acte what I in [Speache declare], Onlie [Induced witH varietie]. CoM|Plaints [And praises euery one] Can writE, [And passion Out Their pangu’S in statlie] rimes; But of loues Pleasures none did euER writE, That have succeeded iN theis latter times. AcC|ept of it, Deare Lord, In gentlE gree, And better lynes, ere long, shall honor thee.

S H A-C-E S P-ER-E

I M-P O-T E N C-I-E

In Nashe’s poem known as Choosing Valentines a temporary impotencie is remedied by the availability of a dildo. In the dedication, Nashe’s DILDO anagrams are constructed in elevated form: Pardon, sweete flower of Matchles poetrie, And fairest bud the red rose euer bare;

Sonnets Although my Muse, devorst from deeper care, Presents thee with a wanton Elegie. Ne blame my verse Of loose unchastitie For painting forth the things that hidD|en are, Since alL men acte what I in [Speache declare], [Onlie InduceD] witH varietie]. Complaints And praises euery one Can writE, And passion out their pangu’s in Statlie rimes; But Of loues Pleasures none did euER writE, That have succeedeD in theis Latter times. Accept [of It, Deare LorD, in gentle gree, And better lynes, ere long, shall honor thee.

303

S H A-C-E S P-ER-E

O D L I-D

O D-L I-D

Shakespeare’s primary response to Nashe’s dedicatory sonnet is comprised in Sonnet 76, in which Nashe’s dildo-poem is invoked in NASHE and CHOOSINGE VALENTINES anagrams: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quicke [CHange]? CH Why with the time dO I not glance aside O To [New found methods, And tO compounds strange]? O N-A Why write I Still all one, euer tHE same, S S-HE And keepe inuention In a noted weed, I That euery word doth almost tel my Name, N ShewinG their birth, and [VvherE they did proceed? V G-E O know sweet loue I Alwaies] write of you, A And you and Loue are still my argumENT: L-ENT So all my best Is dressing old words New, I-N Spending againE what iS already spent: E-S For as the Sun is daily new and old, So is my loue still telling what is told,

In addition, Shakespeare responds to Nashe’s self-advertised reverence for the Italian poet Aretino in a plurality of ARETINO anagrams, while also incorporating backward-and-forward DILDO anagrams: 94 Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quicke change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new found methods, [And to] compounds strange? Why write I still all one, eueR the same, And keepe inuention in a noted weed, That euery word doth almost tel my name, Shew|INg their birth, and where they [DId proceed? O] know sweet Loue I alwaies write Of you,

A R E T IN DI O O L

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AnD you and loue [ARe still my argument: SO] alL my besT is dressing old words new, Spending againe what Is already spent: For as the SuN is daily new and [olD], SO is my loue still telling what is told,

ARE T I N O

D D L O I D

In an apparently effortless demonstration of the “plain and simple” style that Shakespeare brings to perfection, his witty riposte to Nashe’s attacks on Venus and Adonis goes almost unnoticed. The couplet of 76 begins “For as the sun”, where “as the sun” is a verbatim quotation of the supremely self-confident opening words of the earlier poem:

E

Ven as the sunne with purple-colourd face, Has tane his last leaue of the weeping morne, Rose-cheekt Adonis hied him to the chace, Hunting he lou’d, but loue he laught to scorne:

Here again, Shakespeare’s self-quotation is a conventional requirement of the poet who seeks to establish a formal textual inter-connection between his own present and previous poems. So far as his alleged impotencie is concerned, the poet implies, he can be counted on to rise as regularly as the sun rises each morning. Marlowe, Nashe, and Barnes are again specifically identified in Sonnet 82. Shakespeare repudiates the “strained touches” of his rivals’ overblown rhetoric, and their “grosse painting”, and asks (plainly and simply) for his sonnet to be compared with their lesser dedictory offerings. A selection of Shakespeare’s KIT MARLOE, THOMAS NASHE, and BARNABE BARNES anagrams is shown below: I grant thou wert [Not [married tO my [Muse]]], And [therefore Maiest without Attaint ore-looke The dedicated wordS] whicH writers vsE Of their faire subiect, blessing euery [Booke. Thou ARt as] faire iN [KnowledgE aS in hew, Finding thy worth a limIT] past [my praise], And therefore Art inforc’d to seeke anew, Some fresheR stampe of the time [Bettering dayes]. And do so LOuE, yet when they haue deuisde, What strained touches Rhethorick caN lend, Thou truly fairE, wert truly simpathizde, In true plaine wordS, By thy true telling friend. And their grosse painting might be better vs’d, Where cheekes need blood, in thee it is abus’d.

N A S-H-E B AR-N-E-S K M IT A B R A LO-E R-N E S

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The sonnets referring to Marlowe, Nashe, and Barnes are of particular interest in that they are also found to imply Shakespeare’s view of his own verse, and his own style. In Sonnet 82, for example, Shakespeare is found to speak to a theme that was much discussed in the period. H S Bennett discusses this theme in relation to translation in the second volume of his English Books and Readers: 1558-1603: Most translators … go out of their way to emphasize that … they are content to leave the ‘exquisite and curious style to those that have bene brought up in scoles and are seen in oratorie’. Others again prefer their writing to be ‘as simple and plaine … as possibly the matter and phrase of that tongue would suffer’, or write in ‘plaine and simple rudeness’ of manner, rather than trying to be ‘untruelye fine’. 95

It is typical of Shakespeare’s mindset that he is apparently attracted to the hendiadys of the everyday phrase “plaine and simple”. In Sonnet 82 the poet’s anagrammatic citation of this epithet is conventionally inverted: Thou truly faire, wert truly [SIMpathizde], In true [PLainE] words, By thy true telling friend. [And] their grosse painting might be better vs’d, Where cheekes Need blooD, IN theE it is abus’d.

SIM PL-E A N-D

PL A IN-E

On this occasion the shared figura condensa is located in the ambient text at the beginning of the extensae. The condensa is also shared with Shakespeare’s HENRY/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE anagrams: HENRIE WRIOTHESLIE; PLAINE AND SIMPLE: SIMPAtH|izde, IN TRuE PLaINE wordS

Typically self-referential, the quasi-epigrammatic condensa shows Wriothesley “simpathizde” in anagrammatic form. Shakespeare uses this word in The Comedy of Errors in the sense (OED, 1.a) of “compounded of corresponding parts or elements, complicated”. It would seem that Shakespeare views the fine complexity of his implementation of the Classical poetic as deriving from the inter-action of the overt and covert dimensions of his text, a text which is remarkable for its apparently effortless simplicity. As the incremental ascent proceeds, the relationship between the poet and his patron is increasingly viewed in a wider social and national perspective. It is thus that the last two sonnets in the third level of the pyramid-triangle (Sonnets 97 and 98) are found to refer to an episode in

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Henry Wriothesley’s life in which the poet is not involved, but which speak to Wriothesley’s public persona. In these paired sonnets Wriothesley is congratulated for having arranged the escape of Sir Henry Danvers from prosecution for the murder on 4 October 1594 of Sir Henry Long.96 The rescue of Sir Henry and his brother Sir Charles Danvers took place at a time when Wriothesley was in residence at Place House, his country seat in Hampshire.97 The verba certa comprise MYSTERY, SINNE, and PRIDE anagrams, indicating the poet’s pride in the exploits of his beloved patron. Commentators and editors have noticed the high frequency of initial instances of the letter p in these sonnets, a frequency which is consistent both with the repeated PRIDE anagrams and with the poet’s poetic emphasis of the magnitude of his sense of pride in Wriothesley’s courageous act: How like a Winter hath [My] absence beene From thee, the [Pleasure] of the fleeting YeaR|e? What freezingS haue I felT, what Darke daies seenE? What old Decembers barenesse euERY where? And yet this time remou’d was sommers time, The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the [Prime], Like widdowed wombes after theiR Lords decease: Yet this aboundant Issue seem’d to me, But hope of Orphans, anD vn-fathered fruitE, For Sommer and his [Pleasures waite] on thee, And thou away, the very birds aR|e mute. Or If they [SINg, tis with so Dull a cheerE], That leaues looke pale, dreading the Winters NeerE.

M Y S-T ERY

From you haue I beene ab|Sent IN the spring, WheN [PRoud pIDE] Aprill (drest in all his trim) Hath put a spirit of youth in euery thing: That heauie Saturne laught and leapt with him. Yet nor the laies of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hew, Could make me any summers story tell: Or from their [PRoud lap pluck them where] they grew: Nor dID I wonder at the Lillies whitE, Nor [PRaise the deepe] vermillion In the RosE, They weare but sweet, but figures of Delight: DrawnE after you, you patterne of all those. Yet seem’d it Winter still, and you away, As with your shaddow I with these did play.

S-IN N-E

P-R I-D-E

P R I D-E

SIN N-E

P R I-D-E

PR-IDE

PR ID-E PR-I D E

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Shakespeare conceives of Wriothesley’s rescue of the two brothers, Charles and Henry, in terms of the one-in-two of rhetorical hendiadys. The pairing of the sonnets is marked by means of hermeneutic HENDIADES (sic) anagrams, one of which is incorporated in each poem. In Sonnet 97 the forma of the HENDIADES anagram is aptly located in line 10, in which an instance of overt rhetorical hendiadys occurs (emphasis added): But [hope of Orphans], and vn-fathered fruite,

H-E-ND …

In Sonnet 98 the forma of the corresponding HENDIADES anagram is similarly situated in relation to overt hendiadys: That [heauie Saturne laught and leapt with him. Yet nor the laies] of birds, nor the sweet smell

HE-ND …

In addition, the figurae extensae end respectively in the words lilies and leaues, and which are thus themselves conjoined in the manner of Hermes in a kind of hendiadys. The reiteration of “leaues looke pale” (Sonnet 97) in “the lilies white” (Sonnet 98) is designedly conjunctive, as in Corydon’s conjoining of hedera formosior alba and somno mollior herba in the singing contest in Virgil’s Eclogue 7. As already noted, these phrases form a beautiful link between Corydon’s third and fourth rounds, and are translated in the form of “more louely and more temperate” in Sonnet 18. The theme of pride is emphatically registered in the underlying linguistic motif that makes its presence felt in “PRroud pIDE April”. Here again, the two sonnets and their anagrams are designedly linked, in that the anagrams which respectively identify the Danvers bothers are set in reciprocally symmetrical form: How like a Winter hath my absence beene From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting yeare? What freezings [HauE] I felt, what darke daies seene? What old [Decembers] bare|Nesse eueRY where? ANd yet this time remoU’d was sommERS time, The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the [PRIme], Like widdowed wombes after their Lords [DeceasE: Yet this] Aboundant issue seem’d to me, But [HopE] of OrphaN|s, and VN-fathered fruitE, For SommER and his pleasureS waite on thee, And thou away, the verY birds are mute.

H-E D N-RY AN-U-ERS PRI D D-E A N-V H-E-N ER-S R Y

308

Chapter Four Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheere, That leaues looke pale, dreading the Winters neere. From you haue I beene absent in the spring, When [PRoud pIDE] Aprill ([Drest in All his] trim) PR-IDE Hath put a spirit of youth iN euery thing: That heaU|ie SaturnE laught and leapt with him. Yet noR the laieS of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hew, [Could make me any summers] story tell: Or from their proud lap pluck them W|Here they grew: Nor [Did I wonder At the Lillies] white, D-A NoR praise the deepe VERmilL|ion in the Rose, N-VER They weare but sweet, but figurES of delight: S Drawne after you, you patterne of all those. Yet seem’d it Winter still, and you away, As with your shaddow I with these did play.

D-A N U-E R-S C H A R-L ES

The DANVERS anagrams are conventionally corroborated by Ovidian word-play in the concluding line, where “I with these did play” exploits the commonly found play on d and th and offers an alternative reading in the form “I with D’s did play”. The conspicuous repetition of the lettergroup dd in in “shaddow …did” is wittily self-transactional in this context. The reference here is to the doubling of D in the surname shared by the two brothers, Charles Danvers (“D~s”) and Henry Danvers (“D~s”). Wriothesley’s “absence” for a period of time at Titchfield is specifically identified in PLACE HOUSE anagrams: How like a Winter hath my absence beene From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting yeare? What freezings haue I felt, what darke daies seene? What old Decembers barenesse euery where? And yet this time remou’d was sommers time, The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the [Prime], Like widdowed wombes After their Lords de|CeasE: Yet this aboundant issue seem'd to me, But [HOpe of Orphans], and Vn-fathered fruite, For Sommer and his pleasures waite on theE, And thou away, the very birds are mute. Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheere, That leaues looke pale, dreading the Winters neere.

P L-A-C-E HO-V S-E

Shakespeare apparently considered the events of October 1594 to be worthy of a concealed chronogram. The DATE and TIME anagrams in

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Sonnet 97 are customary indicators of the presence of the chronogram in Sonnet 98: How like a Winter hath my absence beene From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting yeare? What freezings haue I felt, what [DArke daies seene]? WhaT old [Decembers barenessE] euery where? And yet this [TImE] remoU’d was sommers tiME, The Teeming Autumne big with ritch Increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the priME, Like widdowed wombes after their Lords [DeceasE]: Yet [This Aboundant Issue] seem’d To ME, But hope of Orphans, and vn-fathered fruite, For SommER and his pleasureS waite on thee, And thou away, the verY birds are mute. Or if they sing, tis with so [Dull A cheere], ThaT leaues looke palE, dreading the Winters neere.

DA D T-E A-T-E TI-ME T-I ME D T-I-ME A-T-E

D-A T-E

The chronogram itself is comprised in Sonnet 98 in the form MDLXXXXIIII, the XXXX-component being customarily supplied by four key instances of the letter S. As already noted, the conventional locus for a sonnet-chronogram is the first quatrain. The founding, higher-order numeral letters in this instance are M, D, and L. After the year 1500, the reader is presumed to come to the chronogram armed with the knowledge that the quatrain will necessarily include the numeral letters M and D in acrostic positions in relation to words. After 1550, in the absence of an acrostic letter C in the quatrain, the reader will be alert to the letters M, D, and L. Seeking a potentially self-contained textual matrix for the MDLcomponent of the chronogram (a matrix in which the requisite letters must be the first or last letters of words), the original reader will have found an obvious candidate in the potentially separable noun phrase “ApriL (Drest in al his triM)”. This potential MDL-matrix will inspire confidence in the existence of an intentional chronogram, and the original reader will now seek the low-order numeral letters X/S, V, and I. In concealed chronogram, it is customary for X/S to be represented by the letters x or s, and for such letters to be situated in acrostic positions at the beginning and/or end of words. It is customary also for the Roman numeral V to be represented by the written letter v (as opposed to the u-form of medial v) The middle-order numeral letters which register the decade in question (here XXXX) are customarily supplied by recognisable repetitions or patterns involving the letter s (the conventional substitute for the infrequent letter x). In the first quatrain, this is conspicuously offered by four instances in which the letter s is an initial acrostic letter in a key word,

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namely ab|Sent, Spring, Spirit, and Saturne. The operative letters are derived from words and phrases which form a coherent concatenation that invokes the essence of Wriothesley’s exploit: Sent in the Spring ~a Spirit of youth in everything ~ heauie Saturne laught and leapt with him: From you haue I beene ab|Sent in the Spring, When proud pide AprilL (Drest in aL his triM)} Hath put a Spirit of youth in euery thing: That heauie Saturne laught and leapt with him.

SS MDL S S

The quatrain does not contain an initial letter v. Therefore the year in question may already be complete, in the form MDLXXXX (1590) or it may contain I, II, III, or IIII. As previously explained, special rules apply as to the construction of the lower-order I-component. To reiterate, if the letter i is to be counted as a numeral letter it must occur within a relatively compact textual matrix that is manifestly dedicated to that purpose. By way of exception to the general rule, all instances of the letter i within that matrix must be taken into account, whether or not located in acrostic positions in words. For the purposes of this rule, a “manifestly dedicated” textual matrix is one which is specifically identified as such by indicators in the ambient text, including for example (1) duplicitous deixis in wordplay; (2) authorial clues; and (3) the “close-clustering” of the letter i. It is customary for the I-component of the chronogram to be repeated in the proximately ensuing text, regardless of whether the higher-order components are repeated. Great care must be exercised by the postEnlightenment reader in distinguishing between words containing the letter i that are merely deictic as to the I-matrix, and the words containing i comprised in the matrix itself. It is presumably for this reason that a number of conventional indicators are customarily used in order to separate out the I-matrix. On this occasion the MDL-matrix is marked by the epithet “proud pide”, which aptly signifyies the coruscatio of the numeral letters within it.98 The noun phrase that is described by the grammatically distinct epithet “proud pide” contains a close-clustering of the letter i, and is duplicitously self-referential as to the letters in which it is dressed: AprIll drest In al hIs trIm

In the following line, a similarly structured noun phrase contains another viable I-matrix yielding IIII. It is introduced by the duplicitously deictic phrase “Hath put a”, which speaks to the poet’s putting of the letter i in the matrix that ensues:

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SpIrIt of youth In euery thing

The original reader will have noted at once the close-clustering of the letter i in these matrices. Post-Enlightenment readers may find the statistical evidence more persuasive, in that the frequency of the letter i in the first matrix is 17.4%, and in the second matrix 16.0%. This compares with a norm in English of 5.9% As already explained, the rules of concealed chronogram require the Icomponent to be constructed from all instances of the letter i within a designated textual matrix, irrespective of acrostic status. In line 2 of Sonnet 98, the adjectival “proud pide” (i.e. “speckled”) describes (and is grammatically distinct from) the noun phrase “AprIll (drest In al hIs trIm)”. The original reader, accustomed to the customs and conventional protocols attaching to concealed chronogram, will be sensitive to the poet’s use of the epithet proud pide, and will draw a distinction between the inoperative i in the deictic adjective and the four instances of i in the noun clause that proud pide describes. The year thus specified (MDLXXXIIII) corresponds to the period from 25 March 1594 (new style) to 24 March 1595 (new style), and may refer either to the date of composition or to the date of the murder and rescue, or (as seems possible) to both.

6. The Third Transilition The beginning of the fourth level of the pyramid-triangle (99-125) is marked in transilition by Sonnet 99. Despite its superficial similarity to Sonnets 97 and 98, Sonnet 99 - which is based on Ovid’s account of the rape of Hermaphroditus by Salmacis - contrasts sharply with them. It thus comprises an apt point of transition to the next level of the notional ascent. More significantly, the apparently anomalous, fifteen-line structure of Sonnet 99 renders it apt to a transilitional (boundary-marking) role. It corresponds in this respect to the next transilitional poem, Sonnet 126, which is also ostensibly anomalous in its twelve-line structure. The fourth level (99-125) is dominated by poems reflecting the end of the loving intimacy between poet and patron that was inaugurated in Sonnet 18. It would seem that the fifteen-line structure of the transilitional Sonnet 99 (see below) is intended to refer to Ovid’s re-telling of the myth of Hermaphroditus (the son of Hermes and Aphrodite) and the lustful nymph Salmacis (Metamorphoses, 4.281-388), in which the beautiful youth Hermaphroditus is specifically stated to be fifteen years old (tria quinquennia).

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Commentators have rightly noted a marked resemblance in the vocabulary of Sonnet 99 and Henry Constable’s sonnet ‘My Ladies presence makes the Roses red’. Constable’s poem was first published as Sonnetto decisette in the sonnet sequence Diana. The praises of his Mistres, in certaine sweete Sonnets. By H.C. (1592). As already noted, this sequence is in fact addressed to Henry Wriothesley, for whom the persona of “Diana” is a conventional screen. The volume is prefaced by a dedicatory sonnet ‘To his absent Diana’, which is imbued (inter alia) with HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams that serve to identify Wriothesley as a specifically hermaphroditic Petrarchan “mistress”. The sonnet contains two WRIOTHESLEY anagrams and one HENRY anagram, and is apparently founded upon the commonly invoked word-within-word conceit that finds WORTH in WROTH|esley. This anagrammatic devise is reflected in the repetition of the word worth in lines 7-8, and corroborated in multiple WORTH anagrams in the ambient text. For the sake of clarity of presentation, one only of the WRIOTHESLEY anagrams is noted in the margin below: To his absent Diana. Seuer’d from sweete Content, my liues sole light; Banisht by ouer-weening wit from my desire: This poore acceptance onely I require, That though my fault haue forc’d me from thy sight; Yet that thou [WOuldst] (my sorrowes to requite) Review these Sonnets, pictures of thy praise; Wherein each woe thy [WOndrous woRTH] doth Raise, WO-R Though first thy [WorTH bereft me] of delight. TH See them forsaken: foR I them forsooke, Forsaken first Of THee, next of my sence; And [W[HEN thou deignst on their blacke tearES to Looke] Shed not one tearE mY teares to Recompence: But IOy in THis (though FatES gainst mee repine) My verse still LIues, to witnes theE diuine.

WO R TH WO-RTH

W HEN R R-Y IO-TH E-S-LI-E

The clear, closely associated Latin ANUS and English ARSE anagrams in line 11 are conventional indicators of the homoerotic dimension of the sonnet: [ANd when thoU deignst on their blacke teareS] to looke

AN-US

[And when thou deignst on theiR blacke teareS to lookE]

A-R-S-E

While many of Constable’s Wriothesley sonnets purport disingenuously to be addressed to a female, the gender of the love-object in many others is

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left unspecified. Constable’s Sonnetto decisette refers to “My Ladies presence”, but his clear HENRYE WRIOTHESLEY and four ARSE anagrams again identify the addressee and the conventionally invoked body-part that is appropriate to the situation: My Ladies presence makes the Roses red, Because to see her lips, they blush for shame: The Lyllies leaues (for enuie) pale became, [And heR [White handS in them this enuiE]] bred. The MaRI|gold the leaues abroad dOTH spred, Because the sunnES, [And her poweR is the SamE]: The Violet of purpLE cullour came, Did in the blood shee made mY hart to shed. In briefe, [All floweRS from her their vertuE] take; From her sweet breath, their sweet smels do proceede; The liuing heate which [HEr eye] beames doth make, Warmeth the ground, [And quickeN|eth the seede]: The Raine wherewith sheE watereth the flowers, Falls from mine EYes, which shE dissolues in showers.

W RI-OTH ES LE Y

HE N R EY-E

In Sonnet 99 Shakespeare brings Constable’s text into formal apposition to his own by quoting key words verbatim, and by adding attributive HENRY CONSTABLE anagrams: The forward violet thus did I chide, Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that If not from my loues breath, the purple pride, (smels Which on thy soft cheeke for complexion dwells? In my loues veines thou hast too grosely died, The Lillie I [COndemned for thy [Hand, C And buds Of mariE]|rom had stolN|e thy haire, O The RoseS fearefullY oN thornes did STAnd, N One BLushing Shame, an other white dispaire: S A Third nor red, nor white, had stolnE of both, T And to his robbry had Annext thy breath, A But for his theft in pride of alL his growth B-L A vengfull canker eatE him vp to death. E More flowers I noted, yet none could see, But sweet, or culler it had stolne from thee.

CO N STA BL E

H E-N R-Y

All of Constable’s flowers - “all flowers” - are alleged to take “their vertue” from Henry Wriothesley, an exaggerated form of rhetorical comparatio on the part of the rival poet that Shakespeare subjects to parodic ridicule. Constable’s crime (“his robbry”) and his punishment (“a

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vengfull canker”) are invoked in two figurae condensae which are respectively located at the beginning and end of the extensae: HENRY CONSTABLE: The LilliE I CONdemned for thy Hand, And Buds Of marierom had STolne thy haiRE, HENRY CONSTABLE: But foR hIS theft iN pridE of alL his growth A vengfull CaNker EaTE him vp tO death

Shakespeare’s condemnation of Constable’s “Lillie for thy hand” is a also a condemnation of the poet’s hand in writing, a hand whose overblown rhetorical flourishes offend against Shakespeare’s conception of the high art of poetry. Constable’s pursuit of comparatio in the sonnet (as in “My Ladies presence makes the Roses blush”) is “too grosely” articifial an example of the rhetorical device whereby the poet takes a known entity of high worth and finds it wanting in comparison with the object of his praise. The verbal art that Shakespeare so marvellously pursues is an art that abhors hyperbolic comparatio, as when he asks “Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?” and answers, in effect, “No: Thou art more louely and more temperate”. This dialogue in rhetoric is itself an example (Shakespeare, might claim) of the proper use of comparatio. Shakespeare’s view of poetry is that should be plain and unforced, and its composition apparently effortless. In Sonnet 21, for example, he explicitly rejects the poetic that would involve “a coopelment of proud compare”. As will become clear, Shakespeare is here responding to another of Constable’s sonnets: So is it not with me as with that Muse, Stird by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heauen it selfe for ornament doth vse, And euery faire with his faire doth reherse, Making a coopelment of proud [COmpare] With SunNe and Moone, with earth and seas rich gems: With Aprills first borne flowerS and all things rare, That [HEauens Ayre[ iN this huge Rondure hems, HE-N-R O let me true in loue But trulY write, Y And then beleeue me, my LouE is as faire, As any mothers childe, though not so bright As those gould candells fixt in heauens ayer:

CO N S T-A B L-E

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Let them say more that like of heare-say well, I will not prayse that purpose not to sell.

The figura condensa has the effect of accusing Constable of what Shakespeare in Sonnet 130 calls “false compare”: HENRY CONSTABLE: And ThEN Beleeue me, my LOuE is aS faiRe, As anY mothers CHildE

It is thus that Sonnet 21 is found to be imbued with Hermeneutic FALSE COMPARISON anagrams, the FALSE anagrams being set in expolitio. A selection only of the latter is noted in the margin below: So is it not with me as with that Muse, Stird by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heauen it selfe for ornament doth vse, And euery [Faire] with his [FAire] doth reherse, FA Making a coopeL|ment of proud [COMPare L With SunnE And Moon]|e, with earth and seas rich gems: S-E With Aprills [First borne] [FlowerS And alL thingS RarE], That heauens ayre [in thiS huge RondurE hems, O let me true iN Loue But trulY write, And then beleeue me, my LouE iS as [FairE], F As Any mothers childe, though not so bright A As those gould candelLS [Fixt in heauens Ayer: LS Let them Say morE] that Like of heare-Say well, E I will not praySE that purpose not to sell.

COM-P A R I-S O-N

F-A L SE

Constable’s “cooplement of proud compare / With Sunne and Moone” is to be found in Decad 6, Sonnet 1 of the enlarged edition of Diana that was published in 1594 (emphasis added): One Sunne vnto my liues day giues true light, One Moone disolues my stormie night of [Woes, One starR|e] my fate and happy fortune shoes, One Saint I serue, One shrine with vowes I dight. One Sunne transfixt haTH burnt my hart out-right, Ine MoonE oppoS’d, my Loue in darknes throes, OnE star hath bid my thoughts mY wrongs disclose, Saints scorne poore swaines, shrines doe my vowes Yet if my loue be found a holy fier, (no right. Pure, vnstaind, without Idolatrie, And shee naythlesse, in hate of my desire,

W R I-O TH E-S-L E-Y

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Liues to repose [HEr iN my miseRIE], My sunne, my moone, my staR, mY saint, mY shrinE, MinE be the torment, but the guilt be thinE.

HE-N R-Y-E /E

In Sonnet 99 Shakespeare takes advantage of the protocols of Hermetic inter-textuality by disposing the obligatory quoted words in a parodic imitatio. There is concealed invective in his criticism of Constable’s feeble repetition and monotonous metre in “From her sweet breath, their sweet smels do proceede”. In the covert dimension of his text, Shakespeare addresses Constable as an impertinent varlet and advises him that his poetry “smells”: The forward varlet thus did I chide, Sweet dum di dum di dum di sweet that smels (that smels) Shakespeare’s monosyllabic line 2 is deliberately lengthened, and its implied adverse commentary on Constable’s sweet … sweet is corroborated by the declaration in “that smels” with which it concludes. Claudius’ “Oh my offence is ranke, it smels to heauen” is comparable. The bracketed indentation of “smels” in Q is apparently authorised by the poet:

T

He forward violet thus did I chide, Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that (smels

Constable’s habit of incorporating occasional long lines in his verse is parodied in lines 6-7 of Sonnet 21. The typographical indentation of the word “smels” in Q speaks also to line 8 of Decad 6.1, which is printed in the 1594 edition of Diana in similar fashion: Saints scorne poore swaines, shrines doe my vowes Yet if my loue be found a holy fier, (no right.

The roses and lilies that Constable finds concealed in the name Wriothesley are flowers proper to Aphrodite, and for the purposes of epideictic verse the poet proposes that the female Aphrodite is manifestly co-present with the male Hermes in the hermaphroditic young earl. In an erotic context, the English poet seeks an Ovidian source-text upon which to found his conventional praise, and finds it in Ovid’s account of Hermaphroditus in Metamorphoses 4. The story of Hermaphroditus and

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Salmacis is decorously apt to the Renaissance project, and appropriate to the persona of the Petrarchan love-object, who is addressed as Diana. It is thus that Shakespeare also appears to take exception to the way in which Constable’s sonnet translates “too grosely” Ovid’s account of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis in terms of Wriothesley’s allegedly hermaphroditic persona. Ovid tells how Hermaphroditus, born of the union of the handsome Hermes and the beautiful Aphrodite, is nursed by Naiads on Mount Ida. When he is fifteen years old he leaves Ida and wanders alone. He finds a clear pool, swims naked in it, and is greatly desired by the water nymph Salmacis. Hermaphroditus resists her sexual advances, but the amorous naiad entwines herself around him in the water, and their bodies merge and become one. Thus metamorphosed, Hermaphroditus is neither a man nor a woman, and Ovid uses the words semimas and semivir (“half a man”) to describe him. Two passages in Ovid’s account are of particular relevance to Constable’s poem and thus to Sonnet 99. In the first, Salmacis is described in terms that link her not with Diana (the virgin goddess of the hunt) but with Venus Aphrodite (the goddess of sexual love). Her partiality in this context is evoked in terms of her attachment to Aphrodite’s flowers (saepe legit flores) and in terms also of Ovid’s wordplay on venare venam (“to hunt deer”) and venare venam (“to hunt the vein”, and hence “to hunt penis”).99 She owes loyalty to Diana, but her consuming interest lies not in the hunt, but in vena (“the vein”). Ovid registers this passion for vena in a sequence of three syncopic anagrams, which are conspicuously comprised in VENatibus aptA (line 302), VENatibus otiA (307), and again in VENatibus otiA (309). The figurae extensae of the three mutually corroborative VENARE VENAM anagrams are capitalized in the annotated extract below, and are also noted in the margin: 300perspicuus liquor est; stagni tamen ultima vivo caespite cinguntur semperque virentibus herbis. nympha colit, sed nec [[[VENatibus aptA] nec arcus flecteRE] quae soleat Nec quae contendeRE cursu, solA|que naiaduM] celeri non nota Dianae. 305saepe suas illi fama est dixisse sorores Salmaci, vel iaculum vel pictas sume pharetras et tua cum duris [[[VENatibus otiA] misce Nec iaculum sumit nec pictas illa phaRE|tras, nec suA cuM duris [[VENatibus otiA] miscet, 310sed modo fonte suo formosos perluit ARtus, saepE Cytoriaco deducit pectine crines et, quid se deceat, spectatas consulit undas;

VEN-A RE

VE N A-M

VEN-A RE

VE N A-M

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Chapter Four nunc perlucenti circumdata corpus amictu mollibus aut foliis aut mollibus incubat herbis, 315saepe legit flores. et tum quoque forte legebat, cum puerum vidit visumque optavit habere.

The VENARE VENAM anagrams are ironically revisited in lines 373375, at the moment of sexual merger, when the phallic vein that Salmacis hunts becomes physiologically and inseparably hers. At lines 383-387 a particularly clear HERMAPRODITE (sic) anagram serves to emphasise the feminizing influence of Aphrodite: [[vota suos habuere] deos; nam] mixta duorum V-E-N corpora iunguntur, faciesque inducitur illis A-R-E 375una. velut, si quis conducat cortice ramos, crescendo iungi pariterque adolescere cernit, sic ubi conplexu coierunt membra tenaci, nec duo sunt et forma duplex, nec femina dici nec puer ut possit, neutrumque et utrumque videntur. 380ergo ubi se liquidas, quo vir descenderat, undas semimarem fecisse videt mollitaque in illis membra, manus tendens, sed iam non vocE virili [HERmaphroditus ait: nato date] MunerA vestro, et PateR et genetrix, amb|Orum nomen habenti: 385quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat in|De semivir et tactis subito mollescat In undis. moT|us uterquE parens nati rata verba biformis fecit et incesto fontem medicamine tinxit.

V-E-NAM

HER-M-A P-R-O D I T-E

The figura condensa of the HERMAPHRODITE anagram is compactly syncopic. HERMAPHRODITE: HERMAPHRODitus aIT: nato datE

The appended phrase nato date renders the condensa self-referential as to the presence of Aphrodite in a being who is now both Hermaphroditus and Hermaphrodite. In accordance with the protocols of quasi-anagrammatic intertextuality, Constable incorporates an attributive MARO anagram in his sonnet, together with HERMES, AFRODITE, HERMAFRODITUS, and HERMAFRODITE anagrams. A selection of these is shown below:

Sonnets My Ladies presence [MAkes the Roses red, Because tO] see her lips, they blush for shame: The Lyllies leaues (for enuie) pale became, And [HER white hands in them this enuie bred. The Marigold the leauES] abroad doth spred, Because the Sunnes, And [HEr power is] the same: The Violet of purple cullouR came, Did in the blood shee MAde my hart to shed. In briefe, all flowers FROm her their vertue take; From her sweet breath, their sweet smels Do proceede; The liu|Ing heaT|e which her eye beames doth make, Vvarmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seede: The raine wherewith shee watereth the flowerS, Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolues in showers.

319 MA-R O

HE R MA FRO D I-T V S

HE R MA FRO D I-TE

Constable also recognises the relevance and aesthetic importance of Ovid’s VENA and VENARE VENAM anagrams. His Latin VENARE and English VEIN anagrams have the effect of setting Hermaphroditus’ naked beauty and Aphrodite’s erotic flowers (saepe legit flores) in revelatory apposition to the sonnet that he addresses to Diana. The potentially tautolgous “violet of purple” invokes the purple head of the phallus, while the opening leaves of the Marigold are evocative of what Constable calls the arse. A selection (only) of Constable’s VEIN, VENARE, ARSE, and PENIS anagrams is shown in the annotated version of the sonnet below: My Ladies presence [MAkes the Roses red, Because tO] see her lips, they blush for shame: The Lyllies leaues (for en|Uie) palE became, And her white hands IN them this enuie bred. The Marigold the leaues Abroad doth spred, Because the Sunnes, [And her [PoweR is] the samE]: The [Violet of purplE] cullour came, Did IN [the blood shee made my hart to shed. In briefe, All flowerS from heR their vertuE take; From her sweet breath, their sweet smels do proceede; The liuing heate which her eye beames doth make, Warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seede: The raine wherewith shee watereth the flowers, Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolues in showers.

MA-R O U-E IN

V-E V-E N IN A-R-E

The aesthetic strategy of Shakespeare’s sonnet is to condemn Constable’s flowers (substituting marierom for marigold) - in due sequence - for their theft from his beloved patron: “The forward violet thus did I chide … Sweet theefe … steale the sweet … stolne thy haire …

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robbry … annext thy breath … theft … stolne from thee”. This ornate conversation with flowers is untypical of Shakespeare’s plain and simple style, and is pointedly addressed to a specific gesture in Constable’s sonnet. As aleady noted, it is Constable’s habit to appropriate and reconfigure the constituent parts of the name Wriothesley in terms Roses and Lyllies. In Sonnet 1.9 these flowers are joined by the Marigold and the Violet (both of which are also traditionally associated with the goddess of sexual love). As the poem proceeds, Wriothesley’s surname is traversed incrementally in terms of the poetic requirements of Aphrodite’s flora. This anagrammatic misappropriation of WRIOTHESLEY follows the incremental segments of the figura extensa (see above), as in W … RI … OTH … ES …LE … Y. First, the Lillies take the W of Wriothesley for their “White”. Next, the Marigold takes RI-OTH-ES for “MaRI|gold the leaues abroad dOTH spred, / Because the SunnES, and her power is the same”. Finally, the Violet takes LE for its “purpLE” and Y for the “purpLE cullour did in the blood shee made mY heart to shed”. These are the thefts that are the object of Shakespeare’s literary derision. Constable’s effeminate intricacies do not at all accord with the requirements of Shakespeare’s poetic, and the latter’s supremely self-confident response to Constable’s sonnet takes the form of a mordant pastiche. It is now possible to put Booth’s insightful remarks on Sonnet 99 in perspective: This poem – perhaps intentionally – sounds like a parody of its kind; it is grossly uneconomical; the speaker sounds like someone who is “pouring it on” … in short, he sounds contemptuous of the role he is playing and of himself for playing it. 100

Contemptuous of his rival’s Sonnetto, Shakespeare quotes the weakest of Constable’s words and verbal repetitions in such a way as to ridicule them, and at the same time deploys the same words and repetitions with consummate virtuosity within the aesthetic economy of his own sonnet. Constable’s tautologous repetition of “sweet”in his lines 9-10, for example, is quoted, parodied, and repudiated in verse which is both aesthetically complex and “plain and simple” in style: In briefe, all flowers from her their vertue take; from her sweet breath, their sweet smels do proceede; The forward violet thus did I chide, Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that smels

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Shakespeare’s proemial word-play on violet and varlet has the effect of invoking and commending a truly Ovidian aesthetic: “The forward varlet did I chide”. Here the word varlet speaks to a number of different contexts. It has the sense (OED, 1) of the lowest of the low, “a menial, or groom”. It signifies (OED, 2.a) “a person of low, mean, or knavish disposition, a knave, rogue, rascal”. It is employed (OED, 2.b) as “an abusive form of address”. Its optimally relevant meaning is perhaps (OED, 2.d) “male whore”, as in the OED citation: 1609 SHAKESPEARE Troilus and Cressida v. i. 16 Thou are said to be Achilles male varlot. Pat. Male varlot you rogue whats that. The. Why his masculine whore.

As noted above, Shakespeare’s designedly monosyllabic line 2 has been deliberately lengthened, and its implied adverse commentary on Constable’s sweet … sweet is corroborated by the declaration in “that smels” with which it concludes. Shakespeare’s “that smells to high heaven” is comparable. The bracketed indentation of “smels” in Q is apparently authorised by the poet: The forward varlet thus did I chide, Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that If not from my loues breath, the purple pride, (smels Which on thy soft cheeke for complexion dwells?

Typically, Shakespeare’s culminating comment on Constable’s aesthetic strategy is characterized by its dry humour and “plain and simple” style: More flowers I noted, yet none could see, But sweet, or culler it had stolne from thee.

Booth also rightly points to the “wanton scholarly speculations” that the anomalous form of Sonnet 99 has prompted. An anagrammatic reading suggests that, in a complex gesture typical of Shakespeare’s art, the fifteen-line structure speaks to a plurality converging themes. First, Ovid makes a special point of describing Hermaphroditus (a puer formosus) as fifteen years (tria quinquennia) old: is tria cum primum fecit quinquennia, montes deseruit patrios Idaque altrice relicta ignotis errare locis, ignota videre flumina gaudebat, studio minuente laborem.

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The fifteen metrical lines of the sonnet speak to the grown years of the boy, as in Shakespeare’s “But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade ... When in eternall lines to time thou grow’st”. Secondly, Shakespeare satirises the excess (in various senses) of Constable’s sonnet in terms of the excessive length of his own poem. As printed in Q, Shakespeare’s parodic extension of line 2 serves as a reciprocally corroborative prompt in relation to the excessive character of line 5, with its tautologous third rhyme:

T

He forward violet thus did I chide, Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that If not from my loues breath, the purple pride, (smels Which on thy soft cheeke for complexion dwells? In my loues veines thou hast too grosely died,

Thirdly, the structurally excessive line 5 marks itself as excessive also in relation to Constable’s poetic hunting (Ovid’s venare) of Wriothesley’s vein (vena): “In my loues veines thou hast too grosely died”. That theme, Shakespeare suggests, has been pursued with excessive grossness, and Constable’s VENARE and VEIN anagrams have too grosely died (“too grossly dyed”, where dyeing is the conventional word for the “imbuing” of text with concealed anagram). At the same time, “died” invokes orgasm, both in the purported intent of the rival poet, and in the hyperbolically excessive orgasm with which Salmacis has “too grosely” died in her merging with Hermaphroditus. In the latter context, the word “grosely” speaks to the grossness of carnality and to the body as distinct from the soul. There is invoked here the sense (OED, 2.b) in which gross means “With mixture of other senses: Overfed, bloated with excess, unwholesomely or repulsively fat or corpulent. Hence said also of the ‘habit of body’”. In effect, the offensively excessive character of Salmacis’ “rape” of Hermaphroditus is likened to the offensively carnal invasion of Wriothesley’s bodily and sexual integrity by Constable, and Shakspeare’s monstrous sonnet is a replica and repudiation both of Ovid’s monstrous semivir and of Constable’s monstrous poem. In its anomalous character, Sonnet 99 is thus apt for the transilitional role that marks out Sonnets 99-126 as concerned primarily with the ending of the intimate relationship between poet and patron, and in which the triangular competition with rival poets becomes a dominant theme. In this section of the pyramid also, the relationship between poet, patron, and shared mistress is viewed in terms of the specifically bisexual eternall triangle which is in part reflected in the form of the pyramidal triangle of

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the sequence as a whole. The penitential implications of the married poet’s double adultery now come to the fore, as for example in Sonnet 105, with its proemial play on Idolatrie and Adulterie. This much misunderstood sonnet is another striking example of Shakespeare’s exploitation of the absolute distinction between the overt and covert dimensions of his text in terms of controversiae figuratae. Conventionally disposed formulaic anagrams are duly incorporated in the duplicitous text: Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and euer so. Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow kinde, Still [CONstanT in a wond|ROus excellence], CON-T-RO Therefore my VERSe to constancie confin’de, VERS One thing express|Ing, leaues out difference. I [Faire, kinde, And truE], Is all my argument, A-E F-I Faire, kinde and true, varryinG to other words, G And in this change is my in|Uention spent, U Three theams in one, which wond|Rous scope affords. R Faire, kinde, And True, haue often liu’d Alone. A-T-A-E Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one.

An early authorial clue to the duplicitous character of the sonnet is contained in the (then obvious) sound-play on Since and Sins in line 3. This gesture is reciprocally corroborative in relation to the formulaic SINNE anagram that has its forma in “Sins all alikE”. In the version below, the covertly uttered word Sins is substituted for Since in order that the full implications of the gesture may be readily appreciated. The verba certa are comprised in SINNE and ADULTERY anagrams: Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, [SINs all alike] my songs and praises be To oNE, of oNE, stilL such, [AnD euer so. Kinde is my loU|e to day], to morrow kinde, StilL constant in [A wonD|rous excellence, Therefore my] Verse To constancie confin’de, One thing expressing, Leaues out diffER|ence. Faire, kinde, and true, is all mY argumenT, Faire, kinde and true, varrying to othER words, And in this change is mY inuention spent, Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords.

SIN NE A-D V L T ER Y

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Chapter Four Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu’d alone. Which three till now, neuer kept [Seate IN oNE].

S-IN-NE

In a double syntax, the poet’s “songs and praises” are now seen to have been “to an Idoll”, “of an Idoll” …“still such, and euer so”. The songs and praises, past and present, are thus properly described as “Sins all alike”. Following Wriothesley’s heterosexual liaison, he is no longer to be worshipped as the “One True/Trou Lord”. He has been both un-true and un-trou. In that respect he is (and therefore always has been) a false god and an Idoll, the worship of whom in songs and praises (“Sins all alike”) is “cal’d Idolatrie”. Figuring the bisexual love-triangle in Platonic terms, Shakespeare specifically identifies the thematic importance of the triad in PLATO and ETERNALL TRIANGLE anagrams: Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, Sins all alike my songs and [Praises be P [To one, of one], stilL such, And eueR so. L-A Kinde Is my loue To day, tO morrow kinde, T-O Still constant in A wondrous excellence, ThER|refore my verse to constancie confiN’de, ON|e thing expressinG, Leaues out diffER|e|NcE. E-T-ER-N Faire, kinde, And true, is aLL my argument, A-LL Faire, kinde and true, varrying to other words, And in this change is my inuention spent, Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords. Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu’d alone. Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one.

T-R I A N G-L-E

The respective figurae condensae of the three anagrams are aptly located, and at the same time the deference due to Plato (a primary source for the sonnet and the sequence) is signalled. When the PLATO condensa is abstracted from the ambient text and read in a double context, its epideictic character becomes clear: PLATO: Praises be To one, of one, stilL such, And euer sO

Shakespeare locates the figura condensa of his ETERNALL TRIANGLE anagrams within the phrase “true is all my argument” and is thus able to suggest the optimal relevance of that concept to his theme:

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ETERNALL TRIANGLE: Is ALL my ARGumENT

The poet’s intent to associate the words Plato, Eternall, and Triangle is conventionally registered in a further shared condensa: PLATO, ETERNALL TRIANGLE: ALL ALIkE my sonG|s ANd PRaises bE TO oNE

The most persuasive gesture of all is perhaps that which has the effect of identifying the ETERNALL TRIANGLE anagrams with the Platonic triad Faire, kinde, and true (where kinde has the sense inter alia of good), within “Is ALL my ARGumENT”. When the anagrams are substituted for the latter phrase (which contains their shared condensae), the hybrid formulation thus created within line 9 is succinct: Faire, kinde, and true: ETERNALL TRIANGLE

A further authorial clue to the ultimate theme of the sonnet is to be found in line 5, which for post-Enlightenment commentators has (quite understandably) tended to suggest a tautologous or repetitive gesture: Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow kinde, Helen Vendler, sensitive to the wit with which Shakespeare develops his Platonic theme, notes that Sonnet 105 “has been called ‘dull’ and ‘tautologous’ by several critics (Weiner, Vickers, and Kerrigan among theme), who prefer a visibly imagistic poetics to a poetics of wit. 101 In a sense, however, this is perhaps unfair to Weiner, Vickers, and Kerrigan, for the prior linguistic conceit that informs the sonnet is indeed that which finds a conceptual relevance in the resemblance between the words TrilogiE and TautologiE. A selection (only) of Shakespeare’s hermeneutic TRILOGIE and TAUTOLOGIE anagrams is shown below.102 As already remarked, it is customary for the anagrams of two such compared words to be begin and/or end in the same place in the text, and for the respective extensae to be coterminous, or nearly so: Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, Since all alike my songs and praises be [To one], of one], still such, And eueR so.

T-A

T-R

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Chapter Four Kinde Is my louU|e To day, tO morrow kinde], StilL constant in a wondrous excellence, Therefore my verse tO constancie confin'de, One thing expressinG, leaues out difference. Faire, kinde, and true, Is all my argument, FairE, kindE and truE, varrying to other words, And in this change is my inuention spent, Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords. Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu’d alone. Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one.

U-T-O L O G I E

I L O G I E

It is thus that Shakespeare’s three-word cluster in “Faire, kinde, and true” and the sonnet as a whole are informed by the concept of the trilogia. Wriothesley’s behaviour in initiating the trilogie of the eternal triangle is likened to the rhetorical vice of tautologie in its unnecessary reduplication of the homosexual relationship between poet and patron in terms of the heterosexual relationship between patron and stolen mistress. The now obsolete, extended sense (OED, 3) of tautologie is in point: “An unnecessary or superfluous action; (also) a repeated or repetitive act, incident, or experience”. The meaning of line 5 (“Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow kinde”) is now clear. When read in terms of the immediate and wider literary contexts, this line is found to carry the alternative sense of “Kinde is my loue today (to me), to morrow kinde (to her). The gesture is directly comparable with that of Barnabe Barnes in Madrigall I (Parthenophil and Parthenophe, 1593): Oh powers celestial, with what sophistrie Tooke she delight, to blancke my hart by sorrow, And in such Riddels act my tragedie, Making this day for him, for me tomorrow.

The gestures in both poets are framed in chiasmus: Making this day for him : for me tomorrow. Kinde is my loue today : to morrow kinde.

Shakespeare’s mandatory BARNABE BARNES anagrams indicate that he has borrowed from the Madrigall: Let not my loue [Be cal’d Idol|Atrie], NoR my beloued as] aN Idoll show,

B-A R-N

B-A R-N

Sonnets Since All alike my songs and praisES BE To one, of one, still such, and euer so.

327 A-BE

ES

Shakespeare also uses the distinction between today and tomorrow in a differential sense in Much Ado About Nothing (3.2), when Don Pedro protests: There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises; as, to be a Dutchman today, a Frenchman to-morrow …

The unsustainably crowded trilogie-cum-tautologie of the bisexual triangle is formally reflected in the inter-twining of WILL SHAKESPEARE, HENRY WRIOTHESLEY and ELISA VERE anagrams, and in particular in the shared figura condensa of the concluding line. The ELISA VERE anagrams are indicated below: Let not my loue be cal’d Idolatrie, Nor my beloued as an Idoll show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and euer so. A-S Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow kinde, I-L Still constant in a wondrous excellence, E Therefore my [VERsE] to constancie confin’de, VER-E One thing expressing, leaues out differencE. Faire, kinde, and true, is all my argument, Faire, kinde and true, varrying to other words, And in this change is my inuention spent, Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords.

V ER-E

It is of the concluding line that Booth rightly comments: The line is nearly prose; whether by accident or design, its rhythmic awkwardness suggests the difficulty of retaining three in one.

Line 14 is indeed composed in such a way as to reflect the erotically crowded situation in terms of the inter-twining of the letters of the names of the three lovers. In accordance with customary practice, the figura condensa is capable of reconfiguration in the form of a quasianagrammatic device in which the the concluding phrase “in one” carries the self-referential sense of “in one line”. The sense in which the three lovers are envisaged as keeping seate in one refers inter alia to sexual cohabitation:

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Chapter Four WILL SHAKESPERE; HENRIE WRIOTHESLIE; ELISA VERE: WHIch THREE tILL noW, nEUER KEPt SEAtE In ONE.

The in unum gesture in line 14 may be compared with that in The Two Gentlement of Verona, in which one line is so crafted as to incorporate the letters of the name HENRIE WRIOTHESLIE (sic) twice, the sexual duplicity of the young earl being thus epitomized.103 Meta-dramatic references of this kind are conventional in Classical Latin drama and occur frequently in the covert dimension of the text of Shakespeare’s plays. It will be recalled that associated names are deemed to be constructed separately, each having recourse to all of the letters in the textual matrix of the figura condensa: HENRIE WRIOTHESLIE: LO, HeRE IN One LInE IS HiS NamE TWIce WRIiT

As already noted, the sonnets in this section of the overall sequence (99-126) are primarily concerned with differences arising between the poet and his patron-lover, and the ending of their earlier closeness. These poems are, however, interspersed with sonnets which refer to historical occasions that are significant enough to mark the passing of time, and thus also to establish a wider perspective within which the leaving behind of earlier intimacy is aptly located. Sonnet 107, for example, appears to have been composed in 1603 (old style). It carries a chronogram of the year MDCIII in line 2, and appears to mark the recent death (Latin mors) of Elizabeth I, and the accession of James I. Shakespeare’s pejorative view of the queen is reflected in the location of the formae of his ELISA and ELISABETH anagrams in line 12, where the poet says of death that “[He insults ore dull [and speechlessE]] tribes”. A selection (only) of the MORS and ELISA/BETH anagrams is shown below Not [Mine Owne feaReS], nOR the prophetick soule, Of the wide world, dreaming on thingS to come, Can yet the lease of my true loue controule, Supposde as forfeit to a confin’d doome. The [MORtall Moone hath her eclipse induR’de, And the sad AugurS] mock their owne presage, Incertenties now crowne them-selues assur’de, And peace proclaimes Oliues of endlesse age, Now with THE drops of this most Balmie time, [My loue lookes] fresh, And death tO me Subscribes,

M-O-R-S

MO-R S

THE-B A-S M-O

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Since spight of him Ile Liue in this poore rime, I-L While [he insults ore dull [And SpeachlessE]] tribes. E [And thou In this shaL|t finde] thy monument, When tyrants crests [and tombs of brassE] are spent.

R S

James is welcomed in the third quatrain, which is imbued with IAMES anagrams in the context of the declaration that “peace proclaimes oliues of endlesse age”. In the interests of clarity, a selection only is again shown in the annotated extract below: The mortall Moone hath her eclipse [Indur’de, And the sad Augurs] Mock their ownE presage, [IncertentiES] now crowne them-seluES Assur’de, And peace proclaiM|ES OliuES of endlesse age,

I A-M-E S

I-A M-E S

Henry Wriothesley is represented by the HENRY/IE anagram which is designedly coterminous with the IAMES anagrams: The mortall Moone hath [HEr eclipse IN|dur’de], And the sad AuguR|s mock theiR owne presage, Incertenties now crowne them-selues assur’dE, And peacE proclaimes Oliues of endlessE agE,

HE-N HE-N R R I-E I E

Once again the figura condensa is aptly located. Henry has both (a) endured eclipse at the hands of Elizabeth I, and (b) outlasted her: HENRIE: Her Eclipse IN|duR’dE

Shakespeare cites the date of composition in customary fashion in a concealed chronogram of the year MDCIII, the queen having died on the last day of the year 1602 (old style). The textual matrix of the numeral letters of the chronogram is marked and heralded in duplicitous deixis at the beginning of the sonnet - the customary word-play on not and knot being again invoked:104

K

Not mine owne feares, nor the prophetick soule, Of {the wIde world, DreamIng on thIngs to CoM|e}, MDCIII

In accordance with the protocols of concealed chronogram the lowestorder I-component is arrived at by counting all instances of the letter i (whether or not in acrostic positions in words) in the designated matrix

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The chronogram is also conventionally marked by TIME anagrams in the ambient text:

K

Not mine owne feares, nor [The] prophet|Ick soule, Of [The] wide world, dreaM|Ing on things to coME,

T-I ME

T-I-ME

Sonnets 115 and 116, written in response to Wriothesley’s private marriage to Elizabeth Vernon in August 1598, imply the poet’s disengagement from his patron, and are thus characteristic of the fourth level of the pyramid-triangle. Wriothesley’s marriage was prompted or hastened by Elizabeth Vernon’s pregnancy. Congratulatory MARRIAGE LINES anagrams are incorporated in both 115 and 116 (which are paired in hendiadys), together with amiable anagrams of ELISABETH and ELISABABE. The contrasting ELISABET and ELISA-BAYT anagrams in Sonnet 129 (which belongs to the fifth level and concern the reviled Elizabeth Vere) are comparable: Th’expence of [Spirit in] a wastE of shaME Is lust iN actioN, and till actioN, lust Is periurd, murdrous, blouddy full of blame, Sauage, [Extreame, rude, cruelL, not] to trust, E-L Inioyd no sooner but dispised straight, I Past reason hunted, and no Sooner had S Past reason hated As a swollowed BAYT, A-B On purposE layd to make the taker mad. E Made in pursuT and in possession [so, T Had, hauing, and in] quest, to haue extreame, A blisse in proofe and proud and [VEry wo, BefoRE] a ioy proposd behind a dreame, All this the world well knowes yet none knowes well, To [Shun thE heauen] that leads MEN to this hell.

S-E-ME N E-L I S A-BAYT

VE RE S-E-MEN

Each of Sonnets 115 and 116 is found to incorporate a hermeneutic HENDIADIS (sic) anagram, the rhetorical device of hendiadys being evocative (inter alia) of the one-in-two of married love. Each also contains clear MARRIAGE LINES anagrams, the words lines and marriage being overtly stated in the first lines of 115 and 116 respectively. Elizabeth Vernon is addressed with poetically licensed familiarity as LISABETH: Those LInes that I before haue writ doe lie, EueN those that said I could Not loue you deerer, Yet theN my iudgement knew No reason why, My [Most full flame] should AfterwardS burne cleereR. But Recken|Ing time, whose milliond accidents

LI N E S M-A-R R-I

Sonnets Creepe In twixt vowes, And chanGE decrees of Kings, Tan sacred beautie, blunt the sharp’st intents, Diuert strong mindes to th’ course of altring things: Alas why fearing of times tiranie, Might I not then say now I loue you best, When I was certaine ore in-certainty, Crowning the present, doubting of the rest: [Loue is a Babe, then might I not say so To giue full growth] to that which still doth grow.

331 A-GE

L-IS-A-B E-TH

In the couplet of Sonnet 115 the pregnant Lisabeth Vernon is depicted in anagram as carrying her babe within Lisababe Vernon. This appealing gesture is marked by usual play on not and knot and by the Ovidian play on might and mite (where mite signifies “infant”): [Loue is a Babe, then might] I knot say so To giue full growth to that which still doth grow.

L-IS-A-BABE … E-TH

In Sonnet 116 the coterminous extensae of the LISABET and LISABABE anagrams are set in revelatory counterpoint to the overt dimension of the text, the specific reference conferring supreme authority upon the third quatrain, and thus upon the sonnet as a whole: [Let me not to the [Marriage] of true mindes] Admit Impediments, loue is not loue Which alters when it alteR|atioN findES, Or bends with the Remouer to remoue. O no, It is an euer fixed marke That lookes on tempests And is neuer shaken; It is the star to euery wandrinG barkE, Whose worths vnknowne, although his hight be taken. Lou’s not Times foole, though rosie [LIps and cheeks Within hiS bending sickles compasse] come, Loue Alters not with his BreefE houres And weekes, But Beares iT out euen to the edge of doomE: If this be error and vpon me proued, I neuer writ, nor no man euer loued.

M L A I R N-ES R I A G-E LI S A-B-E T

LI S A-B-A B-E

In Sonnet 115 the physiological reality of the pregnancy is reflected in word-play in the covert dimension. Shakespeare’s usual play on time and teem (where the latter refers to the pouring forth of semen) enables him to paint a decorously deferred picture of accidental conception. He talks in effect of “reckening teem, whose milliond accidents / Creepe in twixt vowes”, and refers to the “BABE … which still/steel doth grow” (where

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steel has its usual phallic meaning). These revelatory accidents of language reflect the milliond accidents which lead to the reckening (i.e. accunting) or con-summation If in 115 the poet is playfully concerned with sexual reproduction, pregnancy, and with his patron’s predicament and marriage, the professed theme of Sonnet 116 is unveering, eternal love. It is un-veering (a) because it dispenses with Vere, and (b) because it is directed towards the anagrammatic non-veering of Elizabeth Veer-non as contrasted with Elizabeth Veer. The sonnet is thus informed throughout by the prior onomancy that finds the word veer concealed in Elizabeth Vere, and the macaronic negative veer non (i.e. veer not) in Elizabeth Vernon. The prior devise that finds a revealing difference between the sexual veering of Vere and the non-veering of Vernon is found to inform the poet’s lexicon: “alters … alteration … bends … remouer … remoue … euer fixed … neuer shaken …wandring … bending … alters not … beares it out euen … error”. Accordingly Sonnet 116 also contains VERNON and hermeneutic ONOMANTIE anagrams: Let me not to the marriage of true mindes Admit impediments, loue is not loue Which alters when it alteration findes, Or bends with the remouer to remoue. [O NO, it is an euer fixed Marke] That lookes on tempests ANd is neuer shaken; IT Is the star to euery wandring barkE, Whose worths vnknowne, although his hight be taken. Lou’s not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks Within his bending sickles compasse come, Loue alters not with his breefe houres and weekes, But beares it out euen to the edge of doome: If this be error and [Vpon] mE proued, I neuER writ, Nor NO maN euer loued.

O-NO-M AN T-I-E

V-E R-NO-N

The optimally relevant focus of “onomancy” in Sonnet 116 is the linguistic and conceptual affiliation that connects Ver-non with Veer not and distinguishes Vere from Vere-non. Accordingly, the figura condensa of the ONOMANTIE anagram is shared with an additional, aply located VERNON condensa which links onomancy with Elizabeth Vernon, and thus renders the sonnet self-interpreting. The ONOMANTIE anagrams in Sonnet 14 (see above) are directly comparable. In each case the hermeneutic anagram is deployed in revelatory fashion in order to identify specifically the aesthetic strategy that the poet adopts. The shared figura

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condensa of the VERE, VERNON and ONOMANTIE anagrams is thus aptly located: VERE; VERNON; ONOMANTIE: O NO, IT is aN EUER fixed MARkE

As we have seen, it is beholden upon the Renaissance poet writing in the Graeco-Roman tradition to invoke a plurality of authoritative texts in order that they may be set in resonant, revelatory (quasi-anagrammatic) apposition to the work in hand. In the present instance, for example, an anagrammatic reading reveals that the phrase “beares it out euen to the edge of doome” speaks (inter alia) to the eschaton and to Revelation 19.9 in the Bishops’ Bible, and thus to the concept of Eternal Love: “And he sayde vnto me, write: Happy are they which are called vnto the supper of the lambes mariage. And he said vnto me: These are the true sayinges of God”. It is to the latter declaration (“These are the true sayings of God”) that Shakespeare’s “If this be error and vpon me proued” is found to speak. The sufficiently interested reader may care to exscribe the sonnet and to trace for himself Shakespeare’s attributive REVELATION … NINETEEN … NINE anagrams and hermeneutic MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMBE anagrams. An ESCHATON anagram with doubled extensa is also incorporated, its textual extent being marked in inclusio by phrasal syncope in “It is the star … to the edge of doome”. The star is (inter alia) the redemptive Star of Bethlehem which signals the birth of Christ. The fixed marke is (inter alia) the signum fixum of the sign of Leo, the sign of Apollo and of gold:

L

Et me not tO] the marriage of true mindes Admit impediments, loue is not loue Which alters when it alteration findes, Or bends with the remouer to remoue. O no, it is an euer fixed marke That lookes on tempests and is neuer shaken; It is the star to [Euery wandring barke, Whose worthS vnknowne, although his hight be taken]. Lou’s not Times foole, though rosie lips and Cheeks Within His bending sickles compasse come, Loue Alters noT with his breefe houres and weekes, But beares iT Out eueN to the edge of doome: If this be error and vpON me proued, I neuer writ, nor no man euer loued.

LE-O

E S C H A T-O-N

The shared condensa of this group of anagrams is located in lines 9-10:

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Chapter Four THE MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMBE; ESCHATON; REUELATION; NINETEEN; NINE: LoU’s NOT TIMes FoOLE, THOUgh RosiE liPs And CHEeks WiTHIN hIS BendInG Sickles com|PAssE coME

In the literary and historical contexts, it behoves Shakespeare to present his patron with a wedding present of considerable literary substance. Accordingly, Sonnet 116 is modelled upon the proem to Pindar’s Seventh Olympian Ode, and is additionally crafted in the form of a carmen figuratum in the shape of a wedding-cup. Pindar likens his poem to a wedding-cup, a magnificent golden goblet given as a wedding present by a father-in-law to his son-in-law. Pindar follows Homeric and later precedent in composing the proem to the Ode in the metrical form of a recessed technopaegnion in the traditional shape of a cup. Shakespeare imitates Pindar by composing his sonnet in the shape of a wedding-cup. As already explained, it is mandatory for concealed technopaegnia to be marked by PAENION or PENION anagrams, and for reference to be made to the exisitence of the paegnion by means of hermeneutic anagrams in the covert dimension of the ambient text. On this occasion the poet’s wedding present (his sonnet) is rendered particularly honorific by virtue of an appositional inter-textuality that extends to the metrical shape of the poem itself. PINDAR and SEUENTH ODE and obligatory PENION anagrams: Let me not to the marriage of true mindes Admit im[PEdiments, loue is not loue PE Which alters wheN] It alter]|ation findes, N-I Or beND|s with the remouer tO remoue. O [O no, it is AN eueR fixed marke] N That lookes on tempests anD is neuer shaken; It is the [Star to EUery wandring barkE, Whose worth] vnknowne, although his hight be takEN. Lou’s not Times foole, thougH rosie lips and cheeks Within his bending sickles com|Passe come, Loue Alter]s not with (h)Is breefE houres and weekes, But beares it out eueN to the edge of Doome: If this be error And vpon me proued, I neueR writ, nor no man euer loued.

P I ND A-R

O D E S-EU EN TH P I N-D A R

When the text is notionally centred, the sonnet assumes the metrical shape of the wedding-cup, and the marriage lines of the sublime sonnet are transformed into a splendid wedding presen

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Let me not to the marriage of true mindes Admit impediments, loue is not loue Which alters when it alteration findes, Or bends with the remouer to remoue. O no, it is an euer fixed marke That lookes on tempests and is neuer shaken; It is the star to euery wandring barke, Whose worths vnknowne, although his hight be taken. Lou’s not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks Within his bending sickles compasse come, Loue alters not with his breefe houres and weekes, But beares it out euen to the edge of doome: If this be error and vpon me proued, I neuer writ, nor no man euer loued.

A further level of social and physical disengagement is registered in the final sonnet of this, the fourth level of the pyramid-triangle. Sonnet 125 refers to Wriothesley’s brief imprisonment in 1604 following accusations made to James I against him by the “Informer” Sir George Home.105 As Master of the Royal Wardrobe, Hume had been responsible for supplying the newly constituted King’s Men with the red cloth for their ceremonial clothes on the occasion of James’s coronation procession. In view of the short time that had elapsed since Wriothesley’s deliverance and embracement by James in 1603, Shakespeare complains that the professed “eternity” of the “great bases” of the triumphal monuments of James’ coronation has “proued more short than wast or ruining”. A selection (only) of Shakespeare’s doubled INFORMER, GEORGE HUME, and IAMES anagrams is shown in the annotated version below: Wer’t ought to me I bore the canopy, With my extern the outward honoring, Or layd [Great bases for eternity, Which proues morE] short then wast or ruining? HauE [I Not seene dwellers on Forme and fauOR] Lose all, and More by paying too much rent For compound sweet; forgoing simplE sauoR, Pittifull thriuors in their gazing spent. Noe, let me be obsequious in thy [Heart, And take] thOU My oblacion, poorE but free, Which [Is] not mixt with seconds, knows no Art,

G-E OR-G E I-N-F-OR M E-R H U-M-E I-A

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But Mutuall render, onely me for thee. [HencE, thOU subbornd InforM|er, a trew soulE When Most impeacht, standS least in thy controulE.

M E S

H-U-M E

The shared figura condensa is poignantly located: IAMES; GEORGE HUME; INFORMER: GREAt bases FOr Eternity, WhicH prouES MorE short then wast Or RUINinG

Here again, as in the closing sonnets of the previous level, the poet’s regard for Henry Wriothesley stands firm. Now, however, Wriothesley is viewed in a public rather than a private perspective.

7. The fourth transilition The coming of the fifth level of the ascent of the pyramid-triangle is marked by the patently anomalous, transilitional Sonnet 126 - a valedictory poem based in part on Virgil’s retrospective tenth Eclogue. Shakespeare’s TRICKLE and TRILL anagrams in lines 1-8 are relevant to the theme, and a selection is shown below:

O

[Thou my loue]|ly Boy who in thy poweR, Doest hould times fICKLE glasse, his fICKLE, hower: Who hast by wayning growne, and therein shou’st, [Thy louers witheR|ing, as [thy sweet selfe]] grow’st. If Nature (soueraine misteres oueR wraCK) As thou goest onwards stILL wILL plucke [Thee] backe, She keepes [Thee] to this purpose, that heR skill, May time disgrace, and wretched mynuit kILL. Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure, She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure Her Audite (though delayd) answer’d must be, And her Quietus is to render thee. ( ) ( )

T-R ICKLE T R ILL

T-R I-CK L-E E

As Shakespeare’s TRICKLE and TRILL anagrams indicate, Sonnet 126 comprises a recessed carmen figuratum in the metrical shape of an hourglass, and is thus well suited to a transilitional role. The hourglass is turned in order to re-start the trill and trickle of measured time. When line 6 is metrically sub-divided (see below) in order to form the shape of the glass, the twelve lines of the printed sonnet become fourteen. The

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retrospective nature of the poem affords a notional view of the lower levels of the penitential pyramid (in Sonnets 1-125), and the implied inversion of the hourglass marks the beginning of a new triangle rising (in Sonnets 126-152). An anagrammatic reading reveals that the anomalous twelve-line structure of Sonnet 126 refers specifically to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and to Pallingenius’s Zodiacus vitae (“the Zodiac of Life”). Barnabe Googe had published his verse translation of the Zodiacus vitae in full in 1565. The English title reveals the pertinence of Googe’s translation to Shakespeare’s concept of the penitential ascent: The zodiake of life written by the godly and zealous poet Marcellus Pallingenius stellatus, wherein are conteyned twelue bookes disclosing the haynous crymes and wicked vices of our corrupt nature: and plainlye declaring the pleasaunt and perfit pathway vnto eternall lyfe, besides a numbre of digressions both pleasaunt and profitable, newly translated into Englishe verse by Barnabae Googe. Shakespeare follows conventional practice by marking his invocation of Googe’s poem with attributive BARNABE GOOGE anagrams:

O

Thou my louely Boy who in thy power, Doest hould times fickle glasse, his sickle, hower: Who hast [By wayning growne], And therein shou’st, Thy louers witheR|ing, as thy sweet selfe grow’st. If Nature (soueraine misteres ouer wrack) As thou [GOest onwards still will plucke] thee BackE, She keepes thee tO this] purpose, that her skill, May time dis|GracE, and wretched mynuit kill. Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure, She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure. Her Audite (though delayd) answer’d must be, And her Quietus is to render thee.

The figura condensa is WRIOTHESLEY anagrams:

shared

with

B-A R N A-B-E GO O G-E

Shakespeare’s

HENRY

HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; BARNABY GOOGE: WhO Hast By wayning GROwnE, And thereiN shou’st, ThY LoueRS witherING, as thY sweet selfE grow’sT.

As its long title would suggest, the word “nature” in its various senses is prominent in Googe’s poem. In due accord with the rules of appositional inter-textuality Shakespeare quotes the word nature verbatim. In addition,

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Shakespeare’s reference to the greater force of Nature in the second quatrain is taken from a four-line passage in Googe’s “fithe Booke entituled Leo”. The textual inter-connection is marked by the GOOGE anagram which is coterminous with Shakespeare’s text: If Nature (soueraine misteres ouer wrack) As thou [GOest onwards still will plucke] thee backe, She keepes thee tO this purpose, that her skill, May time dis|GracE, and wretched mynuit kill.

GO O G-E

Well maist thou nature rule sometime, but neuer hir expell For she is still of greater force than all thy guiding well.

Perhaps the optimally relevant source-text, however, is Virgil’s Eclogue, and in particular the well-known words sub sidere Cancri. Omnia vincit omnia: et nos cedamus Amori: Aethiopium versemus ovis sub sidere Cancri. Omnia vincit omnia: et nos cedamus Amori: Beneath the Crab we herded Ethiopian sheep. Love conquers all: we also must submit to Love. (Tr. Guy Lee)

Seeking a Classical correlate for his valedictory poem, Shakespeare appears to have been drawn to Virgil’s last Eclogue, a locus classicus of retrospective valediction. Virgil’s phrase sub sidere Cancri (“under the star of Cancer”) – apt to the zodiacal scheme of the sonnet - may then have suggested the reference cited in John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments to the folly of those pagan souls who seek salvation “in euery signe of the Sodiacke”.106 In the notional farewell to Wriothesley, at the turn of the fickle glasse, the concept of Zodiacus vitae may have seemed apt. Shakespeare’s hermeneutic SODIACKE (sic) and STARRES and MOONE anagrams are indicated in the annotated version below:

O

Thou my louely Boy who in thy power, Doest hould times fickle glasse, his [Sickle], hower: Who hast by wayning growne, and therein shou’st, Thy louers withering, as thy sweet selfe grow’st. If Nature (soueraine misteres ouer wrack) As thou goest onwards still will plucke thee backe, [She keepes thee to this] purpose, that her skill, S-T

S O-D I-A CK E

Sonnets [May time] disgrace, and wretched mynuit kill. Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure, She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure. Her Audite (though delayd) answer’d must be, And her Quietus is to render thee. ( ) ( )

339 A R R E S

M O-ON E

Shakespeare’s interest in “the Sodiacke” is in part centred on the ominous prospect of “wrack”, a word which carries (inter alia) the sense (OED wreck 10.a) of “being brought to disaster; downfall, overthrow, ruin”. The shared condensa of the SODIACKE, STARRES, and MOONE anagrams is revelatory in this context: SODIACKE; STARRES; MOONE: NaturE (SOueraine MIstereES OueR wrack As Thou goesT OnwARDs STill will plucke thee baCKE,

The hourglass shape of Sonnet 126 ensures that it is especially suited to a transitilitional function in terms of the penitiential ascent through time to the eternal life beyond time. In addition, the retrospective character of the sonnet, affords a summary view over the lower levels of the pyramid (spanning 1-124), and paves the way for the sonnets which follow. The obligatory PENION anagram is indicated by emphasis (only) below: O thou my louely Boy who in thy power, Doest hould times fickle glasse, his sickle, hower: Who hast by wayning growne, and therein shou’st, Thy louers withering, as thy sweet selfe grow’st. If Nature (soueraine misteres ouer wrack) As thou goest onwards still will plucke thee backe, She keepes thee to this [purpose, that her skill, May time disgrace, and wretched myn]|uit kill. Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure, She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure Her Audite (though delayd) answer’d must be, And her Quietus is to render thee.

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The hourglass shape is not uncommon in Renaissance texts. It is apparently customary for the narrow neck of the hourglass to be formed by the metrical sub-division of a line or lines, marked by word-play in the text. The notional sub-division of line 6 is based upon the caesura after the unstressed final syllable of onwards and the subordinate caesura after still: As thou goest onwards || still || will plucke thee backe,

When the sonnet is construed in the revelatory form of the carmen figuratum, the apparently anomalous twelve lines of the overt text are found to extend to the fourteen lines that convention would normally require. The obligatory PENION anagram is emphasised in the figure above: 107 The word-play at the neck of the notional hourglass is ingeniously appropriate. When the sands of time trickle, “thou goest onwards”. When they cease, after the caesura, all is “still”. But when the hourglass is inverted, Time’s hand “will plucke thee back” and the trickling will begin again. The homoerotic reference in the globes (“OO”) of the hourglass is aesthetically corroborated in the doubling of letter O in the repetitio of “O Thou … O thou”. The reader is invited to relate the underlying logic of the sonnet to the figured houglass, and to the “holding” of the glass by the addressee. In the manner of Hermes, the sonnet may be read thus

O

Thou Doest hould times fickle glasse, Yet feare her O thou minnion She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure.

Sonnet 126 is only fully understood, however, when read in close conjunction with the closing lines of Virgil’s Eclogue. Shakespeare’s “grow’st in “thy sweet selfe grow’st” is not only a self-citation from Sonnet 18, but also a mandatory quotation of Virgil’s crescit, which has the effect of bringing the Eclogue into paradigmatic apposition to the sonnet: Aethiopum uersemus ouis sub sidere Cancri. Omnia uincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori. 70Haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poetam, dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco, Pierides: uos haec facietis maxima Gallo, Gallo, cuius [Amor tantum mihi crescit in horas], quantum Uere nouo uiridis se subicit alnus. 75SurG|amUS: soleT esse grauis cantantibUS umbra,

A U G-US-T-US

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iuniperi grauis umbra; nocent et frugibus umbrae. Ite domum saturae, uenit Hesperus, ite, capellae. Beneath the Crab we herded Ethiopian sheep. Love conquers all: we must also submit to Love. To have sung of these things, goddesses, while he sat and wove A frail of slim hibiscus, will suffice your poet. Pierians, you will make them very great, for Gallus – Gallus, whose love so grows upon me hour by hour As the green alder pushes upwards in new spring. Let us arise: for singers heavy is the shade, Heavy the shade of juniper; and shade harms fruit. Go, little she-goats, Hesper comes, go home replete. 108

Thus, the last eight lines (70-77) of Virgil’s tenth and final Eclogue take the form of a sphragis in which the poet’s avowed love for Augustus is figured in the perfectly executed, V-shaped trace of the extensa of the AUGUSTUS anagram. By setting Virgil’s sphragis in formal apposition to his sonnet, Shakespeare in effect confers the godlike status of Augustus upon Wriothesley, and Virgilian status upon himself. Virgil’s Amor is also quoted verbatim in Shakespeare’s AMOR anagram: Thou my louely Boy who in thy power, Do|[Est hould times fickle glasse], his sickle, hower: Who hast by wayning Growne, and [Therein] shou’st, Thy LOuers witherinG, as thy sweet selfe grow’st. If NaturE (soueraine misteres ouer wrack) As thou goest onwardS still [Vvill] plucke thee backe, She keepes thee to this purpose, that hER skill, May time dis|Grace, and wretched mynuit kILL. Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure, She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure. Her [Audite (though delayd) answer’d Must be, And her] Quietus is tO rendeR thee.

E G LO-G-E V ER G-ILL

A-M O-R

The condensa of Shakespeare’s HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams is shared with the VERGILL and EGLOGE anagrams, a gesture that is reciprocally corroborative in relation to the translation of crescit in grow’st: HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; VERGILL; EGLOGE: WHO Hast bY wayninG GrownE, and theREIN shou’st, Thy LOUers witherinG, as thY sweet SELfe grow’sT.

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The close connection between Sonnet 126 and Virgil’s sphragis would tend to suggest that the sonnet itself is also intended to be read in the alternative as a typically ludic sphragis. The conspicuously truncated (compact) form of the poem, its valedictory character, and its alternative form as an emblematic hourglass would support such an interpretation. In such a context it seems possible also that Shakespeare’s Latin NATES (“buttocks”) and ANUS anagrams are reciprocally corroborative in relation to the paired crescent-shaped brackets which are incorporated at the base of the poem in Q. While the use of paired brackets (or lunulae) in punctuation was a comparatively recent introduction in Shakespeare’s England, lunulae were in Roman culture traditionally emblematic of the vagina, and hence of the female gender.109 In Shakespeare’s sonnet, however, the conspicuous, synopic ANUS anagram in line 12 would suggest an homoerotic reference: [ANd her QuietUS] is tO rendeR thee.

( (

AN-US

) )

When the concluding line is read in conjunction with the ANUS anagram within it, the “rendering” of Henry Wriothesley in the lunulae in terms of Latin anus (which may signify both “posterior” and “old age”) is readily apparent:

O

Thou my louely Boy who in thy power, Doest hould times fickle glasse, his sickle, hower: Who hast by wayning growne, [And thereiN shoU’st, Thy louerS] withering, [As] thy sweet selfe grow’st. If [NATure (soueraine misterES] ouer wrack) [As] thoU goest onwardS still Vvill plucke thee backe, She keepes thee to this purpose, that her skill, May time disgrace, and wretched mynuit kill. Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure, She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure. Her [Audite (though delayd) answer’d Must be, And her] Quietus is tO rendeR thee.

( (

A-N-U S NAT-ES A-N-V S

A-M O-R

AN-US

) )

Shakespeare is found to add typographic lunulae in homoerotic contexts in a number of his sonnets, as for example in Sonnet 85, in “(Though words come hind-most)”, where words are also Latin verba, and hence verpa. Similarly, in Sonnet 46 (in which “eye” and “heart”

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represent penis and anus respectively), the lunulae are again selfreferential, and are corroborated by the anal anagram that is contained within them: My heart doth plead that thou in him doth lye, (A closet neueR pearst with christall eyeS) But the defendant doth that plea deny,

A-R-S

The “point” of Sonnet 45 becomes clear when the relatively innocuous American term my dick is substituted for “mine eyes”, and mine ass is substituted for “my heart”. The word sight in line 2 becomes seate in the paronomasia of sight/seate: My dick and ass are at a mortall warre, How to deuide the conquest of thy seate, My dick, mine ass thy pictures sight would barre, Mine ass, my dick the freedome of that right, My ass doth plead that thou in him doost lye, (A closet neueR pearst with christall eyeS) But the defendant doth that plea deny, And sayes in him thy faire appearance lyes. To side this title is impannelled A quest of thoughts, all tennants to the heart, [And by theiR verdict iS] determined The cleere dick’s moyitie, and the deare ass’s part. As thus, my dick’s due is thy outward part, And mine ass’s right, thy inward loue of ass.

A-R-S

A-R-S

Following the precedent set by Virgil in Eclogue 10, the ANUS, NATES, and BUTT anagrams in Sonnet 126 are primarily retrospective, comprising quasi-anagrammatic transpositions (“re-writings”) from selected sonnets in the lower levels of the pyramidal ascent. Individual words in the overt dimension, also, are quoted verbatim from contextually relevant earlier sonnets. In line 5, for example, the word Nature is apparently intended to be read and recognised as a verbatim quotation from Sonnet 4. It is identified as such by the reiteration of the associated NATES anagram in the earlier poem. Shakespeare’s close adherence to the earlier sonnet is capable of summary description: Sonnet 4 If [NATure (soueraine misterES] ouer wrack) As thou goest onwards still will plucke thee backe,

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344

Chapter Four ... She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure. Sonnet 4 [NATures] bequest giuES nothing but doth lend,

NAT-ES

The protocols of Classical inter-textuality require verbatim quotations (including self-quotations) to be concealed so far as is practicable. Such formally constituted gestures belong by convention to the realm of Hermes and are deemed to be subject to the god’s injunction to silence. Thus the word Audite is also quoted verbatim from Sonnet 4, but the self-quotation is quite unobtrusive: Sonnet 126 If Nature (soueraine misteres ouer wrack) As thou goest onwards still will plucke thee backe, Her Audite (though delayd) answer’d must be, And her Quietus is to render thee. Sonnet 4 Then how when nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable Audit can’st thou leaue? Thy vnus’d beauty must be tomb’d with thee, Which vsed liues th’executor to be.

Similarly, the proemial utterance of Sonnet 126 (“O thou my louely Boy”) comprises a re-writing of line 2 of Sonnet 18 (“Thou art more louely and more temperate”), which invokes Virgil’s puer formosus. This gesture comprises a decorously apt reiteration of the Virgilian souce in Eclogue 4 in a sonnet based upon Virgil’s valedictory Eclogue 10. Similarly, the phrase “and wretched mynuit kill” in line 8 is found to represent a contextually apt re-writing of “our minuites hasten to their end” from line 2 of Sonnet 60. Having thus bidden farewell to the four lower levels of the penitential pyramid in the transilitional Sonnet 126, Shakespeare proceeds to address his own (actual or conventional) adultery with Elizabeth Vere in the upper three levels. Most of these sonnets (127-154) are addressed to or concern Elizabeth Vere, who in the later sonnets is addressed (following her marriage to William Stanley) as Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Derby. In Sonnet 127, in characteristic pursuit of a founding onomancy, Shakespeare finds in Elisa Vere (a Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen) a notional successor in title to Elisa Regina. Following the precedent of John Donne’s satirical invocation of the Queen’s pubic region in his

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duplicitously obscene poem known as ‘The Anagrame’, Shakespeare bases Sonnet 127 on the prior conceit that finds a revelatory resemblance between Latin vagina (“sheath”, and hence vagina) and regina (“queen”). In accordance with this schema Elizabeth Vere becomes an Elisa Vagina in line of succession from Elisa Regina. Shakespeare’s attributive IGNOTO, ANAGRAME, and ELISA REGINA anagrams are indicated in the annotated version of the sonnet below. It was Donne’s habit to conceal his poetic identity under the conventional pseudonym Ignoto (“unknown”), as for example in the two poems by Donne that are appended to Love’s Martyr (which are overtly attributed to “Ignoto”). Donne’s fellow poets appear to have respected his anonymity. As already noted, it was customary for ELISA REGINA anagrams to be set in elevated (i.e. reversed) forma: In the ould age blacke was not counted faire, Or if it weare it bore not beauties name: But now is blacke beauties successiue heire, And Beautie slanderd with A bastard shame, For SInce each hand hath put on Natures power, Fairing the fouL|e with [Arts faulse borrow’d facE], Sweet beauty hath no NAme no holy boure, But is prophan’d, if not liues [In dis|GRAce. Therefore my MisterssE eyes arE RaueN blackE, Her eyes sO] suted, and they Mourners seemE, At such who noT borne faire nO beauty lack, Slandr|InG Creation with [a false esteeme, Yet so they mournE becomming of theiR] woe, That euery toung saies beauty should looke so.

A SI L-E I-G N O T-O

A NA GR A M-E

A-N I-G E-R

The shared figura condensa is comprised in lines 1-2: ANAGRAME; IGNOTO; ELISABETH REGINA: In THe ould AGe bLAcke wAS Not counted faiRE, Or If It wearE it boRe NOt beauties NAME

Throughout the sequence, Shakespeare’s anagrammatic identification of Elizabeth Vere typically consists of a single VERE anagram with extensae, together with a plurality of elevated ELISABETH and/or ELISA anagrams. The elevated ELISA and ELISABETH anagrams in Sonnet 127 are disposed in such a way as to be capable of referring to either Elizabeth. The Queen and her Lady-in-Waiting are, however, differentially identified by means of (forward-facing) VERE and (elevated) REGINA anagrams. A

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selection of Shakespeare’s forename-anagrams and the VERE anagram (with plural extensae) are shown below: In THe ould age blacke was not counted faire, Or if it [VvearE] it boRE not beauties namE But now is blackE Beauties successiue heiRE, And Beautie slanderd with A bastard shame, For SInce each hand hath put on Natures power, Fairing [the fouLE] with Arts faulse borrow’d face, Sweet beauty hath no name no holy boure, But is prophan’d, If not Liues in disgrace. Therefore my Mistersse eyes [are Rauen blackE], Her eyes so suted, And THey mourners seemE, At Such who not Borne faire no beautY Lack, Slandring Creation with [A false esteemE], Yet So they mourne becomm|Ing of their woe, [That euery toung saies beauty should LookE] so.

TH E B A SI LE

V-E-RE /RE

A S I-L E

TH E-B A S-I L-E

A S-Y-L E

The two Elizabeths are further differentiated by Shakespeare’s customary word-play on Vere and fair and Vere and were: In the ould age blacke was not counted faire, Or if it [VvearE] it boRE not beauties name: But now is blacke beauties successiue heiRE, And Beautie slanderd with a bastard shame, For since each hand hath put on Natures power, Fairing the foule with Arts faulse borrow’d face, Sweet beauty hath no Name no holy boure, But is prophan’d, if not liues In dis|Grace. Therefore my Mistersse Eyes [are Rauen blacke, HeR] eyes so suted, and they mourners seeme, At such who not borne faire No beauty lack, Slandr|InG Creation with [a false esteeme, Yet so they mournE becomming of theiR] woe, That euery toung saies beauty should looke so.

V-E-RE

V-E RE

A N I-G E R A-N I-G E-R

Here as elsewhere in the period, the ELISA REGINA anagrams are set in elevated (i.e. reversed) form. In “The Anagrame” Donne points satirically to the discrepancy between the false colour of the Queen’s head of faire hair (i.e. her wig) and the colour of her pubic hair, a difference which is revealed when the reader construes the word REGINA from below and behind:

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REGINA: A! NIGER! (Oh! Dark!)

Playing in Ovidian fashion upon the resemblance between the words heire and haire, Shakespeare identifies abstract “Beautie” with Elisa Regina and “blacke” with Elisa Vere. The latter, the poet claims, follows traditional decorum in that the hair on her head and her nether hair are uniformly black (“In the ould age blacke was not cunted faire”), and in doing so points to the discrepancy between Elizabeth’s faire wig and her allegedly niger pubic hair. As a result of Elizabeth Vere’s consistency in this respect, Beautie (the Queen) is “slanderd with a bastard shame”. The word bastard is used in this context in the sense of “mixed” and perhaps also in the sense (OED, b.4) of “Not genuine; counterfeit, spurious; debased, adulterated, corrupt”. At the same time, Beautie may be said to be slanderd with a bastard shame because Elizabeth Vere’s father had for several years rejected her as illegitimate. Playing also upon the phonetic resemblance between the letter f and the letter v, Shakespeare further elaborates upon the onomastic paradox that Elisa Vaire (with her black hair and black eyes) is faire (in the sense of light-hued) neither above nor below. In the annotated version of the sonnet below, the body-part anagrams are contextually apt quotations from Donne’s ‘The Anagrame’: In the ould age blacke was not [Counted faire, Or if it Vveare it bore NoT] beauties name: But now is blacke beautie’s successiue heire, And Beautie slanderd with a bastard shame, For since each hand hath put on natures power, FairinG the foule with [ARts faulSE] borrow’d face, Sweet beauty hath no namE no holy boure, [BUT] is prophan’d, if noT liues in disgrace. Therefore my Mistersse eyes are Rauen blacke, Her eyes so suted, and THey mourners seeme, At such who not borne fairE No Beauty lack, Slandr|InG Creation with [A false Esteeme], Yet So they mourne becomm|Ing of theiR] woe, [That euery toung saies butty should LookE] so.

C V-N-T

A NA GRA M-E

AR-SE BUT-T

A-N I-G-E R

Booth notes that “the repetition of eyes” in “my Mistresse eyes are Rauen blacke, / Her eyes so suted” has “caused most commentators to find something wrong with these lines”. 110 He continues: “The still unsolved and probably unsolvable problem has been to decide the nature of their

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faultiness. Shakespeare may simply have written a pair of lame lines…” The body-part anagrams indicate that the poet intends differential references (a) to eyes in the optical sense, and (b) to eyes in the sexual sense. In the overt dimension of the text, the now obsolete sense (OED, 15) in which and signified “as though” would make sense of the repetition: Therefore my Mistersse eyes are Rauen blacke, Her eyes so suted, as though they mourners seeme,

It is in the covert dimension of the text that the differentiation is made, a differentiation that elaborates upon the obscene devise that informs the sonnet and is marked by the verba perplexabilia in eyes … eyes: Therefore my Mistersse eyes are Rauen blacke, Her nether-eyes so suted, and they mourners seeme,

In the sexual dimension of Classical, Petrarchan, and Elizabethan verse, mourning (involving weeping) is commonly used to refer the discharge of seminal and/or vaginal fluid in sexual intercourse. The sexual sense of the word seeme (playing on Latin semen) is similarly conventional. The poet’s consciousness of his adultery (whether actual or conventionally envisaged) is expressed in the Orphic verba certa, in doubled SINNE and ADULTERY anagrams: In the ould age blacke was not counted faire, Or if it weare it bore not beauties name: But now is blacke beauties successiue heire, And Beautie slanderd with [A bastarD shame], For [SINce] each hand hath put on NatU|res power, Fairing the fouL|e with Arts faulsE borrow’d face, SweeT beauty hath no name no holy boure, But is prophan’d, If Not liues in disgracE. Therefore my Mistersse eyes [Are] RaueN blackE, Her eyes so suteD, and theY mourners seeme, At such Vvho not borne faire no beauty Lack, Slandring CreaT|ion with a false esteeme, Yet so they mournE becomming of theiR woe, That euery toung saies beautY should looke so.

A-D U SIN-N L E T S E I-N R A N-E Y D V-L T E-R Y

The shared condensa of the ELISABETH VERE, SINNE, and ADULTERIE aanagrams is comprised in lines 7-8:

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ELISABETH VERE; SINNE; ADULTERY: SweET beautY HAth no NAmE no holy BoURE, But Is prophan’D, if noT LIUeS iN disgracE.

It is thus that the eschatological urgency of Sonnet 126 (as in “Her Audite (though delayd) answer’d must be”) introduces a triangle rising which is implicitly or explicitly concerned with the poet’s sense of his own sin, and in particular of his adultery, and of the approaching culmination of the penitential ascent. In the last line of Sonnet 141, for example, Elizabeth Vere is described as “she that makes me sinne”, and the sin thus invoked is specifically identified in the Orphic verba certa in terms of SINNE, ADULTERY, and DOTAGE anagrams in the ambient text: In faith I doe not loue thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note, But ‘tis my heart that loues what they [Dispise], D Who in dispight Of view is pleasd To dote. O-T Nor Are mine eares with thy toungs tune delighted, A Nor tender feelinG to base touches pronE, G-E Nor taste, nor [Smell, desire] to be INuited S-IN To any sensuall feast with thee aloNE: NE But my fiue wits, nor my fiue sences can Diswade one foolish heart from seruing thee, Who leaues vnswai’d the likenesse of a man, Thy prouD hearts slaue [AnD VassalL wretch To be]: A-D-V-LT Onely my plaguE thus farR|e I count mY gainE E-R-Y-E That she that makes me sinne, awards me paine.

Shakespeare’s usual ELISABETH VERE anagrams serve to identify the poet’s mistress, the forma of the VerE anagrams being aptly comprised in “Vassall wretch to bE”, in close association with the ADULTERY anagram: In faith I doe not loue thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note, But ‘tis my heart that loues what they dispise, Who in dispight of view is pleasd to dote. Nor Are mine eareS with THy toungs tune delighted, Nor tender feel|Ing to base touches pronE, Nor taste, nor smelL, desire to Be inuited To any sensuall feast with thee [AlonE]: But my fiue witS, nor my fiue sences can Diswade one foolish heart from seru|Ing thee,

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Chapter Four Who leaues vnswai’d the Likenesse of a man, [Thy proud hearts slauE] and [Vassall wretch to bE]: Onely my plague thus farRE I count my gaine, That she that makes me sinne, awards me paine.

L E

V-E RE

Elizabeth Vere married William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, on 26 January 1595. The poet now confronts two adulteries in his (actual or merely conventional) liaison with his mistress. In the fifth level of the pyramid-triangle (126-143), Elizabeth’s alleged promiscuity is treated with apparently hyperbolic playfulness in Sonnets 135 and 136, in which the three “Wills” who are said to be eligible to enjoy her favours are specified in anagram as her husband Will Stanley, Will Knollys and Will Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. A LESBIA anagram in the sestet confirms that Sonnet 136 for example is founded upon Catullus’ similarly hyperbolic “account” of Lesbia’s notorious promiscuity: Then in the number [LEt me passe vntold, Though in thy stores a]|ccount I one must be, For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold, That nothing me, a some-thing sweet to thee.

LE S-B I A

The revelatory analysis of the word a|ccount (sic) has the effect of drawing attention to the usual sexual word-play in account/accunt, while at the same time enabling the acrostic C in “a|Ccount” to operate as the first letter of the forma of Shakespeare’s COUNTESSE anagram. In this sonnet, Elizabeth is addressed as Elisabeth, Countesse Stanley: If thy soule check THee that I come so neere, SwearE to thy Blind soule that I was thy Will, And will thy Soule knowes Is Admitted there, Thus farre for Loue, my loue-sute Sweet fullfill. Will, will fulfill [the treasure of thY louE], I fill it full with wils, [and my wilL onE], In things of great receit with ease we prooue, [Among a number one is reckon’d none. Then in the number let me] passe vntold, Though in thy stores a|[CcOUNT I one must be, For nothing hold mE, [So it pleaSE thee] hold, ThaT nothing me, A some-thing sweet to thee. Make but my Name thy Loue, [and loue] that still, [And then thou louest mE] for mY name is Will.

TH E-B A-S-I A L S E Y L-E

S T-A N-L E-Y

C-OUNT E-S-SE

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Shakespeare’s WILL KNOLLYS anagrams are particularly clear, the surname Knollys being additionally marked by phonetic modelling in the word “Knowes” in line 3: If thy soule check thee that I come so neere, Sweare to thy blind soule that I was thy Will, And [Will] thy soule [KNOwes] Is admitted there, Thus farre for loue, my loue-sute sweet fulfiLL. Will, will fulfilL the treasure of thY loue, I fill it full with wilS, and my will one,

W-I LL

KNO L L-Y S

The sexual meaning of soule is invoked in the shared condensa of the WILL KNOLLYS anagrams: WILL KNOLLYS: WILL thY soule KNOweS

The WILL STANLEY and doubled EARLE PEMBROKE anagrams are also clear and consistent: If thy soule check thee that I come so neere, [Sweare to thy] blind soule That I [was thy Will], W S-T ANd wILL thy soule knowes is admitted there, ILL AN Thus farre for LouE, mY loue-sute sweet fullfill. L-E-Y Will, will fulfill the treasure of thy loue, I fill it full with [wils, and my will] one, In things of great receit with [EAse] we [Prooue]. EA P Among a numbeR onE is reckon’d none. R E Then in the number Let ME [PassE] vntold, L-E P-E M Though in thy stores account I one Must Be, M-B B FoR nothing hold me, so it please thee hold, R R That nothing me, a some-thing sweet tO thee. O O MaKE but my name thy loue, and loue that still, KE KE And then thou louest me for my name is Will.

The WILL STANLEY condensa is comprised in line 3, which refers to Stanley’s marital right of admission: WILL STANLEY: ANd WILL thY SouLe knows is admitted TherE

The condensa of the EARLE PEMBROKE anagrams is also aptly located:

352

Chapter Four EARLE PEMBROKE: AMong a numBER One is recK|on’d none. Then in thE numbeR Let me PassE

As elsewhere, Shakespeare uses the word “passe” as a phonetic prompt for the PISSE anagram which ensues, and in respect of which “PassE” is the outline model. In the Latin and Elizabethan sexual vocabularies the words for “pass water” (meio and pisse, respectively) are also used to refer to the ejaculation of semen. A selection (only) of the relevant anagrams is shown below: Among a number one is reckon’d none. Then in the number let me [Passe] vntold, P Though In thy Stores account I one must be, I For nothing hold me, So it pleaSE] thee hold, S-S-E That noth|Ing me, a Some-thing Sweet to theE. MakE but my namE thy louE, and louE that still, And then thou louest me for my name is Will.

P I-S S E

P I-S-S E

In the covert dimension of the text, the poet pleads: “Then in the number let me pisse vntold”. The elevated ESSES anagrams in Sonnet 135 specifically identify another of Elisabeth Vere’s alleged lovers. In addition, Shakespeare incorporates forward-facing ROBERT and upward-facing DEVEREU (sic) anagrams. A selection of the key anagrams is shown below: Who euer hath her wish, thou hast thy Will, And Will too boote, and Will in ouer-plus, More then enough am I that vexe thee still, To thy [SweetE] will making addition thus. Wilt thou whose will is large and [SpatiouS, Not once] vouchsafe to hide my will in thine, Shall will in otherS [SeemE] right gracious, And in my will no faire acceptance shine: The Sea all water, yet receiues raine still, And in aboundancE addeth to his Store, [So thou beeing rich in Will addE] to thy Will, One will of minE to make thy large Will moR|e. Let no vnkinde, no faire be|[SeecherS kill, Thinke all but onE], and me in that one Will.

U E RE-VE D

S-E S-S E

S E S-S-E R O-BE R T

S E S-S E

It may be helpful in this context to take a cross-bearing from another poet at this point. We have seen that John Marston’s anonymous satire

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Willobie His Avisa (registered late in 1594) appears to be based upon Shakespeare’s sonnets (circulated in manuscript), and in particular upon Shakespeare’s naming of Elizabeth Vere’s alleged sexual partners. Making full use of anagrammatic controversiae figuratae, Marston’s scandalous book purports to describe a “constant” wife’s refusal to succumb to the propositions of a series of unnamed suitors. In the covert dimension of the text, however, Elizabeth Vere (whose surname signifies “constant” in Latin) is accused of having had sexual intercourse with a series of eminent men. In Stanza 2 of the first Canto, Marston disclaims responsibility, claiming that he would not have written if “one had slept” (i.e. if Shakespeare had not openly advertised Elizabeth Vere’s misdemeanours in his circulated sonnets). The poet’s allegorical theme is specifically identified in terms of concealed anagram: My [Sleepie Muse] that wakes but now, Nor now Had wAK|’t if onE had slept, To vertueS praise hath Past hER vow, To paint the RosE [Which grace hath kept, Of sweetest Rose, that stILL] doth spring, Of VERtues birdE my MusE must sing.

S H-AK-E S-P-ER E-R-E VER-E

The birdE that doth resemble right, The Turtles faith in constant loue, The faith that first her promise plight; No change, nor chance could once remoue: This haue I tri’d; This dare I trust, And sing the truth, I will, I must. [Afflicted Susans spotlesse thought, Intis’t by lust to sinfull crime, To lasting fame her name] hath brought, Whose praise incounters endlesse time: I sing of one whose beauties warre, For trials passe Susanna’s farre.

W ILL

A-S I L-E

A | S I-L E

Marston’s key anagrams are strongly marked in the ambient text. The “one” who is blamed for revealing Elizabeth’s sins is identified in the SHAKESPERE anagram in that part of the text. The conventionally elevated ELISA anagram is marked by the (reversed) forma commencing in “her namE”. The VERE of whom the poet’s “Muse must sing” is conspicuous in the syncopic form of the self-referential VERE condensa in “VERtues birdE”. In addition the customary word-play on the surname Vere (in the sense of “true”) is present in the lexical expolitio of “right …

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constant … faith … truth”. Shakespeare’s usual Ovidian play on praise/prize and time/teeme is reiterated in the satirical hyperbole of“Whose prize in-cunters endlesse teeme”. The Earl of Essex, the first of Avisa’s unnamed suitors, is described non-specifically in the overt dimension of the text as “a Noble man” whose example is offered as a warning to “all young maids” to “beware of the alluring intisements of great men”. The identity of the Noble man is disclosed in the conventionally elevated ESSES anagrams with which Marston’s text is imbued, as for example in Canto 3 (1-3). The frequency with which the letter s is repeated (in close conjunction with the lettergroup es) is an obvious pointer to the Earl of Essex, a favourite object of concealed anagrammatic identification in the period: YOur Honours place, your riper yeares, Might better frame SomE grauer talkeS: Midst Sunnie rayES, thiS cloud appeareS; [Sweete] Roses grow on prickly [StalkeS: If I conceiuE], what you request, You aime at that I most detest. My tender age that wants aduice, And craues the aide of Sager guidES, [Should rather learnE for to bE wiSE], To Stay my StepS from [Slipperie] SlideS Then thuS to [SuckE], then thus to tast The poys’ned Sap, that kils at last. I wonder what your wisdomE ment, Thus to asS|ault a [Silly maidE]: Some [SimplE] wench, might chancE con|Sent, By false resembling [SheweS betraidE]: I haue by grace a natiue shield, To lewd assaults that cannot yeeld,

S ES S-E

S-ES S-E

S-E S-S-E

S E-S-S E

S-E S-S-E

S-E S-S-E

Notwithstanding the wider ambit of Sonnets 135 and 136, the sonnets in the fifth level of the pyramid (126-143) are mainly concerned with the triangle of desire involving the poet and Elizabeth Vere’s alleged liaison with Henry Wriothesley. Sonnet 134 is typical in this respect. Shakespeare’s ELISA/ELISABETH VERE anagrams are indicated in the first of the annotated versions below: So now I haue confest that he is thine, And I my selfe am morgag’d to thy will, My selfe Ile forfeit, So that other mine,

A S

Sonnets THou wilt restorE to be mY comfort still: But thou wilt not, nor he wilL not Be free, For thou Art couetouS, [and [he] Is kinde], He learnd but suretie-Like to write for me, Vnder that bond [that him as fast doth bindE]. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou [VsurER that put’st forth all to vsE], And suE a friend, came debtER for my sakE, So him I loose through my vnkinde abuse. Him haue I Lost, thou hast both him and me, He paies the whole, [and yet am I not freE]

355 TH-E B A-S-I L E V-ER-E

Y L E

V ER-E A S I-L E

The HENRY WRIOTHESLEY anagrams are constructed in usual form. Some commentators have speculated in relation to “he pays the whole” (line 14) that Shakespeare may be playing on whole and hole in a sexual sense. An anagrammatic reading reveals that the sonnet is indeed based in part upon the devise that finds a revelatory linguistic resemblance between the words whole and hole. The poem begins and ends with HOLE anagrams with plural extensae: So now I [haue] confest that he is thine, And I my selfe am morgag’d to thy will, My selfe Ile forfeit, so that other mine, Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still: But thou wilt not, nor he [Will not be] free, FoR thou art couetous, and [HE] Is kinde, He learN|d but suretie-like tO write for me, VndeR THat bond that him as fast doth binde. The statute of thy beautY thou wilt take, Thou vsurer that put’st forth alL to vse, And suE a friend, came debter for mY sake, So him I loose through my vnkinde abuse. [Him [Haue]] I lost, thou [Hast both him and me], [He paies the whOLE], and yet am I not free.

H O-L E

HE N R Y

H OLE

H O LE W R-I O TH E-S L E-Y

H-OLE

In the context of a national economy based (then as now) in large part upon debt, Shakespeare was doubtless familiar with the particular burden of being obliged to “pay the whole” (as opposed to “part”) of some onerous financial obligation. Samuel Schoenbaum notes for example that in 1580 Shakespeare’s father, having stood surety in relation to two failed debts, was fined a total of £40, which “amounted to the whole of the Lambert mortgage”. 111

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8. The fifth transilition The inauguration of the sixth and penultimate level of the pyramidtriangle (144-152) is marked by Sonnet 144, which (as already mentioned) is in part selected as transilitional in the sequence because it happens to be composed in pursuance of the explanatory note attached to Watson’s transilition poem. The sonnets of this level typically offer an insight into the sins of both the poet and his mistress, and culminate in a kind of summary self-criticism in Sonnet 151 (in which the poet’s adultery is compared with that of the newly married Elizabeth Stanley), and in Sonnet 152, which concludes with the poet’s confession in “more periurde eye/I”. At the same time, the final ten sonnets of the pyramid form a “triangle rising” with its own special emphasis upon the poet’s consciousnsess of his historic sinfulness, and upon the need for redemptive absolution that is described in the one-in–two of Sonnets 153/154. The latter are again represented by the letter A in the diagram below: A 152 151 148 149 150 144 145 146 147

As we have seen, Sonnet 144 is particularly apt to introduce the ultimate penitential triangle (reaching towards the perfection symbolized by the number 10) in that it takes as its covert theme the poet’s professed dual-gender adultery with patron-lover and mistress - a state of affairs that has thus far in the sequence remained unscrutinized. In Sonnet 144, Shakespeare follows the conventional practice of the anagrammatist in failing to utter overtly the key words “two angels”. These two words are, however, strongly implied in the proemial declarations of lines 1-3: Two loues I haue … Which like two spirits … The better angel is …

In the period, and in the literary context, the conspicuously unstated words “two angels” suggest reference to Genesis 19, which (in the Bishops’ Bible) begins: “And there came two angels to Sodome at euen, and Lot sate at the gate of Sodome: and Lot seing rose vp to meete them, and he bowed hym selfe with his face towarde the grounde”. This

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authorial clue is corroborated by (and itself corroborates) the doubled LOT anagrams in lines 1-3 and the LOT anagram in the couplet: Two [LOues I haue of comforT] and dispaire, Which [Like twO spirits dO sugiesT] me still, The better angell is a man righT faire: The worser spirit a woman collour'd il. ... I gesse one angel in an others hel. Yet this shal I nere know but [Liue in doubt], Till my bad angel fire my good One ouT.

LO-T LO L-O T L-O-T T

L O-T

The identities of the two angels are specified in Shakespeare’s customary HENRY WRIOTHESLEY and ELISA(BETH) VERE anagrams: Two loues I haue of comfort and dispaire, Which like two spirits do sugiest me still, The better angell is a man right faire: THe [VvorsER spirit a woman collour’d il. To win mE] soone to hell my femall euill, Tempteth my Better Angel from my sight, And would corrupt my Saint to be a diuel: [Vvoo|Ing his purity with hER fowle pridE]. And whether [that my angeL bE] turn’d fiend, Suspect I may, yet not directly tell, But being both from me both to each friend, I gesse one Angel in An otherS hel. Yet this Shal I nere know but liue in doubt, TilL my bad [angel fire my good onE] out. Two loues I [Haue] of comfort and dispaire, [Which likE two spirits do sugiest me] still, The better angell is a maN RIght fairE: The worser spirit a woman collour’d Il. To win me soone tO hell my femall euill, TempteTH my better angel from my sight, And would corrupt my saint to bE a diuel: Wooing hiS purity with her fowle pride. And whether that my angeL bE turn’d fiend, Suspect I may, yet not directlY tell, But being both from me both to each friend, I gesse one angel in an others hel. Yet this shal I nere know but liue in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

V-ER E

V-ER-E

A-S I L-E H E N-RI-E

TH E B-A S I L-E

A S-I L-E

W R I O TH E S L-E Y

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The poet’s consciousness of his own adultery is poignantly reinforced by the ANNE HATHAWAY and ADULTERY anagrams with which the sonnet is imbued: Two loues I [HAue] of comforT and dispaire, WhicH like two spirits do sugiest me still, The better [ANgell is A maN right fairE]: The Worser spirit [A womAN collour’d il. To wiN mE] sooNE to [Hell mY] femall Euill, Tempteth my better Angel from my sight, And would corrupT my saint to be a diuel: Wooing his purity with [Her fowle pride. [[ANd Whether that my] angel be] turN’d fiend, Suspect I mAY, yet Not directly telL, But being both from mE both to each friend, I gesse one angel in [AN others hel. Yet this shal I Nere] know but liuE iN doubt, Till my bad [ANgel firE my good oNE] out.

HA-T H AN-N-E A A-N W-A NE H Y A T H A-N A-W N AY E AN-N E AN-NE

The numbering of the sonnets in this part of the sequence is such that these confessions of adultery are experienced as paving the way for Shakespeare’s reminder that “Anne hath a way” in Sonnet 145. The condensa of the ANNE HATHAWAY and ADULTERY anagrams is shared with the poet’s HENRYE/IE WRIOTHESLEY/IE and ELISABETH VERE anagrams, and is comprised in lines 1-2: THE BEttER ANgeLL Is A mAN RIgHT faiRE: THE WOrser Spirit A VvomAN collour’D IL.

Sonnet 145, apparently written on the occasion of Shakespeare’s eighteenth birthday, records an episode of pre-marital intimacy with Anne Hathaway, whose pregnancy seems to have hastened their marriage. This reminder of his wife (the injured party in relation to his adultery and broken marriage vows) is set against the overtly penitential Sonnet 146, in which the poet addresses his own soul in terms of “Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth”. The poet’s EIGHTEEN and BIRTHDAY anagrams are reminiscent of Henry Wriothesley TWENTY ONE and BIRTHDAY anagams in Sonnet 17: Those lips that Loues owne hand did make, Breath’d forth the sound that said I hate, To me that languisht for her sake: [But when she saw my] wofull state, Straight In heR heart did mercie come,

B I-R

Sonnets Chiding that tongue that [Euer sweet, Was vsde In] Giuing gentle dome: And tougHT It thus a new to greetE: I hatE shE alterd with aN [End, That follow’d It as Gentle day, Doth follow nigHT who likE a fiend From heauEN to hell is flowne away. I hate, from hate away she threw, And sau’d my life saying not you.

359 TH D A-I-E E I-G HT-E EN

E I-G HT E-E-N

As might be expected in a birthday poem, a concealed chronogram of the year MDLXXXII is distinguishable in the first quatrain, the traditional locus of chronogram. The respective matrices are enclosed in brackets in the annotated extract below. Those lips that {Loues owne hanD did Make}, Breath’d forth the sound that {saId I hate}, To me that languisht for her sake: But when {She Saw my wofull State},

MDL II XX X

If the sonnet was indeed composed in 1582, the young Shakespeare was apparently already familiar with the protocols of concealed chronogram. Conventionally disposed DATE and TIME anagrams are also located in the first quatrain: Those lips that Loues owne hand [Did make], Breath’d forth the sound [That said I hATE], [To ME] that langu|Isht for her sake: But when she saw My wofull statE,

D ATE T-I M-E

T-I ME

The shared figura condensa of the chronogram and the EIGHTEEN and BIRTHDAY anagrams is comprised in lines 4-5 at the beginning of the respective extensae: EIGHTEEN; BIRTHDAY: But whEN shE saw mY wofull stATe, StraIGHT In heR Heart Did mercIE comE,

Following the precedent of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s indecent play on Anne and Âne in his poetic addresses to Anne Boleyn, Shakespeare founds his sonnet in part upon the prior proposition that Anne Hath a way. Her way is defined by the Âne in Anne, where âne (“ass”, hence arse) refers in general terms to the female nether regions and presumably to the vagina in particular. The poet further proposes in relation to ANNE HATE-AWAY

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(sic) that it is only when “HATE” is taken away from “|HATE| A WAY” that A WAY will be made freely available to him. The withdrawal of Anne’s hate and the freeing of the last two syllables of her surname are figured in the poet’s word-play in: “I hate she alterd with an / âne end, not you”.112 The annotated version below contains a selection (only) of the relevant anagrams. The proemial play on “Loues âne hand” is conventional and should not necessarily be construed as the product of adolescent immaturity. It closely resembles Wyatt’s similarly based word-play in his Anne Boleyn sonnets: Those lips that Loues owne hand did make, Breath’d forth the sound that said I hate, To me that languisht for her sake: But when she saw my wofull state, Straight in her heart did mercie come, [Chiding that] tongue that euer sweet, C Was Vsde iN giuing gentle dome: V-N [ANd tought iT thUS] a New to greetE]: AN-N-E T I hate she alterd with an end, That follow’d it [As gentle] day, A Doth follow Night who likE a fiend N-E From heauen to hell is flowNE away. I [HATe, from Hate AWAY] she threw, HAT-H-AWAY And sau’d my life saying not you.

AN-US A N NE AN-E

In this, the sixth level of the purgatorial ascent, the retrospective reminder of the poet’s wife, his marriage, and thus his marriage vows, is followed immediately by the poet’s penitential address to his “Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth” in Sonnet 146. It is in the final ten-sonnet triangle and in A Lover’s Complaint that Shakespeare’s “Catholicism” comes sharply into focus. While few scholarly readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets have failed to add to our understanding of them, it is primarily to Booth (1977) and Vendler (1997) that we instinctively turn for exceptionally high levels of insight and honesty. Their respective comments on the redundant repetition in line 2 of Sonnet 146 (as printed in Shake-speares Sonnets of 1609) are typically suggestive. The poem is transcribed below in the form in which it appears in Q, except that the redundant noun phrase is emphasised. In addition, a selection of Shakespeare’s Orphic MYSTERY, SINNE, and PRIDE anagrams is noted in the margin:

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P

Oore Ǖoule the center of [MY] Sinfull earth, MY-S My Ǖinfull earth theǕe rebbell powres That thee array, T Why doǕt thou [Pine] within and ǕuffER dearth ER Paint|Ing thy outwarD walls Ǖo coǕtliE gaY? Y Why Ǖo large coǕt hauing Ǖo Ǖhort a leaǕe, DoǕt thou vpon thy fading manǕion Ǖpend? [Shall wormes inheritors of this exceǕǕe], S Eate vp thy charge? Is this thy bodies end? I TheN Ǖoule liue thou vpoN thy Ǖeruants loǕǕE, N-N-E And let that Pine to aggrauat thy [StoRr|e]; P-R Buy tearmes diuine IN Ǖelling houres of droǕǕe: I Within be feD, without bE rich No morE, D-E So Ǖhalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, ther’s no more dying then.

361

P-R I-D-E

S IN N-E

In relation to the apparently anomalous repetition of “My sinfull earth” in line 2, Booth comments: Sisson, who called this “the prize crux of the Sonnets”, sums up the problem and its solutions: “It is apparent that the compositor has repeated my sinfull earth as a sort of catchword, and left out two syllables which would have completed the sense of 1.2. Conjecture is free, subject to a decision upon the trend of thought of the missing words…” 113

Booth rehearses some of the arbitrary conjectures made by commentators, and concludes: If I had to offer my own no less arbitrary preference, I would choose “pressed with”, which participates in the phonetic pattern set in motion by the consonants in Poor soul and which pertains variously to the ideas of weight, siege, and penalties that run through the whole sonnet. 114

The verba perpexabilia are omitted from Booth’s modernized version of the sonnet: Poor soul, the center of my sinfull earth, these rebbell pow’rs that thee array,

Vendler adopts a somewhat similar approach: The corrupt second line in the Quarto (repeating my sinfull earth) has made the poem tantalisingly incomplete. I would like to argue for feeding as the missing word, chiefly because it “explains” the presence of the word fading used of the mansion”.115

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An anagrammatic reading of the sonnet reveals that the redundancy is not a compositor’s error but is in fact authorial. In a gesture of ironical self-censorship, Shakespeare obliterates the “original” words “Prince of” by substituting “My sinfull earth” for them. As printed in Q, line 2 of the sonnet is designedly tautologous and hypermetric – a vivid example of the censorship that results in what Shakespeare in Sonnet 66 calls “arte made tung-tide by authoritie”. Shakespeare’s notional gesture of literary censorship in lines 1-2 of Sonnet 146 parodies the obliterations and substitutions of contemporary censorship, and in particular the then familiar deletion and obliteration of references to the Pope and/or the Roman Catholic Church in manuscripts and printed works.116 An anagrammatic reading reveals that Sonnet 146 takes effect (inter alia) as a prayer for the soul in purgatory - a Roman Catholic concept. The notional suppression of the words “Prince of” at the beginning of the second line is necessary in order to eradicate the plurality of POPE anagrams with which the “original” octave would otherwise have been conspicuously imbued. A selection of the relevant extensae is noted in the margin below:

P

Oore] Ǖoule] the center Of my Ǖinfull earth, [PrincE] Of theǕE rebbell [POwres that theE] array, Why dO|Ǖt thou PinE within and Ǖuffer dearth [Painting thy outward walls Ǖo coǕtliE] gay? Why ǕO large coǕt hauing ǕO Ǖhort a leaǕe, DoǕt thou vP|on thy fading manǕion Ǖpend? Shall wormes inheritors of this exceǕǕE, Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end?

PO P-E P O P E

P O P-E

The notional condensa of the POPE anagram would be conspicuously located, and would offer the publicly unacceptable proposition that Prince is identified with Pope and that the Pope is Princeps mundi: POPE:

P

Oore Ǖoule the center of my Ǖinfull earth, PrincE

The versal apparatus would then also take effect as a graphic figura condensa: POPE:

P

Oore PrincE

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In addition, in the sonnet’s notionally original form, the obliterated words “Prince of” also permit and inaugurate the prominent PRINCEPS anagram that ensues. The shared condensa of the second POPE anagram corroborates the poet’s identification of Pope and Prince: POPE; PRINCEPS: [PRINCe of theǕE rebbell PowreS]

At the same time the proemial invocation of “the center of … earth” provide an authorial clue to the designedly unuttered epithet centrum mundi, which that phrase translates. The phrase centrum mundi (with its implications for the Pope and the Church of Rome) is thus also effectively suppressed by being deprived of the context to which it originally referred. It forms a particularly perfect chronogram, in usual form, of the year MDCI: Centrum MunDI

Where chronograms occur in Shakespeare’s sonnets, they are sometimes used to refer to the external event which provides the poet’s compositional motivation, as for example his eighteenth birthday in 1582, the coming of the numerologically significant year 1600, the accession of James I in 1603, and the publication of Q in 1609. The chronogram of the year 1601 presumably refers to the calendar year which began on 25 March 1601 (old style) and ended on 24 March 1602 (old style). For Shakespeare and his age, the year 1601 (old style) began 28 days after Essex’s execution on 25 February 1600 (old style). As will become clear, Sonnet 146 is imbued throughout with elevated ESSES anagrams set in explolitio, and contains ESSES HOUSE anagrams associated with the overt reference to “thy fading mansion” in line 6. Viewed in one (perhaps optimally relevant) perspective, Sonnet 146 appears to be offered as a prayer for the soul of the recently executed Earl of Essex in purgatory. In a plural gesture typical of Shakespeare’s implementation of the Classical poetic, the “Poore soule” and the “Prince” to whom the sonnet refers is also that of Essex in his persona as a Prince of the state of England. So far as the missing words are concerned, Booth’s preference for Pressed with is remarkably acute. Both Pressed with and Prince of do indeed participate “in the phonetic pattern set in motion by the consonants” in Poore soule, and both are capable of referring to Essex. Vendler’s argument for Feeding is acute, also, in that it reflects her perceptive response to the central theme of eating and pining in the

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sonnet, which is found to be informed by the prior device that connects the recently deceased ESSES (the then familiar anagrammatic version of Essex) with the ambivalence of the Latin subjunctive esses (“you used to exist”) and esses (“you used to eat”). At the same time, the word-withinword trope that finds Pine concealed within Prince speaks to the poet’s central question “Why dost thou pine within?” The soul (here envisaged as Prince or ruler of the lower appetitive attributes of the human being) sub-divides in the form of perfectly symmetrical neo-Platonic device. This gesture is offered in part as an authorial clue and a prompt in relation to the obliterated, original words: Why … P r IN c E … dost thou pine within?

When the Prince (in the sense here of the soul) dost pine within, he suppresses the familiar initials (then as now) of Roman Catholicism, namely R.C. When, however, he eliminates his pining (and the word pine), and when he accepts the bread and body of Christ (presumably in the Catholic rite), he no longer pines (whether in sin on earth or in pain in purgatory): “Why … pRinCe … dost thou pine within?”. The sonnet is imbued with a plurality of elevated ESSES anagrams, each having a plurality of extensae. The constituent letters of the extensae are set in capitals in the text below, and a selection (only) of these is noted in the margin. The notionally original text incorporating Prince of is retained in the annotated versions of the sonnet below: Poore SoulE thE center of my [Sinfull Earth, Prince of theSE] rebbell powerS that theE array, Why dost thou pinE within and Suffer dearth Painting thy outward wallS [So costliE] gay? Why So largE cost hauing [So short a leaSE], Dost thou vpon thy fading mansion Spend? [Shall wormES inheritors of this ExceSSE], EatE vp thy chargE? is this thy bodieS End? Then [SoulE liue] thou vpon thy [SeruantS lossE], And let that pinE to aggrauat thy [StorE]; Buy tearmES diuinE in [[Selling houres of drosSE]: Within bE] fed, without be rich no morE, [So Shalt thou feed on death, that feedS on men, And death oncE] dead, ther’s no more dying then.

S-E-S SE

S E S S-E

S-E-S-SE S-ES-SE

S ES-SE

S-E-S-S-E S-E-S-SE S E S-S E

The sin of pride (which is defined in the sonnet’s Orphic verba certa) is attributed inter alia to Essex, whose superbia was deemed to have led to his downfall. The sonnet is marked as a prayer for Essex’s soul in PATER

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NOSTER, PRAYER, and AMEN anagrams, which as we shall see are comparable with those in the penitential Epilogue to The Tempest: [Poore soule the centeR] of my sinfull earth, [Prince of these rebbell powres thAT thee ArraY, Why dost Thou pine within and suffER] dearth Painting thy outward walls so costlie gay? Why so large cost hauing so short a lease, Dost thou vpon thy fading mansion spend? Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse, Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end? Then soule liue thou vpon thy seruants losse, And let that pine to aggrauat thy store; Buy tearmes diuine in selling houres of drosse: Within be fed, without be rich [NO mor]|e, So ShalT thou feed on death, that feeds on men, [And death once dead, thER|’s no more dying then].

P-R P-AT ER

NO S-T ER

A-Y ER

A-M-EN

The words Prince of are also required in order to meet the requirements of the poet’s PINE, PURGE and PURGATORYE anagrams (which again attract the censorship of Roman Catholic reference). One would expect the word-within-word play on Prince and pine within to be corroborated by an anagram in the ambient text, and in this instance a PinE anagram with two extensae is inaugurated in the reinstated word PrincE: Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth, [Prince] of these rebbell powres that thee array, Why dost thou pINE withIN and suffeR dearth Painting thy outward walls so costliE gay?

P INE

P IN E

While many of Shakespeare’s covertly expressed meta-poetic and meta-dramatic comments are found to imply Catholic sympathies, Sonnet 146 is the only sonnet in the six lower levels of the sequence (1-152) that is aesthetically committed to that theme. A full anagrammatic reading of the sonnet reveals that in the present instance Shakespeare takes this opportunity of responding to contextually relevant attacks made upon him by Michael Drayton, Francis Meres, and William Scott. He is specifically criticised in relation to his his “selfcensorship”, his concealment in anagram of what are alleged to comprise (a) Catholic and (b) homosexual tendencies. In order to understand Sonnet 146 fully, therefore, it is necessary to know something of the historical and

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cultural background, and to understand that the literary “wars” of the period were in the main conducted covertly, in concealed anagram. In 1598 Francis Meres published his Palladis tamia, Wits treasury being the second part of Wits common wealth. By Francis Meres Maister of Artes of both vniuersities. An anagrammatic reading of this volume reveals that in a wide-ranging survey of contemporary poets, Meres damns Shakespeare’s literary productions with faint praise, accuses him of personal immorality, and purports to install Michael Drayton (Meres’ friend and fellow cleric) as Poet Laureate in solemn form: “Michael Drayton (quem toties honoris & amoris causa nomino)”. As a consequence, Drayton is portrayed wearing a laureate wreath in the frontispiece to Gerard’s Herball (pubished in 1598), and Drayton’s Laureate Portrait (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London) follows in 1599. 117 For the remainder of his life, Drayton and his circle cultivated a grandiose assumption of laureate primacy, and Drayton is portrayed as poet laureate in a variety of texts, frontispieces, and images. 118 In 1599 Drayton, true to his new national role, published Englands Heroicall Epistles. Newly enlarged With Idea. In this volume two sonnets are of particular note. The first is a prefatory poem subscribed “Thomas Hassall, Gent.” This sonnet, which contains clear, doubled POETE LAUREATE anagrams, refers overtly to “That title which true worth should only raise”, a typically periphrastic reference in the overt dimension of the text to specific revelation in the covert dimension: [Long haue] I wish’d And hop’d my weaker Muse, (In nothing strong but my Vnhappy loue) Would giue me leaue my foR|tune to approuE, And view ThE world as, named, [Poets vsE]; But still her fruitlesse bosome doth refuse To blesse me with indifferencie of [Praise]; Not daring ([Like tO many) to AbusE, That TitlE] Vvhich true worth should only Raise: Thus bankerout and despairing of minE own, I set my wish And hope, kind friend, on TheE, Whose fruite approu’d, and better fortune knowne, Tels me thy Muse, my loues sole heire must be. So barren wombs embrace their neighbours young, So dombe men speake by them that have a tongue.

L-A V R-E A-T-E POET-E P O-E T-E

L-A V-R E A-T-E

The shared condensa is comprised in lines 1-2, at the beginning of the relevant extensae:

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POETE LAUREATE: [Long hauE] I wish’D And hOP’d my weakeR Muse, (In NOthing strong buT mY Vnhappy louE)

It is thus that Drayton, the informally constituted poet laureate, presumes to attack Shakespeare in Sonnet 46 of Idea. Drayton uses the traditional language of invective in affecting to address his own brain, but his WILL SHAKESPEARE anagrams reveal that the reviled “leaden braine” is that of Shakespeare, who has presumably criticised his verse at some earlier point: Thou leaden braine, [Which censur’st what I write], And say’st my Lines be duLL] and doe not moue, I mervaile not thou feelst not my delight, vvhich never feltst my fiery touch of loue. But thou whose pen hath like a Pack-horse seru’d, vvhose [Stomack vnto gaule] HAth turn’d thy foode, vvhose senCES like poore prisoners, hunger-staru’d, vvhose griefe hath Parch’d thy body, dry’d thy blood. Thou which hast [Scorned lifE], and Hated death, And in a moment, mad, sobeR, glad, and sorry, Thou which hast band thy thoughts and Curst thy birth vvith thousand plaguES more then in Purgatory. Thou thus whose spirit LouE in his fire refines, Come thou And read, admRE, applaud my lines.

W-I L-L

W-I LL

S-HA CES P E S-H A-R A C ES-P E A-RE

The allegedly Roman Catholic Shakespeare is addressed as “Thou which hast band thy thoughts”, an accusation of self-censorship that appears to have prompted the gesture of self-censorship in Sonnet 146, and which carries with it the stigma of religious hypocrisy. Drayton’s Orphic verba certa (expressed in SINNE and ADULTERY anagrams) speak to the reviled Will Shakespeare, whose name is anagrammatized in the ambient text: Thou leaden braine, which censur’st what I write, [And [say’st my] lines be] dull and doe not moue, I mervaile not thou feelst not my delight, Which never feltst my fiery touch of loue.

S I-N N-E

A-D U-L-T ER-Y

Typically, Shakespeare responds to Drayton and his sycophantic friend Meres in supremely competent fashion. In Sonnet 121, for example, Shakespeare addresses both of his pious critics, who are specifically identified in attributive anagrams:

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Chapter Four Tis better to be vile then vile esteemed, When not to be, receiues reproach of being, And the [Iust plea]sure lost, which is so Deemed, I-D Not by our feeling, but by others seE|ing. E For why should others false A[|DulteR|at eyes A D-R Giue salu|Ation] to mY sporT|iue] blood? A-Y-T Or oN [My frail|ties why are [FRAiler spies]; M O-N FRA Which IN their wils Count bad what I think good? I-C N-C Noe, I am that I Am, and they that leuELL A-EL I At [My abuseS], reckon vp their owne, M S I may be straight though they them-selues bE beuel E By their RanckE thoughtES, my deedes must not be shown R-ES Vnlesse this general euill they maintaine, All men are bad and in their badnesse raigne.

The sub-division of the word plea|sure in order to release the epithet “plea sure” is not uncommon in the period. The shared figura condensa has the effect of epitomising Drayton and Meres as “frailer spies”: MICAEL DRAYTON; IDEA; FRANCIS MERES: Or oN My FRAilties whY Are fraiLER spiES; Which IN theiR wilS Count bAD what I Think gooD?

As noted above, Shakespeare appears to have been particularly affronted by Drayton’s accusation of self-censorship and religious hypocrisy in “Thou which hath band thy thoughts”. In Sonnet 121, in responding to this accusation, Shakespeare quotes the word thoughts verbatim, and incorporates a conspicuous, syncopic BAND anagram in the ambient text: I may be straight though they them-selues be beuel By their rancke thoughtes, my deedes must not be shown Vnlesse this general euill they maintaine, All men are [BAd aND] iN their baD|nesse raigne.

thoughtes

BA-ND

Here, as elsewhere, Shakespeare’s Christ-like compassion elevates his “plain and simple” verse above the manipulative diction and pious homilies of his critics. To reiterate, Drayton’s ostensible address to his own leaden braine is parodied in Shakespeare’s contextually apt self-address in Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth in Sonnet 146, and the accusation of selfcensorship is answered in the notional obliteration of Prince of (which in a gesture of showy non-showing has the effect of drawing the reader’s

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attention to the Catholic sympathies of the poet). The redundancy and weak tautology of Drayton’s “Thou leaden braine, which censur’st what I write, / And say’st my lines be dull” is parodied and ridiculed (quite hilariously) in Shakespeare’s deliberate solecism in “Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth, / My sinfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array”. The rebbell powres that are arrayed against the Prince (who in this perspective is also Shakespeare) are Meres, Drayton, and others, including in particular the Puritanical William Scott. All three critics are identified in anagram in the octave of Sonnet 146, and Drayton’s selfaggrandisement is invoked in POETE LAUREATE and PORTRAYTE anagrams – the latter being corroborated by the poet’s otherwise unexplained reference to “Painting thy outward walls so costlie gay”: [POore soule] the centeR of [My sinfull Earth, PO-R Prince of these REbbell powreS] that Thee arRAY, T-RAY Why [DosT thou [PinE] within] and suffeR dearth D-R P Painting thy outward walls sO costlie gAY? AY O Why so [LArgE] cosT hauing so shorT a leasE, T E-T-E Dost thoU vpon thy fading mansion spend? ON Shall wormes inheritoRs of this Excesse, EATE vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end?

M-E RE-S

LA U R-E ATE

William Scott, who appears to have allied himself with Meres and Drayton, is not forgotten. His covert attacks on Shakespeare are contained in the manuscript treatise entitled The Model of Poesy, a work identified in Shakespeare’s SCOTT and MODELLE OF POESYE anagrams: [Poore soulE] the center [Of] [My sinfull earth, Prince OF these rebbell] powreS that thee arraY, Why Dost thou pinE within and suffer dearth Painting thy outward walls [So COst]|lie gay? Why [So large COsT] hauing so shorT a lease, DostTthou vpon thy fading mansion spend? Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse, Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end? And let that pine to aggrauat thy store; Buy tearmes diuine in selling houres of drosse: Within be fed, without be rich no more, So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, ther’s no more dying then.

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It is typical of Shakespeare’s covert replies to his critics that in Sonnet 146 he flexes his poetic muscles by making a show of his almost miraculous virtuosity in the art of anagramma figuratum. As will emerge in due course, Scott’s attacks are best explained in the context of Meres’ accounts of Shakespeare and Drayton in Wits Treasury. In his survey of contemporary writers, Meres is found to mention Michael Drayton honorifically by name seven times before he purports to nominate his friend and fellow cleric in concealed anagram as Poet Laureate. Immediately before the act of covert lauriation, the following key markers are set down in a gesture of rhetorical repetitio: “As Virgil … so Michael Drayton ~ As Sophocles … so Drayton”. Just as Virgil was considered the greatest of Classical Latin poets, and Sophocles the greatest (save Homer) of the Greeks, so Drayton is alleged to be the greatest of Meres’ contemporaries. Having established Drayton’s literary credentials, Meres performs the lauriation ceremony, covertly, in the context of a comparison of his nominee’s moral stature with that of Persius. A third and final “As … so” leads on to the central speech act that is comprised in the word nomino: As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported among al writers to be of an honest life and upright conversation: so Michael Drayton (quem toties honoris & amoris causa nomino) among schollers, souldiours, poets, and all sorts of people, is helde for a man of vertuous disposition, honest conversation, and wel governed cariage, which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit and soundest wisedome.

Persius is of particular relevance to the occasion by virtue of his covert self-appoinment as Persius poeta laureus in Satire 1 (69-75). He looks askance at his literary rivals and enacts his own lauriation in exceptionally clear, double PERSIUS POETA LAUREUS anagrams. The onset of the passage is marked by the conventional prompt in ecce (“behold!”): Ecce modo heroas sensus adferre docemus 70nugari solitos Graece, nec [PonerE lucum artifices] nec Rus Saturum laudare, ubI corbes et focUS et porcI et fumosa Palilia feno, unde RemUS sulcoque terens dentalia, Quinti, cum trepida ante boues dictatorem induit uxor 75et tua aratra domum lictor tulit - euge poeta!

P-E R-S-I US

P-E R-S I US

Sonnets Ecce modo heroas sensus adferre docemus 70nugari solitos Graece, nec ponere lucum artifices nec rus saturum [LAUdaRE, Ubi corbeS] et focUS et [POrci ET fumosA] Palilia feno, undE Remus sulcoque Terens dentaliA, Quinti, cum trepida ante boues dictatorem induit uxor 75et tua aratra domum lictor tulit - euge poeta!

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With this gesture in mind, Meres completes the sequence that he has begun, a sequence which moves logically to the act of nomination: As Virgil … so Michael Drayton As Sophocles … so Drayton As Persius … so Michael Drayton

This sequence is concluded in that part of Meres’ text which contains the Latin rite of nomination in “As Aulus Persius Flaccus … so Michael Drayton (quem toties honoris & amoris causa nomino)”. The gesture is conventionally corroborated in a clear LAURIATION anagram: As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported among al writers to be of an honest [Life And Up|RIght convers|ATION]: so Michael Drayton (quem toties honoris et amoris causa nomino) among schollers, souldiours, poets, and all sorts of people, is helde for a man of vertuous disposition, honest conversation, and wel governed cariage, which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit and soundest wisedome.

The effect of Meres’ quotation of the formulaic Latin phrase quem, honoris causa, nomino is to bring out the sense in which nomino is capable of signifying “I nominate, constitute, and appoint” in a context of intoned and quasi-ritualistic repetition: “as Virgil … so Michael Drayton ~ as Sophocles … so …Drayton ~ as Persius … so …Michael Drayton (quem causa nomino)”. Drayton is thus portrayed as the contemporary counterpart of Sophocles (the purest of the Greeks) and Virgil (the purest of the Romans), and thus, by implication, the best and purest of contemporary poets of the new Golden Age of English literary accomplishment. At the same time, and most importantly for Meres’

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strategic aim, Drayton is also proposed as replicating the “vertuous disposition” of Persius, and as apt to receive the laurate title. At first sight it would seem that Meres does ample justice also to Shakespeare, albeit that lauriation is not in question: As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to liue in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends, &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loue labors lost, his Loue labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry the 4. King Iohn, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Iuliet. As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin: so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase, if they would speake English.

But the contrast with Meres’ approach to Drayton is marked. Shakespeare’s reincarnation of Ovid is primarily envisaged in terms of his licentious anagrammatism, the realm of Hermes dimension being conventionally implied by reference to the god’s attributes in “sweete wittie soule” and “mellifluous and hony-tongued”. Shakespeare’s sonnets are described as “his sugred Sonnets” (without more), meaning that they contain in unusual plenitude the sweet additive of Hermetic anagram. In contrast, when Drayton is described as imitating Ovid, his imitatio is compared with Virgil’s imitation of the lewd Catullus: “As Virgil doth imitate Catullus in the like matter of Ariadne for his story of Queene Dido: so Michael Drayton doth imitate Ouid in his Englands Heroical Epistles”. Shakespeare is praised for his comedy and tragedy, but it is Plautus and Seneca who live in him, rather than Virgil or Sophocles. Meres goes on to suggest that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare’s “fine filed phrase, if they would speake Englishe”, but he is again compared to Plautus in this, and Meres implies that there is some doubt as to whether the Muses would in fact wish to speake in Shakespeare’s version of English. The low comic theatre of Plautus having been thus associated with Shakespeare, it is then open to Meres in his ensuing sub-chapter on Sinne to invoke the comedies of Plautus and Terence in order to focus his invective upon Shakespeare the man. Shakespeare does not possess the vertuous disposition of Persius and Michael Drayton, and indeed Meres’

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ensuing sub-chapter headed “Sinne”is found to be devoted exclusively to a vitriolic attack upon Shakespeare’s virtue. Meres’ SHACESPERE anagrams are indicated in the annotated extracts below. The proemial forma of the first SHACESPERE anagram sets the scene for what follows, being comprised in “[So hE] sinneth”: Sinne. AS he runneth far that neuer returneth: [So he] sinnetH deadly that neuer repenteth. Porters and Cariers when they arE called to carry a burden on their [Shoulders, first they looke] diligently vpon it, & then they PEise and lift it vp, & trie whetheR they arE able to vndergo it, & whether they can cary it: so before we sin, we [SHould consider whether we] be Able to Cary the burthen of it, that is, thE punishment, which iS hel fire. Lodouic. Granat. lib. 1. Ducis peccat. As the Palate, that is corrupted and distempered by ill humours, cannot tastE the sweetnesse of meate, foR that which is [SweetE] seemetH bitter, and that which is bitter sweete: so A soule corrupted with the humours of viCES and inordinate affections, and accustomed to the flesh Pots of Aegypt, cannot tast Manna, nor the bread of Angels. Ibidem. Euen as in a countrey, wheRE all are borne Aethiopians, it is not an vgly thing to be blacke, and as where all are drunke, it is no ignominy nor slander to be drunke: so the monstrous seruitude and slauerie of sinne, because it is so familiar and common to the worlde, scarsly is knowen or noted in any man. Ibidem. As [Swine are] a certaine Heard of beasts, that delighte in myre and durte, And are nourished with the basest and most vn|Cleane meates: so the filthy soulES of sinners are delighted with no other thing, except with the most filthy durte of carnall PleasurE|s. Ibidem. As wine is marred by vineger; and fruites aRE spoiled of wormes; and euery contrary is corrupted of his contrarie: so also all the powers of our soule are distur|bed and infected through sinne, which is an especiall enimie, and most contrarie to our soules. Ibidem Euen as adultery is the most contrary thing to mariage: [So that whicH is most contrary to a godly And vertuous life] is sin. ibidem. Euen as the rootes of trees beeing Cut vp, the boughes and braunches, which re|ceiue life from the rootES, doe forthwith wither and PERish: so

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Chapter Four thosE seauen capitall sinnes, which are wonte to be termed the [Seauen deadly sinnes, whicH are] the generall and vniuersall rootes of all other vices being hewen in sunder, And vtterly eradicated out of our soules, sodainly al the viCES will die, which are deriued from them. Idem. lib. 2. ducis peccat. As the comedies of Plautus and TerencE, aRE at this day the very [Same] Comedies, whicH they were a thousand yeares agoe, albeit the persons, that then ACted them be chaunged: [So thE same] viceS, whicH in times Past wERE in the men of this And that Condition, arE now al|So, although PERhaps the names bE somewhat changed. Ibidem As deadly poyson [Speedily pearceth the Hearte], killeth the spirites, And bringeth death: so [Sinne] Killeth the soulE, and SPeedily bringeth it to destruction. Ibidem. It is saidE that thundeR bruseth the treE, but breaketh not the barke, and pearceth the blade and neuer hurteth the scabberd: euen so doth sin wound the heart, but neuer hurte the eies, and infect the soule, though outwardlie it nothing afflict the body. As the deuill is the father of [Sinne]: so sin is the mother of deatH. As a man comes into A house by the gate: so death Came into the world by sinnE. As a fire goeth out, when all the fewell is SPente, but burneth as long as that lasteth: so death dieth when sin ceaseth, but whERE sin aboundeth, there death rageth. Drinke doeth kill a mouse, as Aristotle saith: so doth sinne kill the soule. Idem, lib. 5. de animalibus terrestribus. cap. 35. A young man in a tauerne seeing Diogenes, fled through shame further into it, nay, sayes Diogenes, the further thou flyest into it, the more thou art in the tauerne: so sinfull men, the more they hide themselues within themselues, the more they are that they are; but they must come out of themselues, if they desire to auoid them selues. Plutarchus in Moralibus.

The SHACESPERE anagrams are particularly dense in the paragraph relating to “the comedies of Plautus and Terence”, comedies which are

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characterized by their obscene anagrams. emphatic:

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The condensa is pointedly

SHACESPERE AS tHE comedieS of Plautus and TerenCE arE

The most fundamental of Meres’ attacks upon Shakespeare is that which identifies him anagrammatically as a killer of his own soule: As deadly poyson [Speedily pearceth the Hearte], killeth the spirites, And bringeth death: so sinne Killeth the soulE, and SPeedily bringeth it to destruction. … It is saidE that thundeR bruseth the treE, but breaketh not the barke … euen so doth sin wound the heart, but neuer hurte the eies, and infect the soule…

This allegation seems to have prompted Shakespeare to respond in a variety of ways, including the meta-poetic in Sonnet 146, and the metadramatic in 1Henry IV (2.4). In this context, Meres’ story of “a young man in a tauerne” appears to have presented itself as apt to the dramatist’s purpose. Meres sets the scene for his own come-uppance: A young man in a tauerne seeing Diogenes, fled through shame further into it, nay, sayes Diogenes, the further thou flyest into it, the more thou art in the tauerne: so sinfull men, the more they hide themselues within themselues, the more they are that they are; but they must come out of themselues, if they desire to auoid them selues.

The scene now shifts to the Boar’s Head Tavern in Cheapside. Shakespeare’s tavern scene is – depending on the skill of the play’s director and the actors - potentially hilarious, but it gains full comic effect only when viewed as a comic riposte to Meres, the pious sycophant. During this scene the Prince (who in this context is also the “Prince of these rebbell powres that thee array”) becomes, in a meta-dramatic perspective, the Shakespeare who has been damned with faint praise and given a “peniworth of sugar” by the “vnder Skinker” or under-drawer “Francis” (who is one and the same as Francis Meres). Here and elsewhere Shakespeare refers to Drayton in terms of a notional rebus of his name, as a DRAW-TUN, a drawer of ale from a tun (or barrel), and hence an ale-drawer. Meres is represented as his under-drawer.

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Shakespeare incorporates attributive WITS TREASURIE anagrams in the opening lines of the scene. The name Francis is highlighted in “I … call them by their names … Tom, Dicke, and Francis”, where “Francis” is conspicuously non-proverbial and non-hypocoristic, and advertises to the audience some special significance in the name: Scena Quarta. Enter Prince and Poines. Pri. Ned, prethee come out of that fat roome, & lend me thy hand to laugh a little. Poi. Where hast bene Hall? Pri. [WITh [Three or fouRE] Logger-headS], Amongst three or fourescore HogsheadS. I haue Sounded the VeRIE base string of humility. Sirra, I am sworn brother to a leash of Drawers, and can call them by their names, as Tom, Dicke, and Francis.

WIT-S T-R-E-A S-V-RIE

Invoking Drayton or Draw-Tun in “Hogsheads … Drawers”, Shakespeare also incorporates POETE LAUREATE anagrams. It now becomes apparent that in an alternative perspective the Prince speaks for Shakespeare and that he goes on to describe Shakespeare’s treatment at the hands of Francis Meres in Wits Treasurie: Pri. Ned, [Prethee come] Out of that fat roome, & lend mE thy hand To [LAUugh a littlE]. Poi. WheR|e hast bene Hall? Pri. With three or fourE] Logger-heads], Amongst ThreE or fourescore HogsheadS. I haue sounded the VeRIE base string of humility. Sirra, I am sworn brother to a leash of Drawers, and can call them by their names, as Tom, Dicke, and Francis. They take it already vpon their confidence, that though I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the King of Curtesie: telling me flatly I am no proud Iack like Falstaffe, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, and when I am King of England, I shall command al the good Laddes in East-cheape. They call drinking deepe, dying Scarlet; and when you breath in your watering, then they cry hem, and bid you play it off.

P-O E-T-E

LAU R E-A-T-E

To reiterate, the prior devise that informs the scene is that which, in the context of Drayton’s “young man in a tauerne”, finds a Draw-Tun (a tapster, a drawer of ale from the barrel) in Dray-ton. Drayton is one of “three or foure” critics with whom Shakespeare is at “Logger-heads”. By virtue of his Tun (a large cask), Michael Draw-Tun is a “Hogshead” (a large cask), and by virtue of his Draw he is one of “a leash of Drawers”. Meres, who retains his own name in Francis, is an “under-skinker” or

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under-drawer to Michael Draw-Tun. The whole of the Prince’s speech may be read as apt to the attacks made upon him by Meres, Drayton, and Scott in relation (inter alia) to the obscenity of his anagrams. The Prince, (speaking aloud and in public as if he were Shakespeare) complains that they call “drinking deepe” (indulging in sub-textual anagram) “dying Scarlet” (imbuing text with lewd anagrams).119 At the same time these pious puritans associate Shakespeare’s “drinking deepe” of life with the suggestion that he will die with a corrupted soul (“dying Scarlet”). The allegorical identification of Drawer with Drayton is also established by closely associated DRAYTON and DRAW-TUN anagrams in the opening lines of the scene: Pri. Ned, [prethee come] out of that fat roome, & lend P-O me thy hand to [laugh a little]. E-T-E LAU Poi. Where hast bene Hall? R Pri. [WITh [Three or fouRE] Logger-headS], Amongst three E-A-TE or fourescore HogsheadS. I haue sounded the VeRIE base string of humility. Sirra, I am sworn brother to a leash of [DRAWers, and can] call them bY their names, as Tom, Dicke, DR-A-Y DRAW and Francis. They take it already VpON their confidence, T-ON T-V-N that though I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the King of Curtesie: telling me flatly I am no proud Iack like Falstaffe, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, and when I am King of England, I shall command al the good Laddes in East-cheape.

As the passage continues, Francis Meres is identified with Francis the under-skinker, and the Prince as Shakespeare complains that he has been fobbed off with “this peniworth of Sugar”, a reference to Meres’ phrase “sugred sonnets”: They call drinking deepe, dying Scarlet; and when you breath in your watering, then they cry hem, and bid you play it off. To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an houre, that I can drinke with any Tinker in his owne Language during my life. I tell thee Ned, thou hast lost [Much honor, that thou wER’t not with mE in thiS] action: but sweet Ned, to sweeten which namE of Ned, I giue thee thiS peniworth of Sugar, clapt euen now into [My hand by an vndER Skinker, one that neuer spakE othER English in hiS] life, then Eight shillings and six pencE, and, You are welcome: with thiS shrill addition, Anon, Anon sir, Score a Pint of Bastard in the Halfe Moone, or so. But Ned, to driue away time till Falstaffe come, I prythee doe thou stand in some by-roome, while I question my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue [ME the SugaR, and do neuER leauE calling FranciS], that his

M ER-E-S ME-R E-S

M ER E-S M ER E-S

ME-R-E-S

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Chapter Four Tale to me may be nothing but, Anon: step aside, and Ile shew thee a President. Poi. Francis. Pri. Thou art perfect.

The disposition of the clustered MERES anagrams has the effect of identifying Meres and his peniworth of Sugar with Francis the vnder Skinker. Similarly, the single MERES anagram beginning in “me the Sugar” is clearly marked in “calling Francis”, and corroborates that identification in the context of “I question my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue me the Sugar”. In the exchange as a whole, the name Francis is mentioned twenty times (emphasis added): But Ned, to driue away time till Falstaffe come, I prythee doe thou stand in some by-roome, while I question my puny Drawer, to what end hee gaue [me the Sugar, and do neuer leaue calling Francis, that his] Tale to me may be nothing but, Anon: step aside, and Ile shew thee a President. Poi. Francis. Pri. Thou art perfect. Poi. Francis. [Enter Drawer.] Fra. Anon, anon sir; looke downe into the Pomgarnet, Ralfe. Pri. Come hither Francis. Fra. [My Lord. Pri. How long hast thou to seruE, Francis]? Fra. Forsooth fiue yeaRES, and as [Much as] to Poi. Francis. Fra. Anon, anon sir. Pri. FiuE yeaRES: Berlady a long Lease for the clinking of Pewter. But Francis, darest thou be so valiant, as to play the coward with thy Indenture, & shew it a faire paire of heeles, and run from it? Fra. O Lord sir, Ile be sworne vpon all the Books in England, I could finde in [my heart. Poi. Francis]. Fra. Anon, anon sir. Pri. How old art thou, Francis? Fra. Let me see, about [Michaelmas next I shalbE Poi. Francis]. Fra. Anon sir, pray you stay a littlE, my Lord. Pri. Nay but harke you Francis, for the SugaR thou gauest mE, ‘twaS a penyworth, was’t not? Fra. O Lord sir, I would it had bene two. Pri. I will giue thee for it a thousand pound: Aske me when thou wilt, and thou shalt haue it. Poi. Francis. Fra. Anon, anon.

ME-R-E-S

M E RES

M | E R E-S

M | | E-RES

Sonnets Pri. Anon Francis? No Francis, but to morrow Francis: or Francis, on thursday: or indeed Francis when thou wilt. But Francis. Fra. My Lord. Pri. Wilt thou rob this Leatherne Ierkin, Christall button, Not-pated, Agat ring, Puke stocking, Caddice garter, Smooth tongue, Spanish pouch. Fra. O Lord sir, who do you [MEane? Pri. Why then youR brownE Bastard is] your onely drinke: for looke you FranciS, your white Canuas doublet will sulley. In Barbary sir, it cannot come to so much. Fra. What sir? Poi. Francis. Pri. Away you Rogue, dost thou heare them call?

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ME R-E S

[Heere they both call him, the Drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go.]

In the language of the tavern (which is also Meres’ “tauerne”) Meres becomes a lowly vnder Skinker in relation to his master, the drawer Drayton (an allegation, also, of passive homosexuality). In the context of the meta-dramatic inset, it is Falstaff who is here figured as the reincarnated soul of Drayton (in the manner of “As Drayton … so Falstaff”). It is thus that the Prince (who is, similarly, the reincarnated soul of Shakespeare) admonishes his fat companion, saying: “there is a Deuill haunts thee, in the likenesse of a fat old Man, a Tunne of Man is thy Companion”. That this “Boulting-Hutch of Beastlinesse” should have been nominated POETE LAUREATE is apparently beyond Shakespeare’s comprehension: ri. The com|[Plaints I heare] Of thee, arE grieuous. Fal. Yfaith, my [Lord, They are falsE]: Nay, Ile tickle ye for A young Prince. Pri. Swearest thoU, vngracious Boy? henceforth ne’RE looke on me: [ThoU ArT violently carryed away from GracE]: there is a Deuill haunts thee, iN the likenesse of a fat old Man; a TunNE of Man is thy Companion: Why do’st thou conuerse with that Trunke of Humors, that Boulting-Hutch of Beastlinesse, that swolne Parcell of Dropsies, that huge Bombard of Sacke, that stuft Cloakebagge Of Guts, [That rosted Manning Tree Oxe] with the Pudding in his Belly, that reuerend VicE, that grey IN|iquitie, that Father RuffiaN, that Vanitie iN yeeres? wherEin is he good, but to taste Sacke, and [DRinke it? Wherein] neat And cleanlY, but To carue a CapON, and eat it? where-

P-O-E T-E L A U T-U RE-AT N E NE

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Chapter Four in Cunning, but in Craft? wherein Craftie, but in Villanie? wherein Villanous, but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing?

Drayton’s clerical status (as “reuerend” and “Father”), his impertinent piety, and his allegedly over-blown verse are encapsulated in the PoetPrince’s authoritative description of him as “that huge Bombard of Sacke, that stuft Cloakebagge of Guts, that rosted Manning Tree Oxe with the Pudding in his Belly, that revuerend Vice, that grey Iniquitie, that Father Ruffian …” Meres’ epitomization of Shakespeare as a killer of souls, and in particular of his own soul, is central to the project of the penitential ascent: “Sinne (which, as we have seen, is identified with Shakespeare) killeth the soule, and speedily bringeth it to destruction”. In contemporary England, moreover, Meres was not alone in covertly accusing Shakespeare of being a killer of the soul. In the (presumably widely circulated) manuscript of Scott’s Model of Poesy (circa 1598) Shakespeare is again attacked both for his allegedly hypocritical concealment of his Catholic sympathies, and for the immorality of his obscene anagrammatism. In particular he is described as a “sowle murderer”. As will become clear, in the extract below the anonymous plural in “they that vnder these flowers of Poetrye” is found to screen a covert reference to Shakespeare as the single object of the author’s vilification: …and [Soe] they that vnder these flowers of Poetrye, Hyde snAK|y wantonn|ESse, villanye, bringe Poyson in a gold|En goblet, and ARE to be enterteyned, as sowle murderers, … soe they hauinge the pith corrupt and the harte adulterate (which disgraceth all other graces whatsoeuer) are to be banished the societye of the honest; and beinge now but burnisht drosse not able to indure the touchstone of vertue, it were good they might passe the tryall of the fyer till they were purified.

Shakespeare is thus accused of hiding an anagrammatic snaky wantonnesse under the Apollonian flowers of Poetrye of the overt dimension of his text, and of being a sowle murderer. He is to be excluded from the society of the honest in this life, and should look to his dissembling Catholic’s view of the purgation of the soul in the afterlife. The sub-chapter of The Model of Poesy that is devoted to Shakespeare’s admonishment is conventionally marked and inaugurated by the boundary-marking phrase “Nowe bycause”. The passage as whole is informed by the prior onomastic conceit that finds in Will Shakespeare a perversion of what Scott calls “the will that noble part of the sowle”.

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Basing his account of the will (and thus of Will Shakespeare) upon Platonic and Aristotelian commonplaces, Scott prefaces his specific attack on Shakespeare with a series of pejorative words and phrases which add rhetorical force to the homily, as for example in deformitye, harme, offence, poisoned roote, vicious nourishment, viciously offensive, and sensuall. This preamble begins “Nowe bycause euery Poeme consists of those two partes, of the subiect and ground of the devise, and of the devise it selfe”. The specific attack on Shakespeare then ensues, being marked and inaugurated by the conventionally disposed prompt in “Then by that…” The specific identification of the object of Scott’s attack is effected by means of a carefully disposed sequence of concealed anagrams, and Scott marks the textual extent of these anagrams in inclusio by phrasal repetition in “soe as … (soe they) … soe they”. Here again the word soe invokes the customary word-play on so and sew!, where the imperative sew has the sense of an authorial directive to interweave in anagram. A selection only of the many SHAKESPEARE and ANAGRAME anagrams is indicated in the annotated extract below: Then by that musicall connection and composition of words, that beate vpon and affect onely the outwarde sense, soe as that [Sawce] of sweetenes and S eloquence, whicH the Poet vseth, doth but sharpen the stomACK H-ACK and awaken the appetite, to receyuE that wholesome foode, which E euermore breadS our groweth and Progresse in good, and [Soe they that S-P vnder these] flowers of Poetrye, HydE snAK|y wantonnesse, [ANd E villanye], bringe poyson in A Golden goblet, and ARE to be enterteyned, ARE As sowle Murderers, whil’st thesE theiR Poems Are (when they are best accomplisht) onely of the saME value and æstimation that Sabina Poppæa was; who beinge (as Tacitus sayth) graced with all thinges but with [AN honest mynde]; for want of this onely inwarde AN vertue (the kinge of All Graces) her name is RAced out of the check rowle A-G of worthie woM|an, And sheE is nowe famous onely foR beinge An exqui- R-A site struMpett; soe they hauingE the pith corrupt and the harte M-E adulterate (which disgraceth all other graces whatsoeuer) are to be banished the societye of the honest; and beinge now but burnisht drosse not able to indure the touchstone of vertue, it were good they might passe the tryall of the fyer till they were purified.

The shared condensa for of the SHAKESPERE and ANAGRAME anagrams is so disposed as to create a potentially separable, pious homily which is in effect addressed personally to Shakespeare as sowle murderer: SHAKESPERE; ANAGRAME: AwAKEN the Appetite, to ReceyuE that wholesoME foode, whicH euermore breadS our Groweth And PRogresSE

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Shakespeare appears to have been familiar with this impertinent condensa. It is reflected in the parodic homily ostensibly addressed to his own soul in Sonnet 146, a homily that is simultaneously addressed to Michael Drayton of the Laureate Portrait: “Poore soule … Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outer walls so costlie gaie? … Within be fed, without be rich no more”. Scott does not repudiate concealed anagrammatism in itself. He refers to it in conventionally periphrastic terms as “that Sawce of sweetenes and eloquence, which the Poet vseth”. He objects rather to the concealed obscenities of “they that vnder … flowers of Poetrye, hyde snaky wantonnesse”. Perhaps more disturbing for Shakespeare is Scott’s anti-Catholic invective, which (being typical of concealed religious diatribe in the period) is specifically identified in POPE, CATHOLICKE, and MARIE anagrams set in a vilifying context. Shakespeare’s concealed Catholic sympathies are thus invoked in the “villanye” in “hyde snaky wantonesse, and villanye”. As noted above, the textual extent of this central core of Scott’s attack on Shakespeare is marked in inclusio by phrasal repetition in soe they … soe they. By thus implicitly invoking the dictum in “as they sow shall they reap”, Scott appears to be accusing Shakespeare of “sowing” in sin in at least three potentially relevant ways, including: (1) metaphorically in terms of sowing-and-reaping; (2) anagrammatically in relation to “sewing”; and (3) licentiously in the context of the wanton “sowing” of human seed. A selection of the relevant anagrams is shown in the annotated extract below: Then by that musicall connection and composition of words, that beate vpon and affect onely the outwarde sense, soe as that sawce of sweetenes and eloquence, which the Poet vseth, doth but sharpen the stomack and awaken the appetite, to receyue that wholesome foode, which euermore breads our groweth and [Progresse] in good, and soe they that vnder these flowers Of PoetryE, hyde snaky wantonnessE, and villanyE, bringE [Poyson in a golden goblet, and are] tO be enterteyned, as sowle murderers, whil’st these their [Poems arE] (when they are best ac|Complisht) Onely of the same value And æstimation THat Sabina [POPpæa was; whO beingE (as Tacitus sayth) graced with alL thinges but with an honest [MyndE]; for want of this onely Inwarde vertue (the kinge of All graces) her name is

P O-P E

C A T H O L-I

P O-P-E P O P-E POP-E

Sonnets Raced out of the cheCK rowle of worthIE wo[Man, And sheE] is nowe famous onely foR be|Inge an exqui-sitE strumpett; soe they hauinge the pith corrupt and the harte adulterate (which disgraceth all other graces whatsoeuer) are to be banished the societye of the honest; and beinge now but burnisht drosse not able to indure the touchstone of vertue, it were good they might passe the tryall of the fyer till they were purified.

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As we have seen, Shakespeare sets Scott’s diatribe in formal apposition to Sonnet 146 in required manner by incorporating attributive SCOTT and MODELL OF POESIE anagrams. In addition, when Prince of is reinstated in the text, he cites Scott’s plural POPE anagrams verbatim and in plural form. He also quotes key words verbatim, as in the reiteration of Scott’s “outwarde sense” in “outward walls” and “burnisht drosse” in “selling houres of drosse”. The shared condensa of the MARIE and CATHOLICKE anagrams is again an important focal point for Shakespeare’s response in Sonnet 146: MARIE; CATHOLICKE: Her nAMEe Is Raced ouT Of the CheCK rowLE

Scott’s covert allusion here is to the practice of erasing, striking out, or otherwise eliminating references to the Pope, the Catholic Virgin Mary, and Roman Catholicism in Reformation texts. Shakespeare’s response to this (and to the similarly framed criticism levelled at him by Michael Drayton) is comprised in the gesture of notional self-censorship which substitutes the tautologous phrase “My sinfull earth” for “Prince of” in line 2 of Sonnet 146. We have already seen that when “Prince of” is replaced in the text, the first quatrain of Shakespeare’s sonnet becomes conspicuously imbued with POPE anagrams set in expolitio. Here again, Scott’s procession of anagram-facilitating p-words, as in Progresse, Poetrye, Poyson, Poems, and Poppaea, is parodied in Shakespeare’s Poore, Prince, Powres, Pine, and Painting. Similarly, the deliberate tautology of “my sinfull earth … My sinfull earth” comprises (inter alia) a parodic critique of Drayton’s unintentional tautology in precisely the same position in his sonnet addressing Shakespeare as “Thou leaden braine”. Each repetition is enjambed across lines 1 and 2 (lines 1-2 being transcribed separately in the annotated extracts below):

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Thou leaden braine, which censur’st what I write, And say’st my lines be dull and doe not moue,

W-I L-L

Poore Soule the Center Of my sinfull earth, My sinfull earth These rebbell powres thaT thee array,

W-I LL

S-C-O T-T

In this level of the pyramid-triangle, Shakespeare’s consciousness of the sin of adultery is again manifest in the pairing of Sonnets 151 and 152, which are addressed to Elizabeth Stanley (née Vere), and which affect to address the reciprocal adulteries of the married poet and his newly married mistress. Sonnet 151, which is perceptively described by Vendler, is addressed specifically to ELISABETH STANLEY, COUNTESSE OF DERBY: .

Loue is too young to know what [Conscience] is, Yet whO knowes not conscience is borne of loue, Then gentle cheater Vrge NoT my amissE, Least guilty of my faults thy Sweet Selfe prouE. For thou betraying me, I [DoE betray] My nobleR part to my grose Bodies treason, My soule doth tell my body THat he maY, Triumph in louE, flesh staies no farther reason, But rysing At thy name doth point out thee, As his triumphant prize, proud of thiS pride, He Is contented thy poore drudge to be To [STAnd in thy] affaires, falL by [thy side]. No want of coN|science hold it that I call, Her Loue, for whose deare loue I risE and fall.

C O V-N-T-E S-S-E

TH E B-A S I L-E

D-E R-B Y

STA N L-I-E

The Orphic verba certa comprise MYSTERY, SINNE, INFIDELITY, and LUST anagrams. In the interests of clarity a selection only of the relevant anagrams is indicated below: Loue is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knowes not conscience [Is borne of loue], TheN gentle cheater vrge not [MY] amisse, MY [Least] guilty of my FaultS thy sweet [selfe] proue. S For thoU betraying me, I Doe betray T My noblER part to my grosE bodieS treason, ER My [Soule] doth telL my bodY that hE may, S Y Triumph [IN loue], flesh staies no Farther reason, IN But rys|Ing aT thY NamE doth point out thee, N-E As his triumphant prize, prouD of this pride, HE is contented thy poore drudge to be To stand in thy affaires, falL by thy side.

I N F I-D E L I T-Y

L U ST

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No want of conscience hold IT that I call, Her loue, for whose deare loue I risE and fall.

The prior devise that informs the sonnet is the word-within-word conceit that finds a gentle/genital cunt concealed in the title Cuntisse Derby: Loue is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knowes not conscience is borne of loue, Then gentle [Cheater Vrge NoT my amISSE], Least guilty of my faults thy sweet selfe proue. Loue is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knowes not conscience is borne of loue, Then gentle [Cheater Vrge NoT] my amisse, Least guilty of my faults thy sweet selfe proue.

C-V-N-T-ISSE

C-V-N-T

In this ludic sonnet Shakespeare elaborates upon the social and sexual ironies of the new situation. He invokes the dynamic of male tumescence, ejaculation, and detumescence in terms of the conjugation of the will in then name Will and the cunt in the title of Cuntisse, and in terms also of the supposed sexual and social subservience of the poet to his newly elevated mistress. Elizabeth Vere, the recently installed Countess of Derby is now more than ever a gentlewoman, and is therefore properly addressed as “gentle cheater”. But she retains the cunt that is common to all women, and is therefore also capable of being addressed as “genital cheater”. Ironically, her gentle cunt is capable of causing the poet to betray what he calls “my nobler part”. Here and elsewhere in Shakespeare the epithet “thy sweet selfe” is customarily used to refer to the male or female genitalia (as the context admits), and the customary word-play on faults and vaults is also invoked in relation to the sexual leaps that are inherently sinful. The Ovidian metathesis in amisse / emisse (referring to phallic emission) has the effect of wittily conflating the sin and the act. At the same time it permits further play on a second alternative in the word omisse, a familiar reference to the sins of commission and omission regularly confessed in daily prayer. The poet and his mistress have done those things that they ought not to do, and done those things that they ought not to do, where to do and things have their usual sexual meanings: Loue is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knowes not conscience is borne of loue,

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Chapter Four Then gentle cheater vrge not my omisse, Least guilty of my faults thy sweet selfe proue.

In the sestet Shakespeare plays on the commonly found orthographical variant of Elizabeth’s married name, Standley or Standlie (the latter also also permitting the potentially expressive coupling of stand and lie, and hence “rise and fall”. In the socio-sexual circumstances, the poet Will and his phallic will must stand and rise in the presence of the Cuntisse and her cunt, and bow or fall, in due sequence: But rysing at thy name doth point out thee, As his triumphant prize, [Proud of this] pridE, He is coN|tented thy poore drudge to be To [STand] In thy AffaireS, [Fall] by thy side. No want of conscience holD it that I cALL, Her Loue, for whose deare loue I rise and fall.

P E-N I-S

ST-A F N-D ALL

In addition, Shakespeare’s evocation of the repetitious thrusting, spasmodic ejaculation, relief, and falling away of male orgasm is wittily enjambed across lines 10-11: “… prize, proud of this pride, / He is con … tent … ed …”. The metrical definition of the point of optimal relief in con is corroborated by (and reciprocally corroborates) the poet’s Ovidian word-play on “He is con-” and “He is come”. Additional aesethetic corroboration is afforded by a PISSE anagram (signifying, as in Latin meio, the emission of semen), an anagram which is also enjambed in similar fashion:120 But rysing at thy name doth point out thee, As his triumphant prize, [Proud of thIS pride], He iS contented thy poore drudge to bE

P-IS S-E

In a sonnet informed by the cunt in Cuntisse, Shakespeare takes case also to define the sinfulness of his contentedness by invoking the pisse in concupissense. The correlative anagrams are similarly inter-penetrative: Loue is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knowes not [CONscience] is borne of loue, Then gentle Cheater Vrge not my amisse, Least guilty of my faultS thy sweet selfe [Proue]. For thou betraying me, I doe betray My Nobler part to my grose bodieS treasoN, My SoulE doth tell my body that hE may, Triumph iN loue, flesh Staies no farther reason,

CON C-V P I S S-E N-S

P I S S-E

S I N-N E

Sonnets But rysing at thy name doth point out theE, As his triumphant prize, [Proud of thIS pride], He iS contented thy poore drudge to bE To stand in thy affaires, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call, Her loue, for whose deare loue I rise and fall.

387 E P-IS S-E

The location of the forma of the CONCUPISSENSE anagram in “conscience” in line 2 has the effect of corroborating the poet’s verbal analysis (noted by Booth and Vendler among others) of the word conscience in that line. Sonnet 152 confronts the same situation from a somewhat different viewpoint, comprising inter alia an acknowledgment of the poet’s solemn marriage vows and a confession of mortal sin in this context. Sonnet 152 is again addressed to ELISABETH STANLEY but is pervaded by ANNE and ANE anagrams. In the interests of clarity of representation, a selection only of Shakespeare’s many ANNE and ANE anagrams is shown below: In louing thee thou know’st I [Am forsworN|E], But thou [Art twice] forsworNE to me loue swearing, IN [Act thy Bed-vow broake] [ANd Nnew faith torNE], In vowing new hate [After New louE] bearing: But why of two otheS breach doe I [Accuse] thee, WheN I breakE twenty: I am periur’d most, For all my vowes [are] othes but to misuse thee: [ANd all my honest faith iN theE] is lost For I haue sworNE deepe othes of thy deepe kind|NessE: Othes of thy louE, thy truth, thy constanciE, ANd to inlighteN theE gauE eyes to blind|NessE, Or made them swere [Against the] thing they see. For I haue sworNE thee faire: more periurde eye, To swere against the truth so foule a lie.

A-N A-NE NE AN AN AN-N-E N-N-E N-E A N-E AN NE

AN AN-N-E N E A-N-N AN-N-E E A NE

The ANNE anagrams are accompanied by a single HATHAWAY anagram in the octave. Again, a selection only of the relevant figures is shown below: In louing thee thou know’st I [Am forsworN|E], But thou [Art twice] forsworNE to me loue swearing, IN [Act thy Bed-vow broake] [ANd Nnew faith torNE], In vowing new [HATe [After New louE] bearing: But why] of two otheS breacH doe I [Accuse] thee, WheN I breakE twenty: I am periur’d most, For All mY vowes [are] othes but to misuse thee: [ANd all my honest faith iN theE] is lost

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The Orphic verba certa are conveyed in MYSTERY, SINNE, and ADULTERY anagrams. The perjury of which the poet speaks is ostensibly defined in terms of the breaking of vows, and in particular the breaking of marriage vows: In louing thee thou know’st I am forsworne, But thou art twice for|[Sworne] to me loue swearing, IN [Act thy] bed-vow broake anD new faith torNE, In Vowing new hate after new Loue bearing: But why of two othes breach doe I [Accuse Thee, When I breake twenty]: I am pER|iur’D most, For all [MY] vowes are othes but to mis|Use thee: And alL my honeST faith in theE is lost FoR I haue [Sworne] deepe othes of thY deepe kindnesse: Othes of thy loue, thy truth, thy constancie, And to inlighten thee gaue eyes to blindnesse, Or made them [swere] against the thing they see. For I haue sworne thee faire: more periurde eye, To swere against the truth so foule a lie.

S IN-NE A-D V-L A T D ER U Y L-T-E R-Y S I N-N-E

Elizabeth is specifically identified as Elizabeth Stanley: In louing thee thou know’st I am forsworne, But thou art twice forsworne to me loue [swearing, In act thy bed-vow broake] and new faith torne, In vowing new hate after new loue bearing: But why of two othes breach [doe I accuse thee, When I breake twenty]: I am periur’d most, For all my vowes are] othes but to misuse thee: And all my honest faith in thee is lost For I haue sworne deepe othes of thy deepe kindnesse: Othes of THy loue, THy truth, THy constancie, And to inlighten thee gaue Eyes to Blindnesse, Or made them swere Against the thing they See. For I haue sworne thee faire: more periurde eye, To swere against [the truth so fouLE] [a LiE].

S T-AN L-E Y

TH E-B A-S I LE

S T A-N-L E Y

A-S I L-E

This, the penultimate level of the pyramid-triangle (144-152), is dominated by poems comprising or implying eschatological self-appraisal, and exhibiting – often ambiguously and complexly - the poet’s sense of personal culpability. It comprises a final, quasi-confessional stage in a notional ascent towards the apex of the pyramid-triangle, the conventional locus of the possibility of ultimate redemption.

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It is thus that the sonnets at the apex – the Anacreontic Sonnets 153 and 154 - are found to take penitence and purgation as their ultimate theme. These sonnets, which are linked thematically both to Sonnets 1-152 and to A Lover’s Complaint, appear to speak to the state of the poet (and of religion under James I) in the year 1609.

9. The sixth transilition As already noted, the year 1609 is specifically recorded in apices numerales or chronogram in Sonnets 153 and 154 in usual form. In accordance with Classical precedent, the existence of concealed chronogram is confirmed by reciprocally corroborative APICES NUMERALES anagrams in both sonnets. The two sonnets of 1609 and A Lover’s Complaint are found to speak in different ways to Roman Catholism in contemporary England, and to the theme of purgation. While they are thus eminently suited to mark the sixth transilition, they also comprise the ultimate level of the penitential ascent, being dominated by Chaucer’s ful noble way of penitence. While Shakespeare’s imitatio in relation to Anacreon and Lyly is both (a) overtly obvious and (b) covertly corroborated in ANACREON and LILLY/IE anagrams, additional and perhaps more fundamentally important sources are also covertly invoked. In addition, it is necessary to bear in mind that the original reader will have been aware that Sonnets 153 and 154 speak specifically to the year 1609, and to the publication of Shake-speares Sonnets in that year. As already noted, the presence of the printer Thomas Thorpe is emphatically registered in the attributive THOMAS THORPE anagrams that are incorporated in them, as for example in Sonnet 153: Cupid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, A maide of Dyans this aduantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe In a could vallie-fountaine of that ground: Which borrowd from [THis] holie fire of loue, A datelesse liuely heat still tO indure, And grew a seething bath which yet Men proue, Against strange malladieS a soueraigne cure: But at my mistres eie loues brand new fired, The boy for triall needes would touch my brest, I sick withall [THe helpe] Of bath desired, And thether hied a sad distempeR|d guest. But found no cure, the bath for my helPE lies, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye.

TH O M A-S

TH-O R PE

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Specifically, the Anacreontics comprise a response to James I’s mildly scatological prescription (in A Premonition) of a purgative cure for Roman Catholicism. The cure that is promulgated corresponds specifically to the purgative bathing recommended to all and sundry by Thomas Bletnor in his Almanack for 1609. Shakespeare’s consciousness of James’ antiCatholic tendencies had been registered in the proem to King Lear, which contains doubled chronograms of the year 1606 (the year of James I’s Oath of Allegiance), associated with OATH OF ALLEGIANCE anagrams: Ken. I thought the King had more [Affected the] Duke of Albany, then CornwaLL. Glo.It did alwayes seemE so to vs: But now in the diuision [[Of] the KinG|dome, It Appeares NoT whicH] oF the Dukes hee valewes Most, for qualities are so weigh’d, that Curiosity in neither, can makE choise of eithers moity.

O-A T-H

A LL E O G-I-A F N C E

Here, the proemial location of the OATH OF ALLEGIANCE anagrams suggests that an interpretation of the dramatist’s strategic programme is involved, and that Shakespeare conceives of Lear’s self-destructive examination of his daughters in terms of a demand not in truth for love, but for a formal statement of allegiance from each.121 The Oath of Allegiance (a topical issue at the date of the play’s composition) is thus envisaged in quasi-allegorical form as a perverse act on the part of one who would aspire to the high perfection of a loving Christian monarch. Again, this is not of course to maintain that King Lear is a play “about” the Oath of Allegiance. A somewhat similar motive appears to underlie Sonnets 153 and 154. The title-page of Bletnor’s Almanack provides a vivid insight into the topicality of Sonnets 153 and 154 in 1609. The almanac’s presentation in the form of “A Prognostication” explains its particular aptness Shakespeare in relation to James’ A Premonition). It should perhaps be explained as this point that the almanacs of the period were published in advance of the commencement of the almanac year: A Prognostication, for this present yeare of our Lord GOD. M. DC. IX. Thomas Bletnor, practitioner In Physicke

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Elizabeth Lane Furdell describes the almanacs of the period in her Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England: They contained useful information about phlebotomy, bathing, zodiacal references, and general medicine; the accompanying kalender marked the proper days for medical treatment with black and red crosses. Separate from them was the prognostication, which contained information gleaned from the almanac, and heralded the future. 122

In particular, Bletnor lists the appropriate zodiacal times for purging by bathing: And that the Medicine may worke with better successe, Purge euer in the wane of the Moone, with this consideration also, that: Bath for: Bath for: Bath for:

Hot diseases, the Moone in Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces, and in a Time or Sextile of Iupiter or Venus Cold diseases, the Moone in Ares, Leo, or Sagitari, and in a Time or sextile of Mars or Sol Clenlines, the Moone in Libra or Pisces, & in a Time or Sextile of Venus

Sonnets 153 and 154 appear to refer (inter alia) to the affinity between such statements as Bletnor’s “in a Time of Sextile of Iupiter or Venus” and Lily’s “Iupiters Well, which extinguisheth a firie brande, and kindleth a wet sticke”.123 Shakespeare’s ALMANACKE, THOMAS BLETNORE and LILLIE agrams are indicated in the annotated version of 153 below, in which the disposition of the chronogram is seen to cohere with that of the extensae of the ALMANACK anagram: Cupid laid by his brand [And felL a sleepe], A Maide of DyAN|s this aduantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quiCK|ly steepE In a could vallie-fountainE of that ground: Which [Borrowd from [THis] holie fire] of loue, A datelesse [Liuely] heat stILL tO indure, And grew a seeth|Ing bath which yet Men prouE, AgainsT strange malladieS a soueraigne cure: But at my mistres eie loues brand New fired, The boy fOR triall beedes would touch my brest, I sick withall the helpE of bath desired, And thether hied a sad distemperd guest. But found no cure, the bath for my helpe lies, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye.

A-L M-AN A-CK E B TH L O E M T A-S N OR E

C MD IIII V L-ILL I-E

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As always, the effect of the anagrams is to re-contextualize the overt dimension of the text. It then becomes clear that purgation by bathing for “Clenlines” is aptly conducted in what Bletnor describes as the “Time of sextile of Venus”. The syncopic anagram of SEXE in “SEXtilE of Venus” invokes the extended use of sexus in Latin to refer to penis or cunnus. It is ironically paradoxical, the poet implies, that “the bath for my helpe lies, /Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye” (where my helpe is the purging of sin, and my mistres eye is, in the sexual vocabulary of the period, my mistress’s vagina). Shakespeare’s ultimate theme of purgation is, however, especially relevant to James I, who in A Premonition takes issue with Roman Catholic doctrine: And first for the blessed Virgin MARIE, … I reverence her as the mother of Christ … But I do not mocke her and blaspheme against God, calling her not only Diua but Dea, praying her to command and controule her Son, who is her GOD; and her SAVIOUR … … CHRISTS CROSSE must have a particular priuiledge (they say) and bee worshipped ratione conctactus. But first we must know what kind of touching of CHRISTS body drew a virtue from it; whether euery touching, or onely touching by faith?

James’s conventional vilification of the Papacy is thinly veiled: So as to continue herein my formerly purposed Methode, of the Time, Seat, and Person of AntiChrist; this place doth clearely and undenyably declare that Rome is or shalbe the seat of that Antichrist

The mala dies predicted by the monarch are quoted verbatim but in another guise in Shakespeare’s “strange malladies”. James’s Speech to Parliament of 1603/4 is perhaps Shakespeare’s primary source, referring as it does to the metaphorical purging and cleaning of the Catholic Church: I acknowledge the Romane Church to be our Mother Church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions, as the Iewes were when they crucified Christ: and as I am none enemie to the life of a sicke man, because I would haue his bodie purged of ill humours; no more am I enemie to their Church, because I would haue them reforme their errors, not wishing the downethrowing of the Temple, but that it might be purged and cleaned from corruption: otherwise how can they wish vs to enter, if their house be not first made cleane?

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James’s audience will have noted his ENEMA and SHITTE anagrams in the context of the purging of the body of ill humours. These anagrams in particular appear to have comprised the compositional motivation for Sonnets 153 and 154. Marked in phonetic resemblance and inclusio by phrasal repetition in “I am enemie … am I enemie”, these anagrams are not untypical of the anagrams which are found to be incorporated in public oration, as for example in Cicero’s speeches. They are accompanied in James’s speech by a conspicuous CATHOLICKE anagram: I acknowledge the Romane Church to be our Mother Church, although defiled with some infirmities and [Corruptions, As the Iewes were] when THey crucified Christ. And as I am none [ENEMie tO the LIfe of A] [SicKE] man, because I would haue HIs body purged of ill humours; no more am I enemie To Their Church, becausE I would haue them reforme their errours, not wishing the downethrowing of the Temple, but that it might be purged and cleansed from corruption: otherwise how can they wish vs to enter, if their house be not first made cleane?

S HI T-T E

C-A TH O-LI CKE

ENEM A

The figura extensa of the ENEMA anagram is self-referential as to the anagram within it: I am none ENEMie to the life of A sicke man, because I would haue his body purged of ill humours

The condensa is similarly apt: ENEMA: A sickE MAN

The invective against Rome becomes explicity scatological in James’s SHITTE anagrams and once again the shared condensa is aptly disposed: CATHOLIKE; SHITTE; ENEMA: THE LIfE Of A SICKE MAN

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Shakespeare identifies his source by including attributive IAMES STUART anagrams and mandatory quotations from the prior text, and here again the paired sonnets exhibit a reciprocal symmetry. Shakespeare’s AENEMA (sic) anagrams follow the contemporary Latinate spelling. The “point” of the phrase “a soueraigne cure” at 153.8 is now apparent, and the gesture is corroborated and completed by the associated AENEMA anagram: Cupid laid by his brand [and fell a sleepe, A] maide of Dyans this aduantage found, And his loue-kindling fire did quickly [steepe [In A could vallie-fountaine of that] ground: Which borrowd froM this] holiE fire of loue, A datelesS|e liuely heat still to indure, [And grew a] seething bath which yet mEN proue, Against strangE Malladies A [Soueraigne cure: But] aT my mistres [eie loues brand new fired, The boy for triall] needes Vvould touch my brest, I sick with|All the helpe of bath desired, And thether hied a sad distemperd guesT. But found no cure, the bath for my helpe lies, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye. The little Loue-God lying once a sleepe, Laid by his side his heart inflaming brand, Whilst many Nymphes that vou’d chast life to keep, Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand, The fayrest votary tooke vp that fire, Which many Legions of true hearts had warm’d, [And [So The Generall of hot] desirE, Was sleeping by a] VirgiN hand disarm’d. This brand shE quenched in A coole Well by, Which froM loues fiR|e tooke heaT perpetuall, Growing A bath and healthfull remedy, For men diseasd, but [I my Mistrisse thrall, CAME there for cure and thiS] by that I proue, Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue.

I-A M-E S S T V A R-T

A-EN E-M-A

A-E S-T N V E A M R-T A I AME-S

In Sonnet 153 Shakespeare’s AENEMA anagram is so disposed as to reveal the poet’s close adherence to James’ text: [And grew a] seething bath which yet mEN proue, Against strangE Malladies A soueraigne curE:

A-EN E-M-A

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The concluding epithet in “a Soueraigne cure” speaks poignantly to the sense in which James’s aenema is a sovereign’s cure. When the anagram is substituted for the textual matrix of its extensa, and the resulting hybrid combination is read in the manner of Hermes, the message is wittily apt in relation to the sovereign’s purgative prescription: ÆNEMA … a soueraigne cure

9. A Lover’s Complaint To reiterate: Sonnets 153 and 154 are transitional in that they cap and encapsulate Sonnets 1-152, while at the same time preparing the way for the pro-Catholic allegory of A Lover’s Complaint. The latter poem takes “maiden vertue rudely strumpeted” as its ostensible theme, with particular reference to the Earl of Essex’s alleged seduction of the virginal Mary Fitton. The poet apparently envisages this as the act of debauchery which established the pattern (it is implied) for her subsequent sexual liaison with William Herbert, her pregnancy, her abandonment by Herbert, and her unfortunate later life. In the allegory, Essex’s strumpeting of the virginal Mary Fitone (sic) is likened to the strumpeting in Jacobean England of the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary, Mother of God. It is thus that, following his usual practice, Shakespeare bases his poem on an onomancy that finds (a) in the forename Mary an expressive affinity with the name of the Virgin Mary and (b) in the surname Fitone the fie!-tone (the note of complaint) of George Gascoigne’s Complaynt of Phylomene. An extract from the Complaynt will serve to demonstrate Shakespeare’s logic in this respect. It will be recalled that Gascoigne analyses the song of the nightingale to find “fye” in the “second note”: Hir second note is fye, In Greeke and latine phy, In english fy, and euery tong That euer yet read I. VVhich word declares disdaine, Or lothsome leying by Of any thing we tast, heare touche, Smel, or behold with eye. In tast, phy sheweth some sowre. In hearing, some discorde, In touch, some foule or filthy toye, In smel, some sent abhorde.

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In sight, some lothsome loke, And euery kind of waie, This byword phy betokneth bad, And to cast things away. So that it seemes hir well, Phy, phy, phy, phy, to sing, Since phy befytteth him so well In euery kind of thing. Phy filthy lecher lewde, Phy false vnto thy wife, Phy coward phy, (on womankinde) To vse thy cruel knife. Phy for thou wert vnkinde, Fye fierce, and foule forsworne, Phy monster made of murdring mould VVhose like was neuer borne. Phy agony of age, Phy ouerthrowe of youth, Phy mirrour of mischeuousnesse, Phy, tipe of al vntruth. Phy fayning forced teares, Phy forging fyne excuse, Phy periury, fy blasphemy, Phy bed of al abuse. These phyes, and many moe, Pore Philomene may meane, And in hir selfe she findes percase, Some phy that was vncleane.

Shakespeare goes so far as to give Gascoigne the role of the “reuerend man that graz’d his cattell ny, / Sometime a blusterer”. Shakespeare’s revered predecessor is decorously epitomized as a blusterer because the name Gascoigne speaks to Gascony and thus invokes the traditional reputation of the Gascons for boasting, bombast, and bluster.124 Similarly, he grazes “his cattell ny” because his poem of phy is composed in the pastoral mode. Once again, Shakespeare’s references to Gascoigne’s Complaynt should not be categorised as mere “allusions”. In accordance with ancient convention and Renaissance practice the earlier Complaynt is deemed to be brought into quasi-anagrammatic, revelatory apposition to

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Shakespeare’s poem, and in effect to become co-present in the covert dimension of the text: 50These often bath’d she in her fluxiue eies, And often kist, and often gaue to teare, Cried O false blood thou register of lies, What vnapproued witnes doost thou beare! Inke would have seem’d more blacke and damned here! This said in top of rage the lines she rents, Big discontent, so breaking their contents. A reuerend man that graz’d his cattell ny, Sometime A blusterer, that the ruffle knew Of Court of Cittie, and had let go by 60The swiftest hours obserued as they flew, Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew: And priuiledg’d by age, desires to know In breefe the [grounds and motiues of her wo]. So Slides he] downe vpon his greyned bat; And COmelY distant sits he by her side, When hee agaiNE desires her, being satte, Her [GreeuancE] with his hearing tO deuide If that from him theR|e may be ought applied Which may her suffering exstasie asswaGE, 70Tis [Promist in the charitie of age]. Father she saies, thougH in mee you behold The iniurY of many a blasting houre;, Let it not telL your Iudgment I am old, Not age, but sorrow, Ouer me hath power; I Might as yet have bENE a spreading flower Fresh to my selfe, If I had selfe applyed Loue to my selfe, and to no Loue beside.

G-A | S CO-Y NE G-E-O R GE P | H Y L O M-ENE

The sufficiently interested reader will be able to trace a number of verbatim quotations from Gascoigne in Shakespeare’s poem. Here again, these words and phrases are not merely “borrowed” from the prior text. By long-established convention they are deemed to be transposed within it and to invoke with present immediacy a quasi-anagrammatic interconnection between the participating texts. The informing conceit which finds Gascoigne’s phy note as a fie tone in Fitone is identified at the very outset in the mode of construction of the thematic FITONE anagrams in Stanzas 1-3. The poem as a whole is imbued with regularly occurring FITONE anagrams (just as Venus and

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Adonis is imbued with recurrent ADONIS anagrams), but those in the proem are associated with separately constructed, self-sufficient FIE and TONE anagrams: From off a hill whose concaue wombe reworded, A plaintfull story from a sistring vale, My spirits t’attend this doble voyce accorded, And downe I laid to list the sad-tun’d tale, Ere long espied a [FIckle maid full palE], [Tearing Of papers, breaking rings a twaiNE], Storming her world with sorrowes wind and raine.

FI-E T-O-NE

Vpon her head a plattid hiue of straw, Which [Fort|Ified her visage] from the SunnE, F-I-E Whereon the [thought might thinke] sometime it saw T [The carkas Of a beauty spent and donNE]: O-NE Time had not sithed all that youth begun, Nor youth all quit, but spight of heauens fell ragE, Some beauty peept, through lettice of Ǖear’d age. Oft did she heaue her Napkin to her eyne, Which on it had conceited characters: Laundring the silken [FIgures in the brinE] [That seasON|ed woE] had pelleted in teares, And Often reading what contents it beares: As ofteN shrieking vndistinguisht woE, In clamours of all size both high and low.

FI-E T-ON-E

The aptly disposed formae which mark and partake of the FIE anagrams also serve as the formae of the FITONE anagrams - i.e. “Fickle maid full palE”, “Fortified her visagE”, and “Figures in the brinE”. Shakespeare’s proemial MARIE FITONE anagrams are closely associated the text in customary manner: From off a hill whose concaue wombe reworded, A plaintfull story from a sistring vale, My spirits t’attend this doble voyce accorded, And downe I laid to list the sad-tun’d tale, Ere long espied a [FIckle [MAid full pale]], TeaR|Ing Of papers, break-Ing Rings a twaiNE, Storm|Ing her world with sorrowes wind and raineE

MA R-I E

MA R I-E

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The debaucher Essex is strongly evident from the outset also, the proem being densely imbued with elevated ESSES anagrams. In the interests of clarity of presentation a selection only is noted in the margin below: From off a hill whose concaue wombe reworded, A plaintfull Story from a Sistring valE My [SpiritS t’attend thiS doble voicE] accorded, And downe I laid to list the [Sad-tun’d talE], Ere long e|[Spied a fickle maid full pale], Tearing of paperS, breaking ringS a twaine, [Storming her world with SorrowES wind and rainE]. Vpon her head a plattid hiue of [Straw, Which fortified her visagE] from the [SunnE], Whereon the thought might thinke [SometimE] it saw The carkaS of a beauty [Spent and donE]: TimE had not Sithed all that youth begun, Nor youth all quit, but [Spight of heauenS fell ragE], [[SomE] beauty peept, through lettice] of [Sear’d agE]. Oft did [[She heaue] her Napkin to her EynE], Which on it had conceited characterS: Laundring the [Silk|En figureS in the brinE] That [Seasoned woE] had pelleted in teareS, And often reading what contentS it bearES: As often [Shrieking vndiǕtinguiǕht woE], In clamourS of all [SizE] both high and low.

S-E SS-E

S-E S-S-E

S E S-S-E

S-E | S S-E

S-E S S-E

S | S-E S-E S-E-S S-E S-E S-S-E

S-E S S-E S-E S S-E

S E-S S-E

E-S S-E S E-S S-E S-E | S-E S-E S S S-E S-ES S-E

A shared condensa is comprised in the epithet “story from a sistring vale”: MARY FITONE; ESSES: A plaiNT|full StoRY froM a SIString valE

For Shakespeare and his age the phrase “sistring vale” inevitably invokes the possibility of a reference to a Sister’s or Nun’s veil, and hence by metonymy a reference to Roman Catholicism. In such a context and in the conspicuously arcane context of lines 1-2, the poet’s play on vale and veil inevitably (i.e. inevitably in the period) extends to the veiled mode of allegorical discourse. The word-play is mutually corroborative, both semantically and aesthetically, in relation to the anagrammatic specification, as here in the VEILE and ALLEGORIA anagrams which are also present in the proem. The original reader, tutored and experienced in the reading of binary text will have noted that the VeilE anagram is marked by the forma in “ValE” itself, and that the extensa of the VEILE anagram is capable of being read in terms of the V-shaped mark of Hermes

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(a register, as we have seen, of linguistic concealment). The particularly clear, hermeneutic ALLEGORIA anagram is not unusual in Renaissance texts: From off a hill whose concaue wombe reworded, A plaintfull story from a sistring [Vale], My spirits t’attend this doblE voyce accorded, And downe I laid to list the sad-tun’d tale, Ere long espied [A fickle maid fuLL paLE TearinG Of papers, breaking RIings A] twaine, Storming her world with Sorrowes wind and raine.

V E I LE

A-LL-E G-O-RI-A

The allegory turns upon the shared name Mary (or Marie), and Shakespeare ensures that a MARIE anagram is also capable of being read in conjunction with his ALLEGORIA anagram. The MariE anagram is aptly marked by the forma in “[Maid full palE]”: From off a hill whose concaue wombe reworded, A plaintfull story from a sistring vale, My spirits t’attend this doble voyce accorded, And downe I laid to list the sad-tun’d tale, Ere long espied [A fickle [MAid fuLL pale] A-LL-E MA TearinG Of papers, breaking RIngs A] twainE, G-O-RI-A RI-E Storming her world with sorrowes wind and raine.

It is important to bear in mind in relation to Shakespeare’s ALLEGORIA that hermeneutic and thematic anagrams of this kind are not naïve devices used perversely by an otherwise great poet, but are conventional and usual requirements of the Graeco-Roman literary tradition, as perpetuated in the Renaissance. The introductory phrase “plaintfull story from a sistring vale” is found to be semantically plural and typically complex in its expository function. It also speaks, for example, to the sistering of Gascoigne’s Philomena and Procne. It refers also to the notional sistering of Elizabeth Vere and Mary Fitton, who were both (dishonoured) Maids of Honour to Elizabeth I. In the literary context it refers also to the sistering of Elizabeth Vere and Mary Fitton in the 1609 volume. Elizabeth Vere, whom Shakespeare (as already noted) had identified as having allegedly succumbed to Essex’s advances, is also given a role in A Lover’s Complaint. She is the “sacred Sunne” who is said to have been charmed by the debaucher’s “parts”, and her sistring role is specified in Shakespeare’s ELISABETH VERE and MAIDE OF HONOUR anagrams:

Sonnets How mightie then you are, Oh [Hear]|e me tell, The broken bosoms that tO me belong, [Haue emptied all their] fountaines iN my well: And mine I powre yOUR OceaN all amonge: I strong ore them and yOU ore me being strong, Must for youR victorie vs all congest, As compound loue To phisick your cold brest.

401

H O-N OU R

H O N OUR

[My parts had powre] to charme A sacred Sunne, M-A Who disciplin’d I Dieted in gracE, I-D-E Beleeu’d her eies, when they t’ assaile Begun, All vowes And consecrations giuing place: A O most potentiall loue, [VowE, bond, noR SpacE] S V-E-R-E In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine I For thou art all and [alL things els are thinE]. A-S L-E | When thou Impressest what [are precepts worth I Of stale exampLE]? when thou wilt inflame, LE How coldly those impediments stand forth O-F [Of] wealth oF filliall feare, lawe, kindred fame, Loues armes are peace, gainst rule, gainst fence, gainst shame And sweetens in the suffring pangues it beares, The Alloes of all forces, shockes and feares.

The allegorical significance of the poem is specifically identified in the richly anagrammatic opening stanzas, which contain attributive and hermeneutic IAMES STUART, PREMONITIONE, and CATHOLIKE anagrams. As Mary Fitton was abused by Essex, the poet appears to say, so the Virgin Mary (representing the Church of Rome) has been abused by James: From off a hill whose [Concaue] wombe reworded, A [Plaintfull story from a sistR|ing valE] My spirits t’attend THis doble voyce accorded, And downe I laid tO list the sad-tuN’d tale, Ere long esp|Ied a fickle maid fulL pale Tear|Ing Of papers breaK|ing rings a twaiNE, [STorming her world with sorrowes wind and Rain.

C A TH O L I-K-E

Upon her head A [platt|ed hiuE] of straw, Which fortified heR visage froM the Sunne, Whereon the thoughT might thinke sometime [IT saw The carkas] of A beauty spent and donne. TiME had not scithed all that youth begun, Nor youth all quit, but spight Of heaueNS fell ragE, Some beauty peept through lettice of sear’d age.

P R E-M O N IT-ON

P-R-E M O-N I T-I-O-NE ST U-A R I T A ME E-S

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The condensa confirms the allegorical identification of the maid full pale with the Virgin Mary and thus with Roman Catholicism: IAMES STUART, PREMONITIONE, CATHOLIKE A fiCKLE Maid full palE Tearing Of Papers breaking RIngs A twaINE

It is only when A Lover’s Complaint has been read and understood in terms of its allegoria that a fully coherent, retrospective view can be taken of the pyramid-triangle of the sonnets, and of its relationship with the ultimately penitential theme of the volume entitled Shake-speares Sonnets. To reiterate, an anagrammatic reading reveals that the first transilition (at Sonnet 18) inaugurates a zone of loving intimacy and emotionally disruptive erotic triangulation (18-62). The second transilition (at Sonnet 63) introduces a stage in the ascent characterized by more thoughtful poems in a wider context, and which culminate in Sonnts 97 and 98 in celebrations of Wriothesley’s politically courageous and humane rescue of the Danvers brothers. The third transilition at Sonnet 99 inaugurates a collection of sonnets which are primarily concerned with the ending of the poet’s loving intimacy with his patron-lover. The fourth transilition at Sonnet 126 begins with a retrospective view of Wriothesley’s place in the lower levels and refers mainly to the source of the poet’s adulterous sin with his purported mistress. The fifth level (126-143) therefore concerns heterosexual rather than homosexual love, and here Sonnet 129 (with its post-coital disgust) and Sonnet 141 (with its theme of heterosexual sinning) are typical. The fifth transilition at Sonnet 144 (comprising Sonnets 144-152) marks a further quantum of progression towards penitence in its thematic concern with the poet’s marital obligations and specifically with adultery and the breach of marriage vows as mortal sin. The sixth transiliation is comprised in Sonnets 153/4, which represent in hendiadys the apex of the pyramid-triangle. It is in this ultimate level of the Mountain of Purgatory that the ful noble wey of penitence culminates: Ther is a ful noble wey and ful covenable, which may nat fayle to man ne to womman that thurgh synne hath mysgoon fro The righte wey of jerusalem celestial; and This wey is cleped penitence.

The evidence of other texts, including Sonnet 146 (see above) and The Tempest, would tend to suggest that the incorporation in 1609 of the proCatholic Sonnets 153/154, and the allegorical Complaint in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is intended as a quasi-liturgical gesture bearing some resemblance to the last rites of confession and absolution of the Roman

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Catholic Church. In formal terms, if not biographical, the ancient poetic rite of the Orphic verba certa is in effect adopted and adapted to a Christian version of confession and purgation. It is perhaps a literary rather than a personal gesture.

10. Last rites In view of the newly re-discovered sense in which the volume known as Shake-speare’s Sonnets (1609) is capable of being construed in terms of the confession and absolution of the Roman Catholic last rites, it may be helpful to compare it with the valedictory gesture that is arguably comprised in The Tempest (1610). An anagrammatic reading of The Tempest reveals the play’s close affinity with Shake-speares Sonnets, the latter volume having been arranged and completed in contemplation of publication in 1609. As many commentators have surmised, The Tempest was written after details of Sir George Somers’ shipwreck in the Bermudas (1609) had been reported in William Strachey’s ‘A true reportory of the wrecke’ in July 1610. Typically attributive SOMERS and STRACHY anagrams in the opening lines of The Tempest would tend to suggest a terminus a quo based on the date of publication of A true reportory: Mas. Bote-swaine. Bot. Heere Master: What cheere? Mas. Good: [Speake tO th’MarinERS]: fall too’t, yarely, or wE Run our selueS a ground, bestirre, bestirre.. Bot. Heigh my hearts, cheerely, cheerely my harts: yare, yare: Take in the toppe-sale: Tend to th’Masters whistle: Blow till thou burst thy winde, if roome enough. Mas. Bote-swaine. Bot. Heere Master: What cheere? Mas. Good: [Speake To th’Mariners: fall Too’t, yarely], or we Run our selues A ground, bestirre, bestirre.. Bot. Heigh my hearts, CHeerelY CHeerelY my harts: yare, yare: Take in the toppe-sale: Tend to th’Masters whistle: Blow till thou burst thy winde, if roome enough.

S-O-M-ERS

S-O-M E-R-S

S-T R-A | CH-Y

ST-R-A | CH-Y

An anagram in the modern form STRACHEY is also possible (as in “Speake To … Run …A ground … CHEerlY”), but experience teaches that the STRACHY extensae are more idiomatic and more likely to represent

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Shakespeare’s intention. Here again, the possibility of either form is corroborative of authorial intent, rather than the opposite. In addition, the proem contains conventionally disposed double chronograms of the year MDCX in usual form. The opening exchange carries the numeral letters M, D, C, and S in acrostic positions in relation to words: {Bote-Swaine. / Heere Master: What Cheere? / GooD}

If this chronogram is intended to reflect the date of composition, it would be consistent with the terminus a quo (as noted above) and with the first recorded performance of The Tempest in 1611. Shakespeare marks the existence and location of the chronograms with conventional YEARE and TIME anagrams. The registration of the date is further corroborated by duplicitous word-play on “yare” and year in relation to “Yarely …/ yare, yare”. The operative numeral letters of the first and second chronograms are also emphasised in the text below: Mas. Bote-Swaine. Bot. Heere Master: What Cheere? Mas. GooD: Speake to th’Mariners: fall too’t, [Yarely, or wE] run our selues A ground, bestirre, bestirre. Bot. Heigh my hearts, Cheerely, cheerely My harts: yare, yare: Take in the toppe-Sale: TenD to th’Masters whistle: Blow till thou burst thy winde, if roome enough.

Y-E-A RE T-I-M E

TI-ME

Many commentators have interpreted the Epilogue to The Tempest as comprising Shakespeare’s adieu to the stage. The clear ADIEU anagram in the closing lines of Prospero’s address to the audience may not of course be definitive in this context, but adieu was customarily used in the period to signify a leave-taking, and Shakespeare himself uses it with an implication of finality in Sonnet 57 in “When you haue your seruant once adieue”. The sense in which adieu signifies “to God” is relevant here, as is the customary use of adieu on the occasion of a death: [And my ending is Despaire, Vnlesse I be reliEU]|’D by praier Which pierces so, that It assaults Mercy it selfE, and frees all faults. As yoU from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your Indulgence set me free.

A-D I-EU

A D I E U

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The figura condensa of the ADIEU anagram is aptly located in the final couplet of the Epilogue: ADIEU: As yoU from crimes woulD pardon’d be, / Let your Indulgence set me freE.

At the same time, the predominately religious theme of the covert dimension of the text would also suggest that Prospero’s “adieu” is also intended as an aspect of a last rite in which the unclean soul is commended a Dieu (“to God”). The word “Indulgence”, signifying the remission of sins, also speaks to the ultimate theme, while Shakespeare’s Latin anagrams of “praier” (see below) avoid the vernacular and speak directly to the Roman Catholic liturgy.125 Sequential ORO (“I pray”), PATER NOSTER (“Our Father”), and AMEN anagrams follow the general form of the Lord’s Prayer. In the historical and literary contexts, the Latinate form is suggestive of Roman Catholic practice: Now my Charmes are all ore-throwne, And what strength I haue’s mine owne. Which is most faint: now ’tis true I must be heere confinde by you, [OR sent tO] Naples, Let me [NOt Since I haue my Dukedome goT, And [PArdon’d The deceiuER]], dwell In this bare Island, by your Spell, But release me from my bands With the helpe of your good hands: Gentle breath of yours, my Sailes Must fill, or else my [Proiect failes, Which was to pleasE]: Now I wanT Spirits to ENforCE: Art to inchant, And my ending is des[paire, Vnlesse I] be relieu’d by [praier Which pierces] so, that it assaults Mercy it selfe, and frees all faults. [As you froM crimE|s would pardoN]’d be, Let your Indulgence set me free.

OR-O PA-T-ER

NO S-T ER

P E-N-I-T E-NCE

A-M-E-N

This interpretation is corroborated by Shakespeare’s verbatim quotation of the resonant sequence pro redemptione … pro spe salutis from the Commemoration for the Living in the Roman Canon of the Mass: Memento, Domine, famulorum, famularumque tuarum [insert NAME] et [insert NAME] et omnium circumstantium, quorum tibi fides cognita est,

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Chapter Four et nota devotio, pro quibus tibi offerimus: vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis … pro redemptione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis et incolumitatis suæ: tibique reddunt vota sua aeterno Deo, vivo et vero.

This Roman prayer, for named persons and for the congregation at large, is offered “for the redemption of their souls, and in the hope of their salvation and their well-being”. The named persons in Shakespeare’s version of the Commemoration are capable of being read in terms of the SHACESPERE and PROSPERO anagrams which are also incorporated in the Epilogue. It is now seems likely that the name Prospero is ultimately derived from the the concatenation “PRO~SPE~RO” within the resonant words “PRO SPE salutis et incoluminatis suae: tibique reddunt vota sua aeterno Deo, vivo et veRO”. Shakespeare’s PRO REDEMPTIONE and PRO SPE SALUTIS would tend to support such an interpretation. The figura extensa of the PROSPERO anagram is coterminous with the extensae of the PRO SPE anagrams, a customary indicator of inter-verbal affiliation: Now my charmes are all ore-throwne, And what strength I haue’s mine owne. Which is most faint: now ’tis truE I must be heere confinde by you, Or sent to Naples, let me not [Since I Haue] my Dukedome got, And pardon’d the de|Ceiuer, dwell In this barE Island, by your SPEll, But [RElease] mE from my bands With the helpe of your gooD hands: GentlE breath of yours, my [SAiles] Must filL, Or else my [PRoiect failes, Which was TO] pleasE]: NovV I want [SPirits to enforcE]: Art tO iN|chanT, And my ending IS despairE, Vnlesse I be Relieu’d by [PRaier Which pierceS] sO, that it assaults Mercy it selfe, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your Indulgence set me free.

S-H A-C E-SPE R-E

RE D E M-P T-I O-N E

PR O SP E PR O

SA L V T IS

PR O SP E R O

The Orphic ritual of poetic confession is expressed in terms of MYSTERY, SINNE, PENITENCE, and INCEST anagrams, the latter being pervasive throughout the Epilogue. In the interests of clarity of presentation, a selection only of the relevant anagrams is shown below: Now [MY] CharmeS are all ore-throwne, And whaT [Strength I haue’s mine] owne.

SI

Sonnets Which [Is most faint]: Now ’tis truE [I must be heeR|e CoN|findE bY you, Or SenT] to Naples, Let mE not [SINce [I haue] my Dukedome goT], And pardoN|’d the de|Ceiuer, dwell [IN this barE Island, by your Spell, BuT] release me from my bandS With the helpE of your good hands: Gentle breath of yours, my Sailes Must fill, or else my proiecT failes, Which was to please: now [I want] Spirits to eN|force: Art to [IN|Chant], And my Ending is despaire, VN|lesS|e I be relieu’d by praier Which pierCES so, thaT iT assaults Mercy [IT] selfe, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardoN]’d be, Let your INdulgenCE SeT me free.

407 I-N N-E

I-N C-E S-T

SIN N E

I N-C E-S T

IN S E S T

I N-C E S T

I N S-E S-T

INC E S T

I I N N CES-T CES T

I N CE-S-T

IN-CE-S-T

Although the ADIEU anagrams will inevitably invite a possibly facile biographical reading of the Epilogue, the INCEST anagrams will perhaps prove more recalcitrant in this respect. In any event, they are found to speak to a theme specific to the play, namely the relationship between Prospero and Miranda. The long, proemial exchange between Prospero and Miranda at 1.2.1-75 (for example) is imbued throughout with hermeneutic INCEST and LOT anagrams. For the purposes of the present study, an annotated sample extract from the speeches must suffice: I haue with such prouision in mine Art So safely ordered, that there [Is no soule No Not] so much perdition as an hayre Betid to any CreaturE [IN the vessel Which thou heardST Cry, which thou saw’st sinke: Sit] downE, For thou muST now know farther. Mir. You haue often Begun to tell me what I am, but stopt And [Left] me tO a bootelesse [Inquisition, Concluding, stay: NOT] yeT. Pro. The howr’s now Come The very minutE byds thee ope thine eare, Obey, and be attentiue. CanST thou remember A time before we came vnto this Cell? [I doe not] thinke thou canst, for then thou was’t not Out three yeeres old.

I N C-E ST

I N C E ST I-N-C E

IN C E ST

L-O T

L OT

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Chapter Four Mir. Certainely Sir, I can. Pro. By what? by any other house, or person?

S T

Shakespeare’s reference to Lot suggests that the concept of incest between father and daughter, as in Pericles, is contemplated. Philip Stubbes’ Anatomie of Abuses (1583) was popular in the period, and is relevant here: Drunknes caused Lot to commit most shamefull incest with his owne two Daughters, who got them both with Child, he not perceuing it, neither when they lay downe, nor when they rose vp. 126

Prospero’s additional covert references to the Penitentiall Psalmes (sic) and to the hyssope (sic) of Psalm 51 are again suggestive of a metadramatic gesture of some kind, and for some readers may suggest a turning from the pagan art of poetry to the possibility of Christian redemption: Now [MY Charmes are] all ore-throwne, And what STrength I haue’s [mine owne. Which is most faint: now ’tis truE I [Must be] heeR|e confinde bY you, Or Sent to Naples, Let me not Since I haue my Dukedome goT, And pardon’d the deceiuER, dwell In this bare Island, bY your spell, But release me from my bands With the [Helpe] of Your good hands: Gentle breath of yours, my SaileS Must fill, Or else my [Proiect failes, Which was to pleasE]: Now I want Spirits to enforce: Art to InchanT, And my Ending is despaire, VN|lesse I be relieu’d by [Praier Which pierceS] so, That It Assaults Mercy it selfe, And frees aLL faults. As you froM crimES would pardon’d be, Let your Indulgence set me free.

MY ST E R-Y

P E-N E I-T E N T-I A-LL

M-Y S T ER Y

S-I N N-E

H Y-S-S O-P

P S-A L M-ES

Shakespeare’s HyssopE anagram is marked by the forma in HelpE, a reminder of the eschatological use of the word helpe in Sonnets 153 and 154. The verbatim quotation of the key word hyssop(e) would tend to confirm the poet’s invocation of the words of Psalm 51 in the Bishops’ Bible:

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Haue mercie on me O Lorde accordyng to thy louyng kindnesse: accordyng vnto the multitudes of thy mercies wype out my wickednesse. Washe me throughly from myne iniquitie: and clense me from my sinne. For I do acknowledge my wickednesse: and my sinne is euer before me... Purge thou me with hyssop and I shalbe cleane: washe thou me, and I shalbe whyter then snowe. Make thou me to heare ioy and gladnesse: let the bones reioyce which thou hast broken. Turne thy face from my sinnes: and wype out all my misdeedes. Make thou vnto me a cleane heart O Lorde: and renue thou a ryght spirite within me. Cast me not away from thy presence: and take not thy holy spirite from me.

Notes 1

For the conventional form of the sonnet sequence, see John Kerrigan (ed.), William Shakespeare The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 13-18. See also Katherine Duncan-Jones (ed.), Shakespeare’s Sonnets (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1997), 431. 2 The protocols attaching to concealed chronogram are described in Chapter Two. 3 Alastair Fowler, Triumphal Forms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 183-197. 4 Thomas P Roche, Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences (New York: AMS Press), 1989. See also Katherine Duncan-Jones, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 97-101. 5 I am grateful to Alastair Fowler for the opportunity of discussing with him in private correspondence some emblematic and chronogrammatic aspects of titlepages and frontispieces in the period. 6 For inverted or chiastic quotation, see for example Isaac Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 232268. Kalimi defines “chiasmus between parallel texts” as “the presentation of textual components in an order that is the inverse of the order in which they appear in another literary framework, so that placing the two texts opposite one another gives rise to a chiastic structure” (232). He notes that “[Moshe] Seidel assumed that biblical authors made use of this technique whenever they wanted to quote a phrase from another book”, and that “[Raphael] Weiss explained it in picturesque language: “Just as a person ties the end of one string to the beginning of the next, so the poet, wishing to consider something that has been said, does it first by referring to the latter part and then to the earlier part” (232). 7 Fowler, Triumphal Forms, 185. 8 Thomas Watson, The hekatompathia or Passionate centurie of loue, 1582, LXXX-LXXXLII. 9 Ricks’ remarks on the revelatory function of anagram are helpful in this context: “The anagram … may be understood as one form that metaphor may take, in its bringing together (as does rhyme) likeness and unlikeness revelatorily”.

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Christopher Ricks, “Shakespeare and the Anagram”, in Proceedings of the British Academy: 2002 Lectures, ed. P J Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 111-146, at 111. 10 Alastair Fowler, ‘Anagrams’, Yale Review, 95 (2007): 33-43. 11 For the concept of the “triangle rising on 17 as base”, see Fowler, Triumphal Forms, 189. 12 Fowler, Triumphal Forms, 131. 13 Fowler, Triumphal Forms, 187. 14 See pages 293-4. 17 Colin Burrow (ed.), The Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 131. 19 In the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary, French trou (“hole”) is used to signify either cunnus or anus, according to context. Shakespeare’s sonnets addressed to Henry Wriothesley are frequently found to incorporate TROU anagrams, as for example in the conventionally seductive Sonnet 6, where the otherwise unspecified “some place” is identified in a TROU anagram: …[TReasure thOU] some place, TR-OU With beauties treasure ere it be selfe kil’d The first quatrain of Sonnet 40 is composed around word-play on true and trou: Take all my loues, my loue, yea take them all, What hast thou then more then thou hadst before? No loue, my loue, that thou maist [TRue] loue call, TR All mine was thine, before thOU hadst this more: OU 20 For Varro’s etymological word-play see Frederick Ahl, Metaformations: Wordplay and Soundplay in Ovid and Other Classical Latin Poets (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 17-63. The VARRO anagram is aptly disposed in “[VARRying tO] other words”. 21 G Blakemore Evans (ed.), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: The Sonnets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 111-115. 22 J B Leishman, Themes and Variations in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, (London: Hutchinson, 1961), 51. 23 Mary North, The Anonymous Renaissance: Cultures of Discretion in TudorStuart England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 15. 24 John Kerrigan (ed.), William Shakespeare: The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint (London: Penguin, 1995), 21. 33 For the historical background to contemporary criticism of Elizabeth I, see Julia M Walker (ed.), Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 1998. 34 Care must be taken to distinguish (a) Shakespeare’s decorously conventional invocation of ancient homoerotic norms from (b) the “homosexual” interpretation of the sonnets contained in Joseph Pequigney’s Such is my Love: A study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1985. 35 Compare OED’s citation (1684) of pederastist, another variant form of pederast. 36 Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997), 114.

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37 For the early use of the word wanke in English, see Paul S Cohen, “On the Etymological relationships of wank, swank, and wonky”, in Hans Sauer and Gaby Waxenberger (eds.), English Historical Linguistics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012), 21-27. 38 See Cohen, “On the Etymological relationships”, 21-17. 39 The exploitation of the paronomasia of not and knot is widespread in the period. See William Bellamy, “Ben Jonson and the Art of Anagram”, in Richard S Peterson (ed.), Jonsonian Soundings (New York: AMS Press), 2015. 40 For Davies’ Gullinge Sonnets, see Clare Howard (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (New York: Columbia University Press), 1941. 41 Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetoricke, 1553. 42 See note 37. 43 For the euphemistic use of verbs of eating and completing, see J N Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London: Duckworth), 1982, 138-141, 144. 44 French âne (“ass”) is commonly invoked in Medieval and Renaissance English word-play and sound-play involving the English indefinite article (an) and the name Anne. 45 Vendler comes close, noting what she calls “the graphic overlaps among stars, astrology (an error for Astronomy), constant, and art” (her emphasis). See Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 106. Referring to Vendler’s “graphic overlaps”, Ricks notes that “the overlapping can be seen to crystallise in stars/art, and adds that “this enjoys the manifest guidance of “my knowledge I deriue” and of “I read”. See Ricks, Shakespeare and the Anagram, 113. 46 On emblematic letters, see Max Nänny, “Alphabetic Letters as Icons in Literary Texts”, in Max Nänny and Olga Fischer (eds.), Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999), 173-198. See also J Drucker, The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (London: Thames & Hudson), 1995. 47 For Erasmus on predicting and foretelling, see Betty I Knott, “Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style”, in The Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 454457. 48 Maurice Pope, “The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek: A Dialogue”, in The Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 374. 49 See note 47. 50 See note 6. 51 Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 114. 52 The variant orthographical forms Nicke and Hillyerde are not uncommon in the period. Hypocoristic versions of forenames are customarily used in concealed anagram, as for example in Will Shakespere, Kit Marlowe, and Tom Nashe. 53 The letters concerned are “acrostic” in the sense that they form the first and/or last letters of individual words. See Chapter Two (on chronogram). 54 It is idiomatic for anagrams of key words to be expressed in both English and Latin.

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55

See note 40. The word-play in Sonnet 7 in “he reeleth from the day/die” is comparable. 57 Compare, for example, the typically duplicitous opening line of Ben Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’, which Jonson celebrates as the sacred temple of the Muses: Thou art not, Penshurst Thou art knot, “Pen’s Hurst” 58 Guy Lee (ed. and tr.), Virgil: The Eclogues (London: Penguin, 1984), 77. 59 Virgil incorporates hermeneutic AETAS, AESTAS, and AETERNITAS anagrams in the proem to the Eclogue (lines 1-3): 56

Forte sub [[[Arguta consed|EraT ilicE Daphnis], A-E compulER|antque gregeS] Corydon et Thyrsis] in unum, T Thyrsis ou|Is, Corydon distenTAS lacte capellAS, AS ambo florentes aetatibus, Arcades ambo, et cantare pares et repondere parati.

A-E S-T AS

A-E-T ER-N I-TAS

60 In the covert dimension of the text of his plays and poems, Shakespeare customarily invokes the homophony of life and leafe (both apparently pronounced as modern leaf) and time and teeme (pronounced as modern teem). As also in the case of the homophony of day and die, key indicators as to pronunciation in the covert dimension of text have been largely invisible. As one might expect, this is especially important in the case of vowels. The strategy of Sonnet 7, for example, revolves around the homophony of day and die, but it is only by reading the covert dimension of the text in counterpoint to the overt dimension that the “point” of Sonnet 7 is revealed. Helge Kökeritz (the traditional authority on Shakespeare’s pronunciation) is found to rely in part upon an anachronistic view of Shakespeare’s word-play in terms of “puns”, and to make judgements on pronunciation from necessarily partial readings of the relevant texts. Helge Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1953. 61 See Metamorphoses 4. 18-19. 62 On calendar apocalypse, see Henri Focillon, L’an mil (Paris: Gallimard), 1952; See also Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (New York: Oxford University Press), 1967. 63 Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 16-17. 64 On the elevation of ELIZA and ELIZABETH REGINA anagrams in the period, see Bellamy, “Ben Jonson and the Art of Anagram”. 65 On scatological invective see Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humour (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1992. Chapter Five, entitled “Literature Based on Invective” is of particular interest in this context. See also Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 291. 66 For Ben Jonson’s use of FIMUS and SHIT anagrams (following Horace), see Bellamy, “Ben Jonson and the Art of Anagram”. 67 See Chapter Three. 68 See note 67.

Sonnets

69

413

For the emblematic use of letters of the alphabet, see note 46. Jonson’s use of the word exscribe has inevitably been misunderstood by postEnlightenment critics. He addresses Mary Wroth: I that haue beene a louer and could shew it, Though not in these, in rithmes not wholly dumbe, Since I exscribe your Sonnets, am become, A better louer, and much better Poet. For the commonly found word-play on since and sins, see Shakespeare’s Sonnet 105, with its covert admission that “Sins all alike my songs and praises be”. 71 Stephen Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 227-230. 72 Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 228. 73 For the war/whore pun, see also Gail Paster (ed.), Thomas Middleton: Michaelmas Term, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 84, n.12. For Shakespeare’s customary word-play on warre and whore see for example Troilus and Cressida, Act 2 Scene 3. An anagrammatic reading reveals that Troilus and Cressida is informed throughout by the prior devise that finds an apt conceptual relevance in the linguistic affinity between warre and whore. 74 Compare the scatological prompt in “Peace, here she comes. / Oh excellent motion” in Act 2 Scene 1 of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which Silvia (in a meta-dramatic gesture) also figures as the reviled Elizabeth Vere. 75 For the homophony of life and leafe see note 60. 76 Compare Sonnet 30, where the “waste” of six s’s in line 1 (“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought”) is compensated by the restoration of the six s’s in the concluding line: But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend) All losses are restord, and sorrowes end. 77 On Plato’s Mirror and the associated themes of the attainment of self-knowledge and the betterment of the self, see Shadi Bartsch, The Mirror of the Self (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 76-83. 78 Robert Lanier Read, “The Problem of Self-Love”, in E Beatrice Batson (ed.), Shakespeare’s Christianity (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2006), 35-56, at 38. 79 See note 96. 80 Jonathan Walters, “Invading the Roman Body”, in Judith P Hallett and Marilyn B Skinner (eds.), Roman Sexualities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 29-43, at 39. 81 Arthur Golding translates Ovid’s boastfully elongated PENIS anagram in the envoi to Metamorphoses in terms of “My lyfe shall everlastingly bee lengthened still by fame” (where lyfe signifies penis in the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary). 82 See Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (London, 1646), Book IV. 83 See note 6. 84 It is Gerald Hammond who has come closest to understanding the ironical diction and underlying theme of Sonnet 81. The sonnet, he notes, “begins by concentrating on the young man’s life and the poet’s death and ends by entombing 70

414

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the young man”. Gerald Hammond, The Reader and Shakespeare’s Young Man Sonnets (London: Macmillan, 1981), 105. 85 For examples of anagrammatic epitaphs in the period, see H B Wheatley, Of Anagrams: A Monograph Treating of their History from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time (London: Stephen Austin, 1862), 122-172. 86 Piotr Rypson, “Homo Quadratus in Labyrintho: The cubus or labyrinth poem”, in Georgy E SzyĘni (ed.), European Iconography: East and West (Leiden: E J Brill, 1996), 7-17, at 10. 87 Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 276. 88 Matthias Bauer, “Iconicity and Divine Likeness: George Herbert’s ‘Coloss. 33’” in Max Nänny and Olga Fischer (eds.), Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999), 215-234. 89 On the metrical basis of Herbert’s pattern poems, see Martin Elsky. “George Herbert’s Pattern Poems and the Materiality of Language: A New Approach to Renaissance Hieroglyphics”, ELH, 50 (1983), 245-260. 90 See note 90. 91 See also Hammond, The Reader and Shakespeare’s Young Man Sonnets, 103. 92 Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices Libri Septem (Geneva-Lyons), 1561. 93 On fellatio and irrumatio, see J N Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 125134. See also Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson, “Revisiting Roman Sexuality: Agency and the conceptualization of penetrated males”, in Mark Masterton (ed.), Sex in Antiquity (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 449-453. 94 On Nashe and Aretino, see Neil Rhodes, Elizabethan Grotesque (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), Chapter 2, Part 2. 95 H S Bennett, English Books and Readers: 1558-1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), vol. 2, 99. 96 On possible reflections of the Danvers incident in Shakespeare’s plays and poems, see David Evett, Discourses of Service in Shakespeare’s England (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), 82-87. See also G P V Akrigg, Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968), 41-46. 97 See note 96. 98 The protocols attaching to concealed chronogram are described in Chapter Two. 99 On Latin vena in the sexual sense, see Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 35. 100 Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 324. 101 Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 445. 102 OED’s earliest citation for trilogie is (“1661 T Blount Glossographia”). The appearance of the word in Blount’s Glossographia: or A Dictionary Interpreting the Hard Words of Whatsoeuer Language, now used in our refined English Tongue would suggest an established usage. Shakespeare may also have invoked Greek triologia. 103 One recent decipherer of Shakespeare’s sonnets has detected the letters of the name Wriothesley in this line, and has suggested that this might be intentional. See Roy Winnick, ‘“Loe, here in one line is his name twice writ”: Anagrams, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and the Identity of the Fair Friend’, Literary Imagination, 11 (2009): 254-277.

Sonnets

104

415

The protocols attaching to concealed chronogram are described in Chapter Two. The episode is described in Akrigg, Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, 140-142. 106 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 1576, Book 11. 107 The protocols of recessed technopaegnion are described in Chapter Two. 108 Tr. Guy Lee. 109 See for example Plautus’ indecent word-play involving lunula (“little moon”) and anellus (“ring”) in Epidicus (5.1.33). 110 Stephen Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 436. 111 Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 39. 112 Andrew Gurr (all unwitting in 1971 of anagramma figuratum) is to be congratulated for having identified (a) the relevance of the onomastic conceit in “hate away”, and (b) the phonetic traces of the HATHAWAY anagram in the closing lines of the sonnet. Andrew Gurr, “Shakespeare’s First Poem: Sonnet 145”, Essays in Criticism, 21 (1971): 221-6. 113 Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 503. 114 Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 504. 115 Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 611. 116 On early modern censorship as removal and replacement, see Richard Burt, “(Un)Censoring in Detail: The Fetish of Censorship in the Early Modern Past and the Postmodern Present”, in Robert C Post (ed.), Censorship and Silencing; Practices of Cultural Regulation (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1998), 17-41. See also David M Loades, Politics, Censorship and the English Reformation (London: Pinter), 1991; C S Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2003; Janet Clare, Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority: Elizabethan and Jacobean Censorship (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 1990. 117 The identity of the figure wearing a laurel wreath in the title-page of Gerard’s Herball has been the subject of considerable controversy. However, an anagrammatic reading of related texts and the pictorial MICHAEL DRAYTON anagram below the figure confirm the reference to Meres’ poet laureate. The pictorial anagram is comparable with the similarly constituted ELIZABETH REGINA anagram on the reverse of the Phoenix Jewel in the British Museum. 118 Laureate images of Drayton include: (1) the “Laureate Portrait” (1599) in the National Portrait Gallery, London; (2) the anonymous image of the laureate poet in the title-page of Gerard’s Herball (1598); (3) William Hole’s laureate portrait in the frontispiece to Drayton’s Poems (1619); (4) the frontispiece to Drayton’s The Bataille of Agincourt (1627); (5) the laureate portrait of Drayton (artist unknown) in the Dulwich Picture Gallery (1628); (6) William Marshall’s line engraving in Drayton’s Poems (1637); and (7) the engraving (after William Hole) published by William Richardson in 1796. A line engraving of Drayton wearing the laurel wreath was published by Thomas Rodd the Elder as late as 1816. The verse below the engraving of 1816 refers to Drayton as “his Ages Poet-Laureat Crown’d”. 105

416

119

Chapter Four

Shakespeare’s phrase “the Dyers hand” (Sonnet 111) also envisages the imbuing of text with concealed anagrams in terms of the dyeing of a textile cloth. The use of imbuo in Classical Latin poetry to mark concealed anagram is comparable. 120 Adams notes that “verbs meaning ‘urinate’ are often used of ejaculation in Latin”. See Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 142, 245-246. 121 For an account of Lear’s trial of his daughters as a demand for “absolute allegiance” that is “merely couched in courtly diction”, see Lesley Kordecki and Karla Koskinen, Re-Visioning Lear’s Daughters (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2010), 28. 122 Elizabeth Lane Furdell, Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 76. 123 Lyly’s reference to Jupiter’s Well is based on Pliny’s account. See Leah Scragg (ed.), Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 273. 124 The supposed Gascon tendency to boastfulness and bombast was traditional. See Xavier de Planhol and Paul Claval, An Historical Geography of France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 133-134. OED’s earliest citation for the noun gasconade in the sense of “extravagant boasting” or “bombast” is 1652. 125 On the use of Latin in the liturgy in Shakespeare’s England, see W P Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation: The Struggle for a Stable Settlement of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1968. See also Daniel Swift, Shakespeare’s Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2103; Julian Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Early Modern and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1998. 126 The story of Lot and his daughters is one of Stubbes’ “Examples against drunkennesse”. Under the heading of “Proofes against Whordome”, Stubbes cites Our Sauiour Christe: “In an other place, he saith: be not deceiued, for neither Whoremonger, Adulterer, Fornicator, incestuous person nor such like shall euer enter into the kingdome of heauen”.

CHAPTER FIVE OTHELLO

1. Date The opening lines (1-6) of Othello are duplicitously imbued with a double chronogram which registers the year MDCIII, corresponding to the period from 25 March 1603 to 24 March 1604 in the modern notation.1 The play, which is now discovered to be based in large part upon James I’s Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, was presumably written in response to James’ accession in 1603. Daemonologie was first published in Edinburgh in 1597, and subsequently (following James’ accession) in London in 1603. If the chronogram marks the date of composition (and such an attribution must inevitably be problematic), it would accord with the first recorded performance of the play at court on 1 November 1604. The existence and location of the chronogram is conventionally marked by TIME and DATE anagrams which are comparable with those described in previous chapters: Rod. Neuer tell me, I [Take] It Much vnkindly That thou (Iago) who hast had My pursE, As if [The strings were thinE], should’st know of this. Iag. But you’l not heare me. If euer I did DreaM Of such A matT|er, abhorrE] mE. Rod. Thou Told’st mE. Thou [Did’st hold him in thy hATE].

T-I-M E D A T-E

T I-M-E T D I-M A-T-E E D-ATE

The textual extent of the chronogram is registered in inclusio by phrasal repetition in “I take it much vnkindly … If euer I did dream of such”. In the extract below the respective matrices of the paired figures are set in brackets - {thus} – and the operative numeral letters are emphasised in the text and noted in the right margin: Rod. Neuer tell me, {I take It MuCh vnkInDly} That thou (Iago) who hast had my purse, As if ye strings were thine, should’st know of this. Iag. But you’l not heare me. {If euer I dId DreaM

MDCIII

MDIII

Chapter Five

418 Of suCh} a matter, abhorre me. Rod. Thou told’st me. Thou did’st hold him in thy hate.

C

The protocols of chronogram - involving inter alia coruscatio, incrementio, and iustificatio – were explained and illustrated in Chapter Two, and are applicable in the present instance. In addition, the doubling of the chronogram typically permits a notional testing of the respective MDCIII-matrices against each other. Such an opportunity for internal justification is marked by the unobtrusive pairing of Rodorigo’s “I take it much vnkindly” and Iago’s response in “If euer I did dream of such”, in which metrical repetition and the rhyme of much and such also play a part: {I take It {Mu(Ch) vnkInD|ly}

M D C + III

{If euer I dId {DreaM Of su(Ch)}

M D C + III

It will be recalled that when the consonant-diphthong ch is situated at the end of a word (as in much), the c within it is deemed capable of occupying an acrostic position in relation to that word. The metrical, syllabic, and phonetic resemblance between the phrases “I take it mu(Ch)” and “did dream / Of su(Ch)” is reciprocally corroborative with regard to the sanctioning of the letter c in the diphthong in both instances. The opening lines of the play comprise the conventional locus of concealed chronogram, and the audience or reader will accordingly anticipate its occurrence within the inaugural exchange between Rodorigo and Iago. In the present instance the textual extent of the double chronogram is additionally marked by tense-differentiation involving Shakespeare’s word-play on the verb “to tell”. In an alternative reading of the text, “to tell” has the sense of “to tell the time”, as for example in Sonnet 12: “When I doe count the clock that tels the time”. The paired chronograms are set between Roderigo’s “Neuer tell me” (which looks to the future) and Iago’s Thou toldst me” (in which the perfect tense refers duplicitously to the completion of the chronogram). In effect, the concealed apices numerales are set within “Neuer tell me … Thou toldst me”, a coherent concatenation (in the manner of Hermes) which conceals the grammatical structure of not … but, the linguistic device which is found to inform the play in all of its dimensions.

Othello

419

2. Authorship A proemial, signatory SHAKESPERE anagram in usual form is incorporated in lines 10-15, together with dedicatory and attributive IAMES anagrams. While the formal version or “printer’s spelling” of Shakespeare’s surname was as now, Shakespeare and his contemporaries appear in general to have customarily used the form SHAKESPERE in anagram. The anagrammatist’s variant in SHACESPERE is also frequently used. A selection only of the anagrams is shown below: Iag. Despise me If I do not. Three great ones of the cittie, [In person|All [Suite to make ME] HiS] Lieutenant Off-capp’d to him: And by the Faith of Man I Know my pricE, [I AM worth no worsse a place. But he (as louing hiS] owne Pride, and purposES) Euades them, with a bumbast Circumstance, Horribly stufft with Epithites of warRE,

S-H A K-E S-P E RE

I A-M E S

I-A-ME-S I-AM ES

The ShakespearE anagram is carefully marked and inaugurated by the forma comprised in the aptly self-referential phrase “Suite to make mE” (i.e. “set of letters to make me in the form of my anagram”). The shared figura condensa is conventionally located in a duplicitously honorific part of the text, perhaps in the hope of patronage: IAMES; SHAKESPEARE: In PERSonal SuitE to mAKE mE HiS

3. Sources As we have seen, it is also Shakespeare’s custom to cite his primary sources in the opening lines of his plays. In Othello the citations in this context appear to distinguish between a plurality of narrative sources and one overwhelmingly important thematic source, namely James I’s recently published Daemonologie. Several commentators have suggested that the name Othello is based on Jonson’s Thorello, of which Othello is a nearly perfect anagram. Russ McDonald, for example, links Othello’s tragic affliction with Thorello’s comic jealousy and his “strange and vaine imagination” (Every Man In His Humour, 4. 3. 34-35), citing in particular Thorello’s analysis of the pestilence of “fantasie”: 2

420

Chapter Five … like a pestilence it doth infect The houses of the braine: first it begins Solely to work upon the fantasie, Filling her seat with such pestiferous aire, As soone corrupts the judgement, and from thence, Sends like contagion to the memorie, Still each of other catching the infection. (1. 4. 207-13)

It would seem that such an interpretation comes close to the truth, for attributive BEN IONSONE (sic) anagrams are indeed incorporated in the opening lines of the play: Neuer tell me, I take it much vnkindly That thou (Iago) who hast had my purse, As [If the strings were thinE], should’st know Of this. Iag. But you’l Not heare me. If euer I did dream Of Such a matter, abhorre me. Rod. Th(Ou) told’st me, Thou did’st hold him iN thy hatE. Iag. Despise me If I do not. Three Great-ones of the Cittie, ([In personall suite] tO make me his Lieutenant) Off-capt to him: and [By thE faith of maN] I know my price, I am worth no worsS|e a place. But he (as louing his OwNE pride, and purposes) Euades them, with a bumbast Circumstance, Horribly stufft with Epithites of warre, Non-suites my Mediators ...

I-O N S O N-E

I-O N S O-NE

B-E-N

The IONSONE anagrams are closely associated with the doubled IELOUSIE anagrams which form part of the play’s Orphic verba certa: Rod. Neuer tell me, I take it much vnkindly That thou (Iago) who hast had my purse, As [[If ye [Strings were thIN|E], should’st know Of this. S-IN Iag. But you’L Not heare mE. If euer I did dream N-E Of Such a matter, abhorre] me. Rod. Th(OU) told’st me, Thou did’St hold him IN thy hatE. Iag.. Despise me If I do not. Three Great-ones of the Cittie, ([[In personall suite] tO makE me his Lieutenant) Off-capt to him: and [By thE faith of maN] B-E-N I knovV my price, I am worth no worS|e a place. But he (as lou|Ing his OwNE pride, and purposes) Euades them, with a bumbast Circumstance, Horribly stufft with Epithites of warre, Non-suites my Mediators ...

I-E L O U S-I-E

I-O N S O N-E

I-E-L O V-S I-E

I-O N S O-NE

Othello

421

The shared figura condensa is duplicitously addressed to Jonson. It invokes the alternative sense in which the word “strings” (referring to the archetypal lyre) is taken to signify the poetic Muse, and the sense in which “you’l not heare me” is a conventional reference to “you’l knot heare me” (where the play on not and knot is again a conventional reference to the textual knotting of anagram): BEN IONSONE; IELOUSIE; SINNE: If thE Strings werE thINE, Should’st know Of thIS. But yOU’L NOt hearE mE

The narrative sources proper are identified by concealed anagrams of the names CINTHIO, CHAPPUIS (the French translator of Cinthio), and FENTONE (naming Geoffrey Fenton), the composite gesture being marked in duplicitous deixis by the phrase “Three great ones”.3 The close association between Cinthio and Chappuis is registered in proximately situated anagrams which flow from the same letter in “Cittie”: Despise me If I do not. Three great ones of the [[CIttie, IN personall suite To] make me His] Lieutenant) Off-cAPP|’d tO him: and by the faith of man I know my price, I am Vvorth no worsse a place. But he (as louing hIS owne pride, and purposes) Euades them, with a bumbast Circumstance,

C IN-T-HI O

C H APP V IS

The shared figura condensa of the paired CINTHIO and CHAPPUIS anagrams is comprised in lines 9-10 (i.e. in the ambient text at the beginning of the associated acrostics). Fenton is separately identified: Despise me If I do not. Three great ones of the cittie, (In personall suite to) make me his Lieutenant) Off-capp’d to him: and by the [Faith of man I know my pricE], I am worth No worsse a place. BuT he (as louing his OwNE pride, and purposes)

F E-N T-O-NE

The condensa of the FENTON anagram is wittily comprised in an honorific motto (in which the n of man is asked, in accordance with traditional licence, to serve twice): FENTON: ThE Faith Of maN

422

Chapter Five

The primary thematic source for the play is found to be James I’s Daemonologie. An anagrammatic reading reveals that the imminent or recent accession of James I appears to have been a major contributing factor in the changes in the nature of Shakespeare’s plays from 1603. In order to indicate his (honorific) indebtedness to James’s recently published Daemonologie, Shakespeare incorporates IAMES and DÆMONOLOGIE anagrams in close association with those other anagrams (noted above) which specify the authors of the narrative sources: Iago. [Despise me] If I do not. Three great ones of the cittiE, [In personall suite to make me his] Lieutenant Off-capp’d to him: And by the Faith Of MaN I know my price, I am worth nO worsse a place. But he (as LOuinG (h)Is owne pridE, and purposes)

D E M O-N O LO-G-I-E

I A-M E S

The forma of the DaemonologiE anagram is comprised in the phrase “Despise mE”, a phrase which is intended to invoke in etymological word-play Latin despicere (“to look down on, as from a height”). Spenser uses the word “afflicted” (invoking Latin afflictus, “laid low”) in a somewhat similar context in the proem to The Faerie Queene, where the elevation of the monarch is figured in upward-facing ELISA and ELISABETH anagrams.4 The elevated (i.e. backward-facing) extensae of the IAMES anagrams are marked on this occasion by the forward-facing forma. A selection of the relevant extensae is shown below: Iago. [De|Spise me] [If I do not. ThreE great ones] of the cittie, [In person-All SuitE to make ME hiS] Lieutenant Off-capp’d to him: And by the Faith of MAn [I know my price, [I AM worth no worsse a place. But he (as louing his] owne pride, and purposES)

S E A S-E M MA I I

I-A-ME-S I-AM E-S

4. The sin of jealousy In a play composed in contemplation of James I’s treatise on Daemonologie, Shakespeare explores the theme of jealousy in terms of both sin and mania. An anagrammatic reading reveals that Iago is dramatized in the form of a demonic agent who (in Jonson’s words) “like a pestilence … doth infect / The houses of the braine”. Shakespeare imports James’ claim that demonic agents “can make folkes to becom phreneticque or Maniacque, which likewise is very possible to their master to do, sence they are but naturall sicknesses”. At the same time Shakespeare’s verba certa confirm the central significance for the play of

Othello

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the sinne of jealousy. The richly anagrammatic opening lines are also imbued with MYSTERY(E), SINNE, and IELOUSIE anagrams in usual form: Neuer tell me, I take it much vnkindly That thou (Iago) who hast had [MY] purse, As [If the STtrings wER|e] thinE, should’st know of this. Iag. But You’L not heare mE. If euer I did dream Of [Such a matter, abhorre] me. Rod. ThoU told’st me, Thou did’|St hold him In thy hatE. Iag. De|[Spise me If I do Not. Three Great-ones of the Cittie, ([IN personall suitE] to makE me his Lieutenant) Off-capt tO him: and by the faith of maN I know my price, I am Vvorth no worsS|e a place. But he (as lou|Ing his OwNE pride, and purposes) Euades them, with a bumbast Circumstance, Horribly stufft with Epithites of warre, Non-suites my Mediators ...

S-IN N-E

S I-N N-E

I-E L O U S-I-E

I-E-L O V-S I-E

MY ST-ER Y-E

S Y-N N-E

5. The thematic source Othello is informed and unified by certain key themes in James I’s Daemonologie (a treatise on what Hans Peter Broedel calls “demonic encounters on earth”), and in particular by the concept of demonic agency. James describes four types of demonic agency:5 That kinde of the Deuils conuersing in the earth, may be diuided in foure different kindes, whereby he affrayeth and troubleth the bodies of men: For of the abusing of the soule, I haue spoken alreadie. The first is, where spirites troubles some houses or solitarie places: The second, where spirites followes vpon certaine persones, and at diuers houres troubles them: The thirde, when they enter within them and possesse them: The fourth is these kinde of spirites that are called vulgarlie the Fayrie. Of the three former kindes, ye harde alreadie, how they may artificiallie be made by Witchcraft to trouble folke: Now it restes to speake of their naturall comming as it were, and not raysed by Witch-craft. But generally I must for-warne you of one thing before I enter in this purpose: that is, that although in my discourseing of them, I deuyde them in diuers kindes, yee must notwithstanding there of note my Phrase of speaking in that: For doubtleslie they are in effect, but all one kinde of spirites, who for abusing the more of mankinde, takes on these sundrie shapes, and vses diuerse formes of out-ward actiones, as if some were of nature better then other. 6

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James’s “second and third types of the kinde of the Deuils conuersing in the earth” are categorised in Daemonologie (3.2) in terms of outward and inward intrusion, forms of abuse that are instantly recognisable in relation to Othello: As to the next two kindes, that is, either these that outwardlie troubles and followes some persones, or else inwardlie possesses them: I will conjoyne them in one, because aswel the causes ar alike in the persons that they are permitted to trouble causes ar alike in the persons that they are permitted to trouble: as also the waies whereby they may be remedied and cured.7 And first for these that followes certaine persones, yee know that there are two sortes of them: One sorte that troubles and tormentes the persones that they haunt with: An other sort that are seruiceable vnto them in all kinde of their necessaries, and omittes neuer to forwarne them of anie suddaine perrell that they are to be in. And so in this case, I would vnderstande whither both these sortes be but wicked and damned spirites.8

An anagrammatic reading of the play reveals that these passages are of central importance for Othello, which is found upon close reading to reflect them (a) in terms of overall dramatic strategy, (b) in speech, (c) in action, (d) in vocabulary, and (d) in hermeneutic anagram throughout. As already noted, the conventions of the Classical poetic enable Shakespeare not merely to “allude” to Daemonologie but to go further and to create a quasi-anagrammatic, inter-textual connection between the two texts, and thus to bring the source-text into revelatory apposition to the dramatist’s own. Both the dramatist and his educated audience are fully aware of the convention that the link thus invoked is authenticated as belonging to the realm of Hermes by virtue of the poet’s close adherence to regulatory protocols. In particular, the poet must incorporate attributive anagrams identifying his source, and must transpose within his own work key words and/or or phases quoted verbatim from the source-text. A quasianagrammatic transposition of linguistic elements is thus effected, and is deemed to create a formal, paradigmatic relationship between the texts. The word paradigm is used here in its simplest (and etymologically accurate) sense of “a side-by-side showing”, a concept that embraces both apposition and revelation. In due accord with this convention, key passages from Daemonologie (and other less important sources) are invoked at dramatically apt moments in Othello, and the progress of the drama is interpreted and amplified by reference to them. Here, once again, the work is effectively self-interpreting. The opening lines of Othello begin, for example, by transposing the title page of James’s book insofar as it represented by IAMES and

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DAEMONOLOGIE anagrams. From the very outset, hermeneutic DEMONICKE AGENT anagrams specifically define Iago as a demonic agent, and thus indicate his intended dramatic function. In one dimension of the play, Iago functions as the Witch described by James: … and so he may lay on these kindes, aswell as anie others. They can make spirites either to follow and trouble persones, or haunt certaine houses, and affraie oftentimes the inhabitantes: as hath bene knowen to be done by our Witches at this time. And likewise they can make some to be possessed with spirites, & so to becom verie Dæmoniacques: and this last sorte is verie possible likewise to the Deuill their Master to do, since he may easilie send his owne angells to trouble … 9

In accordance with traditional protocols, Shakespeare “conceals” the quotation of key words from the text that he intends to bring into revelatory apposition to his own. James’s word follow in “They can make spirites either to follow and trouble persones” is (for example) quoted verbatim but unobtrusively in Act 1 Scene 1, in close association with DEMONIKE AGENT anagrams. Shakespeare has evidently based the naming of his demonic agent upon the prior onomastic conceit that finds Latin I! ago (Go! I drive”) expressively concealed within Iago. Shakespeare seems to have related the English word agent to the presentparticiple stem of ago in agent-. Iago’s following, troubling, and “driving” of Othello is thus deemed onomastically natural to him. In the annotated extract below, Shakespeare’s DEMONIKE AGENT, I AGO, and DRIUE anagrams are shown in usual form, while overt instances of the word follow and its cognates are emphasised in the text: Iago. Why, there’s no remedie. ‘Tis the cursse of Seruice; Preferment goes by Letter, and affection, [And not by old Gradation, where Each second Stood Heire to]’th’first]. Now Sir, be iudge your selfe, Whether I in any iusT terme am Affin’d To loue the Moore? Rod. I would not follow him then. Iago. O Sir content you. I follow him, to serue my turne vpon him. We cannot all be Masters, nor all Masters Cannot be truely follow’d. You shall marke Many [A dutious and knee-crookinG knauE; That] ([Doting oN his ownE] obsequious bondage) Weares ouT his time, Much like his Masters Asse, For naught but Prouender, & when he’s Old Casheer’d. Whip me such hoN|est knaues. Others there are Who trym’d In Formes, [And visaGE|s of Dutie,

A-G O I

D-E M O N I

A-G-E N T

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Chapter Five KeepE yet] their hearts attending oN themselues, And throwing buT showes of Seruice on their Lords Doe well thriue by them. And when they haue lin’d their Coates Doe themselues Homage. These Fellowes haue some soule, [And such a one do] [I] professe my selfe. For (Sir) It is as sure as you [Are RodoriGO], Were I the Moore, [I] would not be Iago: In following him, I follow but my selfe. Heauen is my Iudge, not I for loue and [Dutie], But seeming so, for my peculiaR end: For when my outward Act|Ion [Doth demonstrate] The natiUE act, and figuR|e of my heart In Complement externe, ‘tis not long after But I will weare my heart vpon my sleeUE For Dawes to pecke at; I am not what I am.

K-E T

N T

A GO I

I A-GO

D R I UE

A GO

D R I UE

Iago’s Heraclitean “I am not what I am” speaks inter alia to Shakespeare’s customary word-play on not and knot (where knot is participial and once again refers to an anagram that is knotted in the textile of the text). An alternative and dramatically significant reading is thus revealed: “I am knot what I am (in onomastic anagram), and my name in Latin (I! ago) signifies Go! I drive - and that imperative reflects my function as demonic agent”. The Latin verb ago is capable of invoking an apt range of senses, including: (1) “to drive, lead, conduct, impel”; (2) “to follow, pursue, press”; (3) “to guide, govern”; and (4) “to endeavour to move or persuade”. Iago’s function as demonic agent, specifically identified at the outset in DEMONICKE AGENT anagrams, is reflected in similarly framed anagrams at relevant points as the play progresses. When reading such anagrams it is necessary to bear in mind that Hermetic quotation is frequently effected inversely (as in AGO I or AGENT DEMONICKE), and that in the case of two associated words it is also customary for one word to appear once, and for the other word to be repeated in expolitio throughout the passage: Neuer tell me, I take it much vnkindly That thou (Iago) who hast had my purse, As if ye strings were thine, should’st know of this. Ia. But you’l not heare me. If euer I did dream Of such a matter, abhorre me. Rodo. Thou told’st me, Thou did’st hold him in thy hate. Iago. [Despise me] [If I do not. ThreE Great-ones] of the Cittie, (In person|All suite to Make ME hiS Lieutenant)

D E M

I A-M-E-S

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Off-capt to him: and by the faith Of maN O-N I know my price, [I AM worth nO worss]e a place. O But he (as LOuinG (h)Is owne pridE, and purposes) LO-G-I-E Euades them, with a bumbast Circumstance, Horribly stufft with Epithites of warre, Non-suites my Mediators. For certes, saies he, I haue already chose my Officer. [And what] was he? A For-sooth, a Great Arithmatician, G OnE Michaell Cassio, a FlorEN|tine, E (A Fellow almosT damn’d in a faire Wife) N That neuer set a Squadron in the Field, T Nor the [DEuision of a Battaile] knows MOre theN a Spinster. Vnlesse the Bookish TheorICKE: Wherein the Tongued Consuls can propose As Masterly as he. Meere pratle (without practise) Is all his Souldiership. But he (Sir) had th’election; And I (of whom his eies had seene the proofe [At] Rhodes, at Ciprus, and on others Grounds A-G Christen’d, and HeathEN) musT be be-leed, and calm’d EN-T By Debitor, [And Creditor. This Count]|er-caster, He (in Good time) must his Lieutenant be, And I (blesse the marke) his Mooreships [AuntieNT]. A Rod. By heauen, I rather would haue bin his hanG|man. G Iago. Why, there’s no remedie. | 'Tis the cursse of SeruicE; E PrefermeNT goes by Letter, and affection, NT [And not] by old Gradation, where each second Stood Heire to’th’first. Now Sir, be iudgE your selfe, Whether I iN any iusT terme am Affin’d To loue the Moore?

I-AM ES

A G EN T DE MO-N-ICKE

A G E-NT

A-G E N-T

Iago’s active diabolism is by no means restricted to his tormenting of Othello and the induction of maniacal jealousy. It is inherent in Iago’s response to the world in general, and in his treatment of those with whom he comes into contact. Shakespeare’s hermeneutic DEMONICKE AGENT anagrams render Iago’s ensuing abuse of Brabantio self-interpreting in this context: Rod. Heere is her Fathers house, Ile call aloud. Iag. Doe, with like timerous accent, and dire yell, [As when (by Night] and NegliG|ence) the Fir Is spied iN populus Citties. Rodo. WhaT hoa: Brabantio, Signior Brabantio, hoa. Iago. [Awake: what] hoa, Brabantio: Theeues, Theeues. Looke to your house, your daughter, and your Bag|s, Theeues, Theeue|s. Bra.Aboue. What is thE reasoN of this terrible Summons? WhaT is the matter there? Rodo. Signior is all your Familie within? Iago. Are your [Doores loc’d?

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Chapter Five Bra. Why? WhereforE] ask you this? Iago. Sir, y’[Are rob’d, for shaM|e put] ON your Gowne, Your heart Is burst, you hauE lost halfe your soule Euen now, Now, very now, an old blaCKE Ram Is tupping your whiT]|e Ewe. Arise, arise, [Awake the snort]|ing Cittizens with the Bell, Or else the deuill will make a Grand-sire of you. Arise I say. Bra. What, hauE you lost your wits? Rod. Most reuerend SigN|ior, do you know my voice? Bra. NoT I: what are you? Rod. My name is Rodorigo.

E M-ON A-G I E CKE N T A G | E N T

Shakespeare’s hermeneutic anagrams prompt us – and are intended to prompt us – to a clearer understanding of what is going on at any point in the play and in the play overall. Here, for example, the phrases “Your heart is burst” and “the deuill will make … of you” invite a reading in terms of diabolic “blasting”, where blast has the sense (OED, 6.c.) of “Any blasting, withering, or pernicious influence; a curse”. Such a reading is confirmed by locally precise BLASTE anagrams, which serve to interpret the particular import of Iago’s utterances at this point: Iago. Sir, y’are rob’d, for shame put on your Gowne, Your heart is [Burst, you haue] Lost halfe your soule Euen now, now, very now, An old [BLacke] Ram IS tupping your whiTE Ewe. Arise, arise, Awake the SnorT|ing Cittizens with the Bell, Or else the deuill will make a Grand-sirE of you.

B-L A S-TE

BL A S-T E

This part of the scene is connected thematically to its sequel in Act 1 Scene 3 by the Duke’s repetition of Iago’s word “rob’d”. Brabantio’s “bruized heart” has indeed been “pierc’d” by Iago’s demonic curse. The passage is imbued with regularly disposed BLASTE anagrams: Duke. The rob’d that smiles, steales something from the Thiefe, He robs himselfe, that spends a [Bootelesse] griefe. Bra. So Let the Turke of Cyprus vs [Beguile], We Loose it not so long As we can Smile: He beares The SentencE well, that nothing beares, But the free comfort which from ThencE he heares. But he beares both the Sentence, and the sorrow, That to pay griefe, must of poore Patience [Borrow. These] Sentences, to Sugar, or to GalL, [Being strong on both sides, Are] EquiuocalL. But wordS Are words, I neuer yeT did hearE: That the bruized heart waS pierc’d through the eares. I humbly beseech you proceed to th’Affaires of StaTE.

B L A-S T-E

B L A S-T-E

B L-A S T-E

B-L A S TE

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In Act 5 Scene 2 we learn that Brabantio has indeed died of a broken heart. There is dramatic irony in Gratiano’s suggestion that Brabantio might now “curse his better Angell”, an epithet which inaugurates a reminder of the blast of the DEMONICKE AGENT in the form of a further BLASTE anagram: Gra. Poore Desdemon: I am glad thy Father’s dead, Thy Match was mortall to him: and pure greefe Shore his old thred in twaine. Did he liue now, This sight would make him do a desperate turne: Yea, curse his [Better AngelL from his side], And fall to Reprobance. Oth. ‘Tis pittifull: but yet Iago knoweS That she with Cassio, hath The Act of shamE A thousand times committed.

B-L A S T-E

There is irony also in Brabantio’s claim that words in themselves cannot pierce “the bruiz’d heart”: But he beares both the Sentence, and the sorrow, That to pay griefe, must of poore Patience [Borrow. These] Sentences, to Sugar, or to GalL, [Being strong on both sides, Are] EquiuocalL. But words Are words, I neuer yet did heare: That the bruized heart waS pierc’d through the eares. I humbly beseech you proceed to th’Affaires of StaTE.

B L A S-T-E

B-L A S TE

When Brabantio claims that words are merely words he emphasises the opposite truth, namely that Iago’s words are themselves active agents.10 When Iago says “Your heart is burst”, he is uttering the very blasting curse which in the diabolic dimension of the play does indeed pierce Brabantio’s “bruiz’d heart”. And Brabantio unwittingly speaks to the central theme of the play when he implies that “These Sentences” (these ways of thinking) expressed in terms of mutually exclusive opposites, such as Sugar and Gall - are tantamount to the equivocation of the Devil. For Iago’s primary recourse in his project of infecting the houses of the brain is the rhetorical device known as contradictio, a device that invokes the negative conjunction not (this), but (that). As we shall see, the Latin equivalent in non … sed is of fundamental significance in the play, which is informed throughout by the prior devise in non Desdemona, sed demona. Iago puts contradictio to powerful effect in his blasting of Brabantio, when he conjures up “an old blacke Ram” who is not young but old, not white but black, not temperate but lustful:

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Chapter Five Iago. Sir, y’are rob’d, for shame put on your Gowne, Your heart is burst, you hauE lost halfe your soule Euen now, now, very now, an old blacke Ram Is tupping your white Ewe.

A similar logic is unobtrusively applied to Brabantio himself. He is not clothed, but undressed. His heart is not intact, but broken. His soul is not whole, but halved. His daughter is not his, but her lover’s. As always, Shakespeare’s clear, plural, hermeneutic SED NON anagrams render the speech self-interpreting in this respect: Iago. [Sir, y’arE rob’D], for shame put on your Gowne, Your heart is burst, you hauE lost halfe your [SoulE Euen [NOw, [NOw, very [NOw, an]]] olD] blacke Ram Is tupping your white Ewe.

S-E-D S-E D NO-N NO-N

An anagrammatic reading confirms that Othello is informed throughout and overall by the device of contradictio and thus by the devise that crystallises the concept of negative conjunction in terms of not … but and sed … non.

6. The informing devise Shakespeare appears to derive the prior devise in not … but (a) from biblical diction generally, and that of Matthew’s Gospel in particular, (b) from James I’s use of rhetorical contradictio in Daemonologie, and (c) from the commonly found invocation of the demonic in relation to female sexuality (of which Shakespeare’s own customary association of the words whore and witch is an incidental example).11 As to (c) above, Walter Stephens notes in Demon Lovers that “there was a peculiar escalation in sensational writing about demonic copulation after 1570”, and an anagrammatic reading reveals that in a sense Shakespeare’s Othello partakes of that escalation.12 At the heart of the contamination of the sexual act through diabolic maleficantia lies the fundamental admission in non puella, sed demon (“not a girl, but a daemon”). A key passage from Giordano (Jordanes) da Bergamo’s unpublished Quaestio de strigis (c. 1470) is symptomatic of this widely cited topos, although presumably not a direct textual source in relation to Othello.13 After sexual intercourse with a hermit who responds to her invitation, a beautiful young woman discloses a discomforting truth: Ecce quod egisti; non enim sum puella sive mulier, sed demon (“Behold what you have done, for I am not a girl or a woman but a demon”).14 Shakespeare invokes that generic insight in a

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prior analysis of innocent Desdemona’s name, an analysis that yields the anagrammatic devise upon which the play is constructed: (NON) DESDEMONA: SED DEMONA

In the hands of Iago this diabolic device is transformed into something poignant and quite specific: non Desdemona sed demona (“not Desdemona but a demon in woman’s form”). Whether or not Shakespeare’s DE STRIGIS (“Of witches”) anagrams in the first exchange of the play are intended to be attributive in relation to Giordano’s treatise as a source-text, these anagrams are an important indicator of the significance of the term witch in the aesthetic strategy that Shakespeare will adopt:15 Rod. Neuer tell me, I take it much vnkindly That thou (Iago) who hast had my purse, As if the [STRinGs] were thine, should’st know of thIS. Iag. But you’l not heare me. If euer I did [Dream Of such a matter, abhorrE] me.

STRI-G-IS D E

In The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft, Broedel refers to Giordano’s story “of a demon who assumed the likeness of a beautiful girl in order to seduce a hermit” as typical of the topos, citing: Quo facto cum surrexisset, dixit illi demon: Ecce quod egisti; non enim sum puella sive mulier, sed demon, et statim disparuit ab oculis eius; ille vero attonitus remansit. Et quia demon maximam seminis habundantiam virtute eius attraxerat, continue heremita ille desiccatus completo mense defunctus est. When he was done and had arisen, the demon said to him, “behold what you have done, for I am not a girl or a woman but a demon,” and at once he disappeared from view, while the hermit remained absolutely astonished. And because the demon, with his great power, had withdrawn a very great quantity of semen, the hermit was permanently dried up, so that he died at the end of a month’s time. 16

As will become clear, the demon’s non puella sed demon is found to inform Othello at all levels and in manifold forms. It is of the essence of Iago’s demonic abuse of Othello, and speaks in particular to the pivotal importance of the night of marital consummation in the play – a significance that is now newly revealed. Girodano’s story tells of postcoital revelation: “When he was done and had arisen”. The beautiful girl

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remains a beautiful girl until “he was done”, and afterwards – immediately afterwards - she is no longer a beautiful girl but an egregious instrument of the Devil. An anagrammatic reading reveals that Shakespeare dramatizes this transformation in terms of the “before-and-after” of the consummation of Othello’s love for Desdemona.17 In Act 2 Scene 2 the Herald announces “the Celebration” of Othello’s “Nuptiall”. Immediately thereafter, at the beginning of Act 2 Scene 3, Othello says “Goodnight” and leads Desdemona to bed for the first time. He addresses Desdemona in such a way as to indicate that they have not yet “come” in the sexual sense: “Come … That profit’s yet to come”. After their exit, Iago indulges in an exchange with Cassio in contradictio, insinuating (as the WHORE and DEMON anagrams indicate) that Desdemona is a demonic whore. The conversation is imbued with NON DESDEMONA SED DEMONA anagrams which mark the parallel with Giordano’s story (or its generic equivalent): Oth. Come my deere Loue, The purchase made, the fruites are to ensue, That profit’s yet to come ‘tweene me, and you. Goodnight. Exit. Enter Iago. Cas. Welcome Iago: we must to the Watch. Iag. Not this houre Lieutenant: ‘tis [NOt yet teN] o’th’clocke. Our Generall cast vs thus earely for the loue of his [DESdemona]: Who, let vs not therefore blame; he hath not yet Made wantON the night with her: anD shE is sport for Ioue. Cas. She’s A Most exquisite Lady. Iag. And Ile warrant her, full Of Game. Cas. IN|deed [ShE|s A most fresh anD] delicate creature. Iag. What an eye she ha’s? Methinkes it sounds a parley to prouocation.

NO-N DES D E M O N-A

DE M-ON | A S-E-D

WHORE and DE STRIGIS anagrams are incorporated in the text, corroborating (and being corroborated by) the NON DESDEMONA SED DEMONA anagrams shown above: Cas. Welcome Iago: we must to the Watch. Iag. Not this houre Lieutenant: ‘tis not yet ten o’th’clocke. Our Generall cast vs thus earely for the loue of his Desdemona: [WHO, let vs not therefoRE] blame; he hath not yet made wanton the night with her: and [She is] sporT foR Ioue. Cas. She’s a most exquis|Ite Lady. Iag. And Ile warrant her, full of Game. Cas. Indeed sheS a most fresh and [delicate] creature. Iag. What an eye she ha’s? Methinkes it sounds a parley to prouocation.

WHO-RE S-T-R I G I-S

D-E

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Here, as elsewhere throughout the play, the passage is characterized by Shakespeare’s subtle dramatization of the grammatical negative conjunction in non … sed and not (this) … but (that). For Iago, Desdemona is not “a most exquisite Lady” but “sport for Ioue”. She is not “a most fresh and delicate creature” but a whore with a sexually inviting “eye” (in both senses of the word eye). For Cassio, she is not “sport for loue” but “a most exquisite Lady”; she is not “full of Game” but “a most fresh and delicate creature”. Regardless of this exchange, the original audience or reader will naturally have contemplated the morning after with considerable interest and heightened expectation. It is immediately after Othello has presumably made the night wanton with Desdemona - “When he was done and had arisen” - that Iago begins his direct assault upon the tragic hero, for whom Desdemona’s sexuality has – the audience is justified in assuming - been made (perhaps unsettlingly) apparent. Othello’s own psyche renders him vulnerable to diabolic abuse. His first private exchange with Iago after the night of consummation is imbued with hermeneutic CONSUMATION (sic), CONIUNCTION and CONTRADICTION anagrams set in parallel, indicating (in terms of rhetorical forms) that the consummatio and coniunctio of the night before have assumed the form of negative conjunction and thus of contradictio. Shakespeare’s CONSUMATION, CONJUNCTION, and CONTRADICTION anagrams are framed beforeand-aft by overt utterances of the word not, and by NOT anagrams. In Othello’s first non-official appearance on stage since the consummation of his marriage, Iago’s insinuation in “Hah? I like not that” is specifically diabolic in its apparent articulation of Othello’s own abstracted thoughts: Enter Othello, and Iago. Iag. Hah? I like not that. Oth. What dost thou say? Iag. Nothing my Lord; or if - I know [NOt whaT]. Oth. Was not thaT Cassio parted from my wife? Iag. Cassio my Lord? [NO sure, I cannOT thinke iT] That he would steale away so guilty-like, Seeing your [Comming. Oth. I dO beleeue] ‘twas he]. Des. How Now my Lord? I haue bin Talking with a SUitoR heere, A MAn that langU|ishes in your Displeasure. Oth. Who is’t you mean|e? Des. Why your LieutenanT Cassio: Good my Lord, If I haue any grace, or power To moue you, His present reconciliatION take.

N-O-T

NO T N-OT

NO-T C O N SU MA | T I ON

C O N T-R A-D I C T ION

C O N I U N C T ION

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Chapter Five For if he bE [NOt one, thaT] truly loues you, That erres in Ignorance, and not in Cunning, I haue [NO iudgemenT] in an honesT face. I prythee call him backe.

NO-T

NO-T

The shared condensa of the NOT anagrams and the triplet-anagrams is aptly located: CONSUMATION; CONIUNCTION; CONTRADICTION; NOT: CassiO My LorD? NO SURE, I CANNOT thinke IT

The technique that involves the dramamatization of rhetorical forms is extended to embrace Desdemona’s entrance and her ill-timed pleading on behalf of Cassio. Her speech on his behalf is conspicuously rendered in terms of a rhetorical persuasiveness that is aptly characterized by the device know as dirimens copulatio. This device may be defined as a statement consisting of two parts, one of which is contrasted with or opposed by the other. Desdemona’s declaration that Cassio “erres in ignorance, and not in cunning” is thus an example of dirimens copulatio. Hermeneutic DIRIMENS COPULATIO anagrams are accordingly incorporated in Desdemona’s speech: Iag. Hah? I like not that. Oth. What dost thou say? Iag. Nothing my Lord; or if - I know not what. Oth. Was not that Cassio parted from my wife? Iag. Cassio my Lord? No sure, I cannot thinke it That he would steale away so guilty-like, Seeing your comming. Oth. I [Do beleeue ‘twas] he. Des. How now my Lord? I haue bin talking with a suitor heere, A man that languishes in your [Displeasure. Oth. Who Is]’t you meane? Des. Why youR Lieutenant [Cassio]: Good my Lord, If I haue any grace, Or power to Moue you, His Present reconciliation takE. For if he be Not one, that trU|ly LoueS you, ThAT erres In ignorance, and not in cunning, I haue nO iudgement in an honest face. I prythee call him backe.

D I R I-M E N-S

C O P U-L AT-I O

The figura condensa is unusually lengthy, occupying the last four lines of Desdemona’s speech:

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DIRIMENS COPULATIO: Present Reconciliation take. For If he be Not One, that truly LoueS yoU, That erres In ignorance, AnD not in Cunning, I haue nO iudgeMenT in an honest facE.

On this occasion the figura condensa is located in the ambient text at the end of the extensae of both the DIRIMENS COPULATIO anagrams and the triplet-anagrams, and is shared by the latter also. This accounts for its abnormal length. To summarize, the passage as a whole invokes sexual coniunctio and consummatio in terms of Othello’s perverse, post-coital sense of dirimens copulatio. The psychotropic effect of copulatio with Desdemona becomes the mental aberration upon which Iago plays, and the term dirimens copulatio (the breaking asunder of a coupling) aptly describes his project, both here and universally. Less emphatic than contradictio, the contrastive opposition inherent in rhetorical dirimens copulatio is locally apt in relation to the gentler diction of Desdemona. But the structure of not … but is still predominantly implicit in Iago’s corrosive language. An un-stated “but” is implied after “Nothing my Lord …” and its absence is only intensified by the subtly moderated or which takes the place of but in “Nothing my Lord; or …” Similarly, when Iago says Cassio my Lord? No sure, I cannot thinke it That he would steale away so guilty-like,

- he implies: Casssio my Lord? No sure, but He did steale away so guilty-like,

Shakespeare’s mastery of the English language is such that verbal implication of this kind is subtle and unobtrusive, and it has indeed escaped the attention of post-Enlightenment commentators. Yet it is apparent in what Frank Kermode calls the “little language” throughout the play.18 In the same scene, a few lines later, the morning-after crisis is further defined in the overt language of negative conjunction in an important exchange between Othello and Desdemona. She has indeed been conversing with Cassio, and in the mind of Othello she is - if only potentially - not “Desdemon” but Demon. The ultimate theme is reflected, again unobtrusively, and as if effortlessly in the little language of the exchange, while at the same time hermeneutic SED DEMON

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anagrams render the scene self-interpreting. The contradictio of Othello’s not and Desdemona’s but is rhetorically dominant but nearly unnoticeable in the little language of the exchange, and sets a precedent for Shakespeare’s dramatization of their future relationship – leading eventually to the protracted not … but which informs the pathos of the murder scene, and ultimately to Othello’s final words in “not wisely, but too well” and “No way but this, / Killing my selfe, to dye vpon a kisse.”. A selection of the NON DESDEMONE SED DEMON, NOT, and BUT anagrams in the postcoital exchange is shown in the text below. The unobtrusive words not and but are also emphasised: Oth. Went he hence now? Des. I sooth; [So humblED], That he hath left part of his greefe with mee To suffer with him. Good Loue, call him backe. Othel. Not now (sweet [DEsdeMON]) some other time. Des. But shall’t be shortly? Oth. The sooner (sweet) for you. Des. Shall’t be to night, at supper? Oth. [No, not to night. Des. To morrow dinner then]? Oth. I shall not [DinE] at home I meete the CaptaineS at the Cittadell. Des. Why then to morrow night, on TuesDay MornE, On Tuesday [NOone, or night; oN] Wensday MOrNE. I prythee name the time, but let it not Exceed three dayes.

S-ED

DE-MON

NO N

NO-N

D-E S D-E MO-NE

The dramatized negative conjunction of Othello and Desdemona is subtly figured in the allocation of the key words. Othello’s inaugural “Not now” is answered by Desdemona’s “But / Shal’t be to night”. Then, in a second exchange, his “No, not to night … I shall not” is answered by her implied “But then to morrow night”. Finally, Desdemona answers her own implicit “Then you, not I, shall name the time, but let it not / Exceed three dayes” The characters are knotted together, as it were, within a negative conjunction that expresses itself in terms of the enclosed economy of an inescapable chiasmus: Not … But … not || not … but … not

There is dramatic irony in the demonic deployment of the grammar of negative conjunction, for Iago’s contradictio (as in “not this but that”) is frequently used in biblical contexts in order to subvert traditional error and to assert a new and purer order - as for instance in the prolific use of

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rhetorical contradictio in Matthew’s gospel. occurs at Matthew 6.27-28 (my emphasis):

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A well-known example

27Ye have heard that it was sayd by them of olde time, Thou shalt not commit adulterie: 28But I say unto you, that whosoeuer looketh on a

woman to lust after her, hath committed adulterie with her already in his heart. 19

For Shakespeare and his age, perhaps the most familiar use of the negative conjunction in not x but y was that in the Lord’s Prayer, which in the Geneva Bible takes the form: “leade vs not into tentation, but deliuer us from euill”. In pre-Enlightenment English versions of Matthew 5, Jerome’s concealed DOMINUS and SATANA anagrams are translated in terms of anagrams of God and the Devil.20 The GOD and DEVILL anagrams in Matthew 5 are shown in the extract below, which is taken from the Geneva Bible of 1587: 9After this maner therefore pray ye,

Our father which art in heauen, halowed be thy name. 10Thy Kingdome come. Thy will be done euen in earth, as it is in heauen. 11[Giue vs this day Our dayly breaD]. 12And forgiue vs our dettes, as we also forgiue our detters. 13And leade vs not into tentation, but [DEliuer Vs from euILL]: 14for thine is the kingdome, and the power, and the glorie for euer. Amen. 14For if ye doe forgiue men their trespasses, your heauenly Father will also forgiue you. 15But if ye do not forgiue men their trespasses, no more will your father forgiue you your trespaces.

G-O-D

DE-V-ILL

In particular, the concealed prayer for delivery from evil and from the evil one is framed in contradictio:21 And leade vs not into tentation, but [DEliuer Vs from euILL]

The sequence “not … but” in verse 13 is is linked in chiasmus with the inverted form in “But … no more” in verse 15:

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Chapter Five But if ye do not … no more will your father

In Othello, Matthew’s not/but (on the one hand) and the not/but of non puella sed demon (on the other) are reciprocally corroborated by the contradictio of James’ Daemonologie. James’ treatise is set in “Forme of a dialogie” between Philomathes and Epistemon, a form which is in effect dependent upon the the one and the other, the not … but, and the but … not. The dialogue begins: PHILOMATHES and EPISTEMON reason the matter. PHI. I am surely verie glad to haue mette with you this daye, for I am of opinion, that ye can better resolue me of some thing, wherof I stand in great doubt, nor anie other whom-with I could haue mette. EPI. In what I can, that ye like to speir at me, I will willinglie and freelie tell my opinion, and if I proue it not sufficiently, I am heartely content that a better reason carie it away then…

As the dialogue proceeds, grammatical instances of the negative conjunction in not … but and but … not are found to proliferate: PHI. I know yee will alleadge me Saules Pythonisse: but that as appeares will not make much for you. EPI. Not onlie that place, but divers others: But I marvel why that should not make much for me?

Evidently the contradictio of the opening exchange of Daemonologie informs the opening exchange of Othello: Neuer tell me, I take it much vnkindly That thou (Iago) who hast had my purse, As if the strings were thine, should’st know of this. Iag. But you’l not heare me. If euer I did dream Of such a matter, abhorre me. Rod. Thou toldst me, Thou did’st hold him in thy hate. Iag. Despise me if I do not. Three Great-ones of the Cittie, (In personall suite to make me his Lieutenant) Off-capt to him: and by the faith of man I know my price, I am worth no worsse a place. But he…

Here again the essence of the dynamic is inherent in the answering contradiction in “Neuer tell me … But you’l not heare me”. It is typical of the Graeco-Roman tradition that the English words not and but are found

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to exist in four forms in the text: (1) overtly but unobtrusively verbatim, as part of the “little language” of the play; (2) covertly verbatim, in hermeneutic anagram; (3) un-stated but implied; and (4) in other verbal forms (such as nay … yet). Here, for example, the sequence Neuer … But partakes of categories (1) and (4). And categories (1) and (3) are invoked in “If euer I did dream / Of such a matter, abhorre me … (But) Thou toldst me” (where Roderigo’s “But” is implied). In addition, the informing devise is frequently invoked in terms of language which invokes the contradictio of not (this) but (that) in terms of mutually exclusive concepts. In such cases, the words not and but may again remain un-stated, but are implicit in the rhetorical form of the utterance. The shared condensa of the DEMONICKE AGENT anagrams in Act 1 Scene 1 may serve as an example: DEMONICKE AGENT: Euen now, Now, very NOw, An OlD blaCKE RaM Is TuppinG your white ewE.

It is here that Iago – specifically defined in the anagrammata as acting as demonic agent – perverts the natural conjunction of ram and ewe by applying the axes of mutually exclusive differentiation in not-white-butblack, not-young-but-old, and not–temperate-but-lustful. And indeed, as will become clear, the play as a whole is constructed around the polar opposites which are exploited by the diabolus in his destructive rampage.

7. Opposites Rhetorical contradictio (“not this, but that”) necessarily involves the deployment of a constrastive paradigm (i.e. a side-by-side showing revealing difference), but it is capable also of embracing polar opposition. Iago’s articulation of contrast in contradictio is at its most destructive when deployed in the latter mode. Here and elsewhere in Shakespeare, the authenticity of x may be threatened by its polar opposite y. Where an entity (such as a human form) is capable of existing in either of two opposite modes, the unique identity of mode x is capable of being negatived by its opposite other y: non Desdemona sed Demona. In the period, the concept of binary opposition was associated primarily with Heraclitus, whose relevance to the play has not gone unnoticed. Maynard Mack, for example, writes of what is at risk in the play, namely

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Chapter Five …the immemorial human dream of creating a world in which (as in Renaissance cosmologies) polar opposites are held in harmony by love: black and white, male and female, warrior and “moth of love”, together with all those other contraries that it was believed perfection called for. “As with the bow and the lyre”, Heraclitus had said, “so with the world: it is the tension of opposing forces that makes the structure one”.

In Act 3 Scene 3, in the morning after the consummation of their marriage, Othello says of Desdemona, “And when I loue thee not, Chaos is come again”, he speaks inter alia of the chaos of what might be called “modal otherness”, a condition stemming from the existence of a single generic entity which is found to manfest itself in two quite opposite, unmediated modal forms. Shakespeare, fascinated here and elsewhere by the idea of modal otherness (or difference in sameness) portrays Othello’s tragic situation in terms of a black human being and a white human being who have in the night been thus nakedly juxtaposed. In a social and hence sexual context that is alien to him, Othello’s self-identity is threatened by Desdemona’s modal otherness, and his faith in himself, and thus in Desdemona, is undermined. As many critics have pointed out, Shakespeare’s mind seems to work in terms of modal differentiation, as defined above. Kermode rightly refers to ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ and Hamlet in this context, but modal differentiation in its less extreme forms is at work everywhere in Shakespeare. It is inherent, for example, in the Classical trope of “repetition with revelatory variation”, and in the concept of anagram as a revelatory re-writing. An anagrammatic reading of 2Henry IV, for example, reveals that the play is informed by the inherently unstable opposition of two modal forms of the single linguistic entity Henry, i.e. Harry Hotspur and his rival Hal, Prince of Wales. In this context, chaos is avoided only when Hotspur is destroyed, and a single Henry is permitted to prevail. The special importance of Heraclitean opposites in Othello is registered in Shakespeare’s attributive and programmatic HERACLITUS and OPPOSITES anagrams in Iago’s early account of his situation and motives in the proem: Iag. Despise me If I do not. Three Great-ones of the Cittie, (In personall suite to make me his Lieutenant) Off-capt to him: and by the faith of man I know my price, I am worth no worsse a place. But he (as louing his [Owne Pride, and pur|POses]) Euades them, with a bumbast Circum|Stance, [Horribly stufft with EpithIT|ES] of warre, Non-suites my Mediators. For certES, saies hE,

O-P-PO S ITES H E

O-P-PO S IT ES

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I haue already chose my OfficeR. And what was he? For-sooth, A great Arithmatician, One Michaell Cassio, a Florentine, (A Fellow aL|most damn’d in a faire Wife) That neuer set a Squadron in the Field, Nor The deuision of a Battaile knowes More then a Spinster. Vnlesse the Bookish Theoricke: Wherein the Tongued ConsulS can propose As Masterly as [He. Meere pratle (without practise) Is] all his SouldiER|ship. But he (Sir) had th’election; And I (of whom his eies had seene the proofe At Rhodes, at Ciprus, and on others grounds Christen’d, and Heathen) must be be-Leed, and calm’d By Debitor, and Cred|Itor. This Counter-caster, He (in good time) musT his LieU|tenant be, And I (blesse the marke) hiS Mooreships Auntient.

R A C L I T V S H ER A C L I T-U S

The universal contradictio of the world of the tragedy is manifest in a plurality of axes of opposition which meet in or impinge upon the relationship between Othello and Desdemona, including for example notwhite-but-black, not-Christian-but-Moslem, not-intact-but-circumcised, not-Venetian-but-Moor, not-young-but-old, and not-chaste-but-whore. Of these it is the opposition of Desdemona and demona - Desdemon and demon - that is optimally relevant to Shakespeare’s dramatic strategy. When in Act 3 Scene 1, for example, Iago is arranging a private meeting between Desdemona and Cassio, the innuendo of his “vertuous Desdemona” is reciprocally corroborated by NON DESDEMONA, SED DEMONA anagrams, and his manipulations are interpreted by an accompanying DEMONIKE anagram: Enter Iago. Cas. In happy time, Iago. Iag. You haue not bin a-bed then? Cas. Why [NO: the day had broke before we parted. I haue made bold (Iago) to send iN] to your wife: My suite to her is, that she will to vertuous [Desdemona] ProcurE me some accesse. Iag. Ile [SEnD] her to you presently: AnD Ile [DEuise a Meane] to draw the Moore Out of thE way, that your coN|uerse and businesse May be MOre free. Exit. Cas. I humbly thanke you fo’t. I Neuer knew A Florentine more KindE, and honest.

NO N D E S SE-D DE-M D DE-M O-N E O | MO | N N N I-KE A A

The figura condensa of the DEMONIKE anagram is poignantly located: DEMONIKE:

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Chapter Five I Neuer Knew a FlorentinE MOre kinDE

The shared condensa of the NON DESDEMONA, SED DEMONA anagrams is specific and exact as to the meane that Iago will adopt in order to turn Othello against Desdemona: NON DESDEMONA, SED DEMONA: ANd Ile DeviSE a MeaNE tO Draw the MOorE

Here the word draw invokes the sense of movement in Iago’s name and in Latin ago, and speaks to demonic agency. Similarly, when Desdemona comes into direct contact with Iago, she invites his appraisal and opens the way for that abuse of the soule (as James’s Philomathes puts it) that characterizes the behaviour of the demonic agent. An anagrammatic reading would suggest that Desdemona’s relationship with Iago is intended to exemplify an Heraclitean “Unity of Opposites” - the belief, as Jonathan Barnes puts it, that “every pair of contraries is somewhere coinstantiated; and every object coinstantiates at least one pair of opposites”.22 It is thus that “according to Aristotle, Heraclitus’ account says that everything is and is not”.23 At the very outset Iago declares “I am not that I am”’; now Desdemona confesses “I do beguile the thing I am, by seeming otherwise”. She herself describes her vulnerability in terms of non Desdemona, sed demona, when she declares in the mode of not …but that “I am not merry: but I beguile / The thing I am, by seeming otherwise”. In her dissembling she is vulnerably coinstantiated with her polar opposite in Iago: Des. What would’st write of me, if thou should’st praise me? Iag. Oh, gentle Lady, do not put me too’t, For I am nothing, if not Criticall. Des. Come on, assay. There’s one gone to the Harbour? Iag. I Madam. Des. I am not merry: but I do beguile The thing I am, by seeming otherwise. Come, how would’st thou praise me?

To be “merry” in Shakespeare, as in Chaucer, is to be sexually active. Desdemona is “not” in this sense merry, “but” she hides away her virtue (as Desdemona, the thing I am) by seeming otherwise. She is not one but the other, not this but that. Her demeanour towards Iago is capable of being interpreted as subtly flirtatious, and her speech as potentially

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whorish. Her provocative “Come, how wouldst thou praise me?” unwittingly invokes the sexual sense of an invitation to come, and the sense also in which to prize also meant to copulate with. The exchange is again interpreted in terms of NON DESDEMON, SED DEMON anagrams. Later in the exchange, Iago adopts the concealed language of Classical, scatological invective (with its customary anagrams), and the exchange culminates in Iago’s description of his preferred woman, namely the WHORE who is also a witch. The passage begins typically (as the play does in “Neuer … but”) with a close variant of not … but in “Nay … else” and is informed throughout by explicit or implicit manifestations of the not … but which invoke oppositional terms such as black/white, fair/foul, worst/best, and wisdom/ignorance. The passage is aptly imbued with hermeneutic I AGO, DEMONIKE AGENT, HERACLITUS, SED NON, and WHORE anagrams. A selection (only) of the relevant extensae is noted in the margin below, and instances of not and but are also emphasised: Iag. Nay, it is true: or else [I am a Turke, I You rise to play, [[And GO] to bed to workE. A-GO Æmi. You shall NoT] write my praise. Iag. No, let me not. Dese. What would’st write of me, if thou should’stpraise me? Iag. Oh, gentle Lady, [Do not put mE] too’t, D-E For I aM [ Nothing, if not Criticall. M Des. Come ON], assay. ON There’s one gone to the Harbour? Iag. I Madam. Des. I am not] merry: but I [Do beguilE] The thing I am, [by [SEeming otherwise. SE Come, how woulD]’st thou praisE me? D Iag. I am about it, but indeed My inuentiON comes from my pate, as Birdlyme do’s from Freeze, it pluckes out Braines and all. But my Muse labours, and thus [SHe Is deliuer’d. If [SHe bE faire], anD] wise: fairenesse, and wIT]], SE-D The ones for vsE, the other vseth IT. Des. Well prais’D: How if [SHe be blacke and wITTY]? Iag. If [SHe be blacke, and thereto haue a wIT], [SHe’lE finD] a whITE, that shall her blacknesse fIT] S-E-D Des. Worse, and worse. Æmi. How if Faire, and Foolish? Iag. [SHe [neuer Yet was foolish thaT was fairE], N For euen] her follY helpT her TO aN heirE. O-N Des. These are old fond Paradoxes, to make Fooles laugh i’th’Alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that’s Foule, and Foolish. Iag. There’s none so foule and foolish thereunto, But do’s foule pranks, [WhicH faire], and wise-ones do. W-H

A-G-E N-T

N ON

D-E S D-E M-ON

S E D

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Des. Oh heauy ignoR|ancE: thou praisest the worst best. But what praise could’st thou bestow on a deseruing [Woman indeed? One], that in the authority of Her merit, did iustly put On the vouch of very malice it selfe. Iag. She that was euer faiRE, and neuer proud, Had Tongue at will, [And yet] was neuer loud: Neuer lackt Gold, and yet wENT neuer gay, Fled from her wish, and yet said now I may. She that being angred, her reuenge being nie, Bad her wrong stay, and her [DispleasurE] flie: She that in [WisedoM|e] neuer was so fraile, TO change the Cods-Head fOR the Salmons tailE: She that could thinke, and Neu’r disclose her mind, See Suitors follow|Ing, and not looKE behind: She was a [Wight, (if euer sucH] wightes were]) Des. To dO what? Iag. To suckle Fooles, and chronicle small BeeRE.

O-R-E W-H O RE A G-ENT

D-E M O N I-KE W-H O RE

W H-OR-E

The HERACLITUS and DEMONIKE anagrams are closely associated in the text, implying Iago’s demonic use of the Heraclitean opposites: She that being angred, her reuenge being nie, Bad her wrong stay, and [Her [DispleasurE] flie: She that in wisedoM|e neuer was] so frailE, TO change the Cods-head foR the Salmons taile: She that could thinke, and Neu’r dis|Close her mind, See Suitors folL|ow|Ing, and noT looKE behind: She VvaS a [Vvight, (if euer sucH] VvighteS were])

D-E M O N I-KE

H E R A-C L-I-T V-S

The shared condensa is also closely associative: DEMONICKE; HERACLITUS: TO sUCKLE Fooles, AnD CHroN|Icle SMall BeeRE.

The Classical invective, unpleasant and surprising for the postEnlightenment reader, is decorously deferred to the realm of Hermes and is entirely conventional. Beginning in Iago’s “SHe … IT … wIT”, it has its analogue in the meta-dramatic, scatological invective directed against Elizabeth Vere in Act 2 Scene 1 of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, where the concealed anagrammata are marked and introduced by the customary word-play on Peace/Pisse and by the defecatory sense of “motion”: Val. Peace, here she comes. Spe. Oh excellent motion…

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In the present instance the defecatory anagrams are similarly marked and inaugurated by Iago’s euphemistic “Muse labours, and … is deliuer’d”and his play on But and Butt (“anus”). The MINDE anagram invokes the sense in the Elizabethan sexual vocabulary in which the English word mind is capable of signifying anus. For Muse, the audience is invited to read Minde, and for But to read Butt: Butt my [Muse] labours, and thus [SHe Is deliuer’d. If SHe be faire, aND wisE: fairenesse, and wIT]],

M I ND-E

SH I T SH-IT

Here Iago sets potential adversatives one against the other, as in his coinstantiation of black and white in “She’le find a white, that shall her blacknesse fit”- a coinstantiation of Desdemona’s purity and Iago’s corruption: Des. Well prais’d: How if [[SHe be blacke and wITTY]? Iago. If [she be blacke, and thereto haue a wit], [She’le find a white, that [shall her blacknesse fit] Des. Worse, and worse. Æmil. How if Faire, and Foolish? Iago. [SHe neuer yet] was foolish that was faire],

SH-IT SH | I T

SH-ITTY I SH-IT

SH IT

SH-I-T

Shakespeare’s word-play on But and Butt is typical of the way in which the various senses and spellings of not and but are found to contaminate the universal language of the play. In Act 4 Scene 2 not becomes knot in the sexual sense, and but comes butt (or target), referring to Iago’s ultimate aim (the engendering of “selfe distraction” and ultimately self-destruction): Oth. But there where I haue garnerd vp my heart, Where either I must liue, or beare no life, The Fountaine from the which my currant runnes, Or else dries vp: to be [DIScarded thence], OR keepe it As a Cesterne, for foule Toades To knoT and gender In. Turne thy complexiON there: Patience, thou young and Rose-lip’d Cherubin, I heere looke grim as hell. Des. I hope my Noble Lord esteemes me honest. Oth. Oh I, as [Sommer Flyes are] in the Shambles, That quicken Euen with blowing. Oh thou weed: Who art so Louely FairE, and smell’st so sweete, That the Sense akes at thee, Would thou had’st neuer bin borne.

DIS-T R-A-C T-I-ON

S E L-FE

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8. Nemesis Shakespeare’s supreme virtuosity in the art of anagram and in the little language of the drama is perhaps most impressively apparent in Act 5 Scene 2 in the episode leading to Desdemona’s death. Although the devise in not … but is designedly absent from the overt dimension of Othello’s opening soliloquy, it is nevertheless intricately manifest in the not … yet/but of “Let me not … Yet ... not … Nor … Yet she must dye” and in the NON SED anagrams which closely shadow the instances of not and but in the overt dimension of the text: Oth. It is the Cause, it is the Cause (my Soule) Let me not name it to you, you chaste Starres, It is the Cause. Yet Ile not [ShED] her blood, [Nor scarre that whiter skin] of hers, then Snow, And smooth as Monumentall Alablaster: Yet she must dye, else shee’l betray more men:

S-ED NO-N

There is a showy non-naming of but, also, in Shakespeare’s repeated invocation of the word Cause, which has inter alia the now obsolete sense (OED, 4.a) of “the object of action; purpose; end”, and which is thus in this context synonymous with butt in the sense (OED 4.a.) of “that towards which one’s efforts are directed; an end, aim, object”. Such gestures are never allowed to stand alone in Shakespeare and the play here on but and butt is linked inexorably with Othello’s later utterance, in nemesis, following the murder: Be [not affraid, though you do [see me weapon]’d]: Heere is my iournies end, heere is my [Butt] And verie Sea-marke of my VT|mosT Saile.

NO-N

SE-D B V-T-T

The progress to the murder itself is enacted in terms of incremental deferral based on Desdemona’s increasingly desperate recourse to the logic of not death but life. The tension is allowed to mount gradually, beginning in the not/but of “I hope you will not kill me … And yet I feare you”: Oth. I would not kill thy vnprepared Spirit, No, Heauens fore-fend I would not kill thy Soule. Des. Talke you of killing? Oth. I, I do. Des. Then Heauen haue mercy on mee. Oth. Amen, with all my heart. Des. If you say, I hope you will not kill me. Oth. Humh. Des. And yet I feare you:

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As the exchange proceeds, there is a gradual increase in the urgency of Desdemona’s response. Her not/but and but/not are now set in chiasmus, and are framed by NON anagrams: Des. Why I should feare, I know not, Since guiltinesse I know [not: But yet I feele I feare. Oth. Thinke on] thy sinnes. Des. They are Loues I beare to you. Oth. I, and for that thou dy’st. Des. That death’s vnnaturall, that kils for louing. Alas, why gnaw you so your nether-lip? [SomE blooD]|y passion shakes your very Frame: These are portents: but yet I hope, I hope, They do [not point on] me.

NO N

S-E-D NO-N

When Othello proceeds to refer to the missing handkerchief, the devise in not … but begins to measure out the length of Desdemona’s life. The NON SED anagrams continue to reinforce the dynamic: Oth. That Handkerchiefe Which I so lou’d, and gaue thee, thou gau’st to Cassio. Des. [No by my Life, and [Soule: send] for the man], And aske him. Oth. Sweet [Soule, take heed], take heed of Periury, Thou art on thy death-bed. Des. I, but not yet to dye.

NO-N

SE-D

S-E-D

The sense of temporal forsehortening increases in intensity in “Neuer … neuer … But … neuer”, and is amplified by reiterated NON SED anagrams: Des. O Heauen haue mercy on me. Oth. I [Say, Amen. Des. And hauE you mercy too. I [Neuer did] OffenD you in] my life: neuer lou’d CassiO, But with such generall warrantie of HeaueN, As I might loue. I neuer gaue him Token. Oth. By Heauen I [Saw my HandkerchiefE in’s hanD]. O periur’d woman, thou do’t stone my heart, And makes me call, what I intend to do, A Murther, which I thought a Sacrifice. I [Saw the Handkerchiefe. Des. HE founD] it then: I [Neuer gaue it him: [SEnD], for him hither: Let him cON]fesse a truth. Oth. He hath confest.

S E D

N O N

S-E-D

S-E D N ON

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Desdemona in desperation pleads in contradictio: “not kill me, but banish me”: Des. Alas, he is betray’d, and I vndone. Oth. Out [Strumpet: weep’t thou for him to my facE? Des. O banish me, my LorD], but kill me [NOt. Oth. DowN]|e Strumpet.

S-E D

NO N

When death is certain, she pleads first for the deferral of immediacy in “not tonight, but tomorrow”, and then in the utmost pathos of “not now but in halfe an houre”: Des. Kill me to morrow, let me liue to night. Oth. Nay, if you striue. Des. But halfe an houre.

And finally: “not without pause, But while I say one prayer”: Oth. Being done, there is no pawse. Des. But while I say one prayer. Oth. It is too late. Smothers her.

The extreme virtuosity of Shakespeare’s apparently effortless absorption of the not … but into the world of the play is reflected in the fact that no commentator has expressed an awareness of its importance, of its existence as an informing devise, or even of the uniquely high frequency of its occurrences in Othello when compared with Shakespeare’s other plays. As we have seen, the protocols of Hermetic inter-textuality require such usages, so far as it practicable, to be concealed within the covert dimension of the text. The tragedy ends inevitably and inexorably in the form of not …. but with Othello’s profoundly resonant “not wisely, but too well” and “no way but this, / … to die vpon a kisse”. Shakespeare customarily indicates the point of nemesis in his tragedies by means of a NEMESIS anagram. In Othello the tragic hero’s recognition of his own nemesis is registered before the public declaration, shortly before his suicide. Othello’s “butt / And very Sea-marke” of his “vtmost Saile” is also the but of not … but (the but that is his nemesis). Shakespeare’s customary play on not and knot (signalling anagrammatic intervention) is registered in the annotated extract below:

Othello But (oh vaine boast) Who can controll his Fate? ‘Tis knot so [Now. Be not affraid, though you do seE ME weapon’d: Heere iS] my iournieS end, heere IS my butt And verie Sea-marke of my vtmost Saile. Do you go backe dismaid? ‘Tis a lost feare:

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N E-ME S-IS

N E-M S-IS

The duplicitous deixis of “‘Tis knot so now …” marks and inaugurates the NEMESIS anagram that immediately ensues. Similarly, the phrase “heere IS my butt” marks the point at which the NEMESIS anagram aptly ends, thus again associating the not … but with Othello’s tragic story and his nemesis. In the speeches leading to Othello’s self-destruction, the phonetic/metrical NEMESIS anagram in “No way but this” again connects the tragic centre of the play with the informing devise. The moment is interpreted in terms of a NIMESIS (sic) anagram.24 This anagram is closely associated with the final manifestation of Shakespeare’s DEMONIKE AGENT and NON SED anagrams: Oth. Soft you; a word or two before you goe: I haue done the State some seruice, and they know't: [NO more of that. I pray you iN] your Letters, When you shall these vnluckie deeds relate, Speake of me, as I am. Nothing extenuate, [Nor set downe ought in] malice. Then must you [speake, Of one that lou’d] not wisely, but too well: Of one, not easily Iealious, but being wrought, Perplexed in the extreame: Of one, whose hand (Like the base Iudean) threw a Pearle away Richer then all his Tribe: Of one, whose subdu’d Eyes, Albeit vn-vsed to the melting moode, [Drops teares [As fast] as thE Arabian Trees Their Medicinable Gumme]. Set you downe this: And say besides, that in Aleppo ONcE, Where a mal|IgnaNT, and a Turbond-TurKE Beate a Venetian, and traduc’d the State, I tooke by th’throat the circumcised Dogge, And smoate him, thus. Lod. Oh bloody period. Gra. All that is [spoke, is marr’d]. Oth. I kist thee, ere I kill’d thee: [No way but this], Kill|Ing My selfE, to dye vpon] a kisS|e. Dyes Cas. ThIS did I feare, but thought he had no weapon: For he was great of heart.

NO-N

NO-N

D-E M ON I-KE

N I-M-E-S | IS

A G E NT

S-E-D NO N

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Notes 1

The protocols of concealed chronogram are described in Chapter Two. Russ McDonald, “Othello, Thorello, and the Foolish Hero”, Shakespeare Quarterly, 30 (1979): 51-67. 3 For the narrative sources, including Fenton, see for example Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 7 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1973. 4 On the conventionally elevated form of Elizabeth Regina anagrams, see William Bellamy, ‘Jonson’s Art of Anagram’, in Richard S Peterson, Jonsonian Soundings (New York: AMS Press), 2015. 5 Hans Peter Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 55 6 James I, Daemonologie (London, 1603), 55-56. 7 James I, Daemonologie, 61. 8 James I, Daemonologie, 63. 9 James I, Daemonologie, 57. 10 For “angelic language” and the significance of verbalisation in demonic agency, see Armando Maggi, Satan’s Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 21-30. 11 Shakespeare’s association of WHORE anagrams with word-play on Which and Witch is described and illustrated in Chapter Four. 12 Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002), 101. 13 Shakespeare’s DE STRIGIS anagrams may for example speak to Giordano’s Quaestio de strigis (c. 1570) or to a number of other texts, including Bernardo Rategno da Como’s De strigis (c. 1505) or Sylvester Prierio’s De strigimagarum daemonumque mirandis (1521). 14 On Giordano da Bergamo’s Quaestio de Strigis, see Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum, 112-113. See also Armando Maggi, Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers. 15 See note 13. 16 Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum, 56, n77. 17 The consummation or non-consummation of Othello’s marriage to Desdemona has long been a matter of critical debate. See for example, David Schalwyk’s interesting essay on “Othello’s Consummation” in L C Orlin (ed.), Othello (London: Bloomsbury), 2014. 18 Kermode defines the “little language” of Shakespeare’s plays as “Shakespeare’s use of a particular word or set of words to give undercurrents of sense to the dramatic narratives” and adds: “Some of these occurrences would normally escape notice”. Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (London: Penguin, 2002), 218219. 19 Geneva Bible, 1587. 20 In a gesture typical of Matthew’s gospel, Jerome’s DOMINUS and SATANA anagrams are set in chiastic array. The chiasmus in the Lord’s Prayer is 2

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unobtrusively reiterated in English pre-Enlightenment texts, as for example in the Geneva Bible of 1587: Thy Kingdome come (G-O-D) forgiue vs our dettes we … forgiue our detters (DE-V-ILL) thine is the kingdome 21 The DEVILL anagram is especially apt in the alternative translation in “But deliver us from the evil one”. See Nicholas Avo, The Lord’s Prayer: A Survey Theological and Literary (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), 9396. 22 Jonathan Barnes, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 70. 23 Barnes, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 70. 24 The alternative spelling in nimesis is common in the period.

CHAPTER SIX HAMLET

1. Date The concealed chronogram of the year MDC1 in the opening lines of Hamlet is conventionally marked by TIME anagrams and by duplicitous deixis in the ambient text. It is prompted and inaugurated by the overt reference to the exact register of the present time in “You come most carefully vpon your houre”. The repeated word “‘Tis” thus serves a double function in this context: Bar. Who’s there? Fra. Nay answer me: stand & vnfold your selfe. Bar. Long liue the King. Fra. Barnardo. Bar. He. Fra. You come most carefully vpon your houre. Bar. [‘TIs now strook twelue], get thee to bed Francisco. Fra. For [This releefe] Much thankes: [‘TIs bitter cold, And I aM sickE] at heart. Bar. Haue you had quiet guard? Fra. Not a Mouse stirring. Bar. Well, goodnight. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, the riuals of my watch, bid them make hast.

TI M E

T I-M-E

TI M-E

For the original reader, the MDC-matrix of the chronogram is conspicuously comprised in “much thankes: ‘Tis bitter cold”, in which the letters M, D, and C are provided exclusively by the acrostic letters of words, and which is self-bounding in the letters M …D: {Much thanks: ‘Tis bitter ColD} M

C D

In accordance with traditional practice, the I-matrix of the chronogram (in “I aM”) is marked by the incremental connective in “And”:

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{Much thankes: ‘Tis bitter ColD} And {I aM} sicke at heart.

The manner of specification of the year MDCI in the chronogram is significant for the play, which is found to refer throughout to the recently enacted Tragique Scene of the Earl of Essex and Elizabeth I.1 Essex was executed on 25 February in the year 1600 (old style). An anagrammatic reading reveals that the “bitter cold” that Francisco feels is intended to refer (inter alia) to Essex’s death in February 1600. The textual matrix containing the MDC-increment of the chronogram is typically revelatory in this context: {Much thankes: ‘Tis bitter ColD}

The year 1601 (old style) began on 25 March, a mere month after Essex’s death on 25 February 1600. The alleged state of the nation (“sicke at heart”) following his execution is registered in the disposition of the Imatrix of the chronogram, which again is bracketed below: {I aM} sicke at heart

Each of these matrices is acrostically self-bounding, and each includes the highest-order numeral letter M: Much thankes: ‘Tis bitter ColD + I aM

The gesture is comparable with Horace’s first chronogram in the Ars poesis, where the founding numeral letter D appears in each matrix. The repetition of M is thus traditional and aesthetically corroborative of Shakespeare’s registration of the year MDCI. An anagrammatic reading reveals that The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke is, in effect, an Essex-play in the sense that ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ is an Essex-poem. It is written in the aftermath of a deeply felt catastrophe, and is informed throughout by reference to that catastrophe. Clear, elevated ESSES anagrams are incorporated throughout the play at dramatically appropriate moments. Thus the connection between (a) Francisco’s extreme sense of unease and (b) the present time of MDCI is typically confirmed by the EsseS anagram that is marked by the forma in the word “SickE”, thus associating the phrase “sicke at heart” with Essex:

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Chapter Six Bar. Who’s there? Fra. Nay answer me: stand & vnfold your selfe. Bar. Long liue the King. Fra. Barnardo. Bar. He. Fra. You come most carefully vpon your houre. Bar. ‘Tis now Strook tweluE, get thee to bed Francisco. Fra. For this releefe much thankes: ‘TiS bitter cold, And I am [SickE] at heart. Bar. Haue you had quiet guard? Fra. Not a Mouse stirring. Bar. Well, goodnight. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, the riuals of my watch, bid them make hast.

S-E S S-E

The title pages of Hamlet in the Quartos and the Folio include the subtitle Prince of Denmarke, a formulation which also doubles as a perfectly compliant chronogram of the year MDCI. Here again, the protocols attaching to concealed apices numerales (as described by Horace in the covert dimension of the Ars poetica) are scrupulously observed.2 First, the higher-order numeral letters M, D, and C are closely clustered in coruscatio in acrostic positions within the well-defined matrix of the subtitle (bracketed below): {PrinC|e of Den|Marke}

Applying the principles of iustificatio, the original reader of the Quartos and the Folio (already aware of the significance of the year 1601) will readily recognise the sub-title as the I-matrix also. In accordance with the rules attaching to the lowest-order numeral letter i, all instances of the letter i within the matrix must be taken into account: {PrInce of Denmarke}

The sub-title becomes iconic in relation to the year 1601, registering, in itself, the virtual presence of Essex’s Tragiqe Scene in the play.

2. Sources Shakespeare’s general dramatic debt to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy has been widely recognised, and is typically acknowledged in KYD(D) anagrams in the opening lines of the play: 3

Hamlet Bar. Who’s there? Fra. Nay answer me: stand & vnfold your selfe. Bar. Long liue the [King. Fra. Barnard|]o. Bar. He. Fra. You come most carefullY vpon your houre. Bar. ‘Tis now Strook tweluE, get thee to beD Francisco. Fra. For this releefe much thankes: ‘TiS bitter colD, And I am [SickE] at heart. Bar. Haue you had quiet guard? Fra. Not a Mouse stirring. Bar. Well, goodnight. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, the riuals of my watch, bid them make hast.

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K | | Y D

or

K | | Y D D

Attributive BELLEFOREST and BANDELLO anagrams in the proem indicate that Belleforest’s version of the story (translated from Bandello’s novelle) is Shakespeare’s primary narrative source.4 It will be recalled that the opening lines of a play are the customary locus for such attributive anagrams: Bar. Who’s there? Fra. Nay answer me: Stand & vnfold your selfe. Bar. Long liue the King. Fra. [BArN|arD|o] Bar. HE. Fra. You come most] carefuLL|y vpon your houre. Bar. ‘Tis] now strook twelue, get thee tO bed Francisco. Fra. FOR this releefE much thankes: ‘Tis bitter cold, And I am Sicke at hearT. Bar. Haue you had quiet Guard? Fra. Not a Mouse stirring.

B E LL-E F OR-E S-T

BA-N-D E LL O

The shared figura condensa of the BELLEFOREST and BANDELLO anagrams is so disposed as duplicitously to convey the dramatist’s “thankes” to his authors: BELLEFOREST; BANDELLO: FOR this RELeefE much thankeS: ‘Tis Bitter cOLD, ANd I Am sickE at hearT.

Apart from its primary function as a narrative source, Belleforest’s text is of particular interest in relation to the Hamlet of 1601 for a number of additional reasons. Belleforest’s Hamlet is notable for his melancholy, for example,5 and for his sense of thwarted ambition.6 His course is hampered

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by delay, albeit arising from what Michael Davies calls “external obstacles”, rather than from an innate tendency to procrastinate.7 All of these factors, together with Belleforest’s characteristic fondness for doublets and hendiadys, are inherent in Shakespeare’s development of Belleforest’s narrative, and speak to the invisible role that Essex plays in the drama. Shakespeare’s modification of Belleforest is informed inter alia by the dramatist’s view of recent events in the English state, including in particular the events leading to Essex’s execution. Conventionally elevated ESSES anagrams occur throughout the play at appropriate dramatic moments. An anagrammatic reading reveals Shakespeare’s sense of the poignant topicality of Essex’s “Tragique Scene”, as it is called in Shakespeare’s poem ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ As we have seen, in the opening exchange, the ESSES anagram is closely associated with the TIME anagrams which mark the thematic MDCI chronogram. This gesture emphasises the immediacy in 1601 of the issues reflected in the play: Fra. You come most carefully vpon your houre. Bar. ‘TIs now Strook twelue, get theE to bed Francisco. Fra. For thiS releefe much thankeS: ‘TiS bitter cold, And I am [SickE] at heart.

S-E S S-E

S E-S S-E

S E-S-S E

Shakespeare appears to have found similarities between the personal attributes and circumstances of Belleforest’s hero and those of Essex, and to have conceived of Essex’s “rebellion” as in part an act of righteous revenge against his political enemies Lord Burghley and his son Robert Cecil. Essex was famously afflicted not only by intermittent bouts of melancholy, but also in the years immediately prior to his death by a marked indecisiveness. In his mission to Ireland in 1599 he had proved ineffectual and inactive, postponing confrontation with the main Irish force, and exhibiting an indecisive approach to military strategy.8 Paul E J Hammer describes him as, by the end of 1600, “bankrupt, paranoid, and surrounded by desperate advisors who urged him to take desperate action to protect their interests and “rescue” the realm from his factional enemies. In contrast to his bold actions in the mid-1590s, Essex now proved remarkably indecisive in dealing with his political failure”.9 Janet Dickinson finds a similar indecision in Essex in the months and weeks leading up to the rebellion itself.10 It is thus that Shakespeare’s tragedy is found to be informed by the prior word-within-word devise that finds the word DEFER in DEVER-eux (an important onomastic trope that exploits the commonly found wordplay involving the letters v and f). This devise is specifically identified in the soliloquy at the end of Act 2 Scene 2, where DEFER anagrams are

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closely associated with both elevated and forward-facing DEUEREUS and ESSES anagrams: Ham. I so, God buy’ye: Now I am alone. Oh what a Rogue and Pesant Slaue am I? Is it not monstrous that this Player heerE, But in a Fixion, in a [DreamE] of PasS|ion, Could Force his [SoulE] so to his whole conceit, That from hER working, all his visagE warm’d; Teares in his [EyeS], [Distraction in’s Aspect, A broken voicE], and hiS whole Function suiting With FormES, to his Conceit? And all For nothing? For Hecuba? What’s Hecuba to him, or hE to Hecuba, That he Should Vveepe for heR? What would hE [Doe, Had he] the Motiue and thE CuE FoR passion That I hauE? He would [DrownE] the stagE with teares, And cleaU|E the generall eaRE with horrid [speech: MakE maD] the guilty, and apale the free, Confound the ignoR|ant, and amazE indeed, The Very faculty of Eyes and EareS. Yet I …

S E S S-E

D-E F ER-E

D E-F E RE

D E F | E R-E D-E U E R-E V-S

E-S S E-S

S-V E-R E UE D

In that part of the speech beginning “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba” and ending “Eyes and Eares”, the DEUEREUS anagrams are closely associated with ESSES anagrams. A selection is shown below: What’s Hecuba to him, or hE to Hecuba, That he Should Vveepe for heR? What would hE [Doe, Had He] the Motiue and thE Cue FoR pasS|ion That I hauE? He Vvould [DrownE] the [StagE] with teareS, And cleaU|E the generall Eare with horrid [[Speech: MakE] maD] the guilty, and apale the free, Confound the ignoR|ant, and amazE indeed, The Very faculty of Eyes and EareS. Yet I …

D-E U E R-E V-S

S-V E-R E UE D

S-E-S E-S E

Essex’s habits of melancholy and procrastination are thus permitted to inform the tragic hero that Shakespeare inherited from Bandello and Belleforest and re-modelled in the likeness of Essex. Here, as elsewhere throughout the play, Belleforest’s predilection for doublets and hendiadys is re-written in the little language of Hamlet’s diction. Marked and inaugurated in the hendiadys of “a Rogue and Peasant Slaue”, a sequence of one-in-two tropes populates the text of the soliloquy, as for example in “a Fixion … a Dreame” and “the Motiue and the Cue” and “Eyes and Eares”. This tendency manifests itself also in gestures that take on the character of hendiadys, as in the protracted one-in-many of “his visage warm’d; / Teares in his eyes, Distraction in’s Aspect, / A broken voice”. Hamlet’s characteristic linguistic concatenations are also an extended form

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of hendiadys, being typically a series of concepts which speak to a single idea, as for example in the long-drawn out one-in-many of “drowne the Stage with teares, / And cleaue the generall eare with horrid speech: / Make mad the guilty, and apale the free, / Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed, / The very faculty of Eyes and Eares”. 11 The textual and temporal deferral that is inevitably involved in hendiadys is of central importance to the aesthetic strategy of the drama. Shakespeare, following the dictates of the Classical poetic, is led to dramatize the delay inherent in Belleforest’s narrative in terms of the delay that is inherent in linguistic protraction. It is thus that Cicero’s hendiadys in the self-referential dictum tarditas et procrastinatio est odiosa is found to comprise the primary linguistic devise that informs every aspect of the play. In this context what is new in Shakespeare’s play is the registration of Hamlet’s “internal” procrastination, and this is achieved by applying the structure of hendiadys universally to speech, action, and narrative. Shakespeare’s careful management of Hamlet’s soliloquies provides a vivid example of the informing invenio that is based on Cicero’s dictum. The dramatic soliloquy is traditionally a form of self-communion, a mode of internal dialogue that is well suited to the enactment of self-division (Shakespeare’s primary indicator of mental derangement) and to the evocation of the non protinus (“not immediately”) of hendiadys. In the hands of Shakespeare, the linguistic structure of soliloquy is complex, and a summary description of Shakespeare’s strategy in this context can be offered only tentatively. In effect, three Hamlets are seen to commune, though not necessarily with each other: Hamlet1: To be? Hamlet2: Or not to be? Hamlet3: That is the question.

A subtle modification of Belleforest’s rhetorical hendiadys is thus invoked. The singular verb is in “That is the question” is akin to the singular verb is in the thematic hendiadys of “Loue and Constancie is dead”. As will become clear, both singular verbs translate the singular verb est in Cicero’s tarditas et procrastinatio est odiosa, a locus classicus of rhetorical hendiadys. At the same time the question(s) in “To be or not to be” are found to invoke (and to translate verbatim) Cicero’s aut esse aut non esse (“To be or not to be”) in De contemnando morte (“In contempt of death”). The hermeneutic HENDIADES (sic) and DELAY anagrams in Hamlet’s soliloquy would tend to suggest a central significance for the concept of hendiadys:

Hamlet Ham. I so, God buy’ye: Now I am alone. Oh what a Rogue and Pesant slaue am I? Is it not monstrous that this Player heere, But in a Fixion, in a dreame of Passion, Could force [His] soule so to his whole conceit, That from her working, all [His] visagE warm’d; Teares iN his eyes, DIstraction in’s Aspect, A broken voyce, AnD his whole Function suiting With FormES, to his Conceit? And all for nothing? For Hecuba? What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weepe for her? What would he doe, Had he the Motiue and the Cue for passion That I haue? [He would [DrownE] the Stage with teares], And cleaue the generall Eare with horrid speech: Make mad the guilty, aND Apale the free, Confound the Ignorant, And amaze indeeD, The very faculty of EyES and EarES. Yet I, A dull and muddy-metled Rascall, peake Like Iohn a-dreames, vnpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing:

459

H E N-DI A-D ES

H E ND I-A-D ES

H-E N-DI-A D ES

D-E L A I-E

These introductory remarks on the source-texts do not, of course, answer the fundamental questions that now arise. How, precisely, does Shakespeare exploit of the concept of rhetorical hendiadys in the drama? And why are Hamlet’s underlying questions (in “To be?” and “not to be?”) referred to in the singular in “That is the question”? In order to resolve these issues it is first necessary to look again at Shakespeare’s Essex-poem, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’, which is cited (for example) in TURTLE, ROBERTE CHESTER and LOUES MARTYR anagrams in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy.

3. The Phoenix and the Turtle It will be recalled that Shakespeare’s ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ is one of the poems by leading poets of the day appended to Robert Chester’s Love’s Martyr (1601). This poem, which pre-dates but is nearly contemporaneous with Hamlet, is itself an important source for the play of 1601. We saw in Chapter One that the one-in-two of Elizabeth R and R Essex is depicted in terms of the ultimately irresolvable hendiadys that informs “their Tragique Scene”. A selection of Shakespeare’s HENDIADIS (sic) and ESSES anagrams is shown in the extracts below, which consist of Stanzas 6-8 and Stanzas 11-13:

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6[Here the AnthemE doth commence: LovE aND Constancy Is] dead; Phoenix AND the Turtle fled In a mutuall flame from hence. 7So they loued, AS loue in twain [HaD the Essence but IN one; Two DIstinctS], division none: NumbER theRE In loue was slaine. 8[Hearts] REmote, yet not AsundER; DIstance, and no space waS seen ‘Twixt the Turtle anD hIS QueenE: But in them it were a wonder.

H E ND I | A D-I S

HE-N DI-A D-IS

H-E ND-I A-D I | S H-E-N D I ER RE | A RE ER DI-S

11Reason in it selfe confounded, Saw Diuision grow together, To themselues yet eithER neithER, Simple were so well compounded.

ER ER

12That it cried, how true a twaine, Seemeth this concordant one, Loue hath REason, REason none, If what parts, can so remaine. 13Whereupon it made this Threne, To the Phoenix and the Doue, Co-Supremes and [StarrES of LouE], As ChoruS to their Tragique [ScenE].

RE RE

S-ES S-E

S-E S-S-E

In this instance, the tragic hendiadys is that of Elizabeth R and R Essex and thus of ER and RE within the unstable true-lovers knot ER&RE. The hubris with which the ambitious Essex historically aspired to parity with Elizabeth is figured in Stanza 9: “So between them Loue did shine, / That the Turtle (RE) saw his right, / Flaming in the Phoenix sight (ER). Elizabeth’s and Essex’s Tragique Scene is also reflected in Hamlet, where it is seen from a different perspective. The tragic hendiadys envisaged in the poem is that Elizabeth-and-Essex, whereas the hendiadys in the play speaks to the politically unassailable one-in-two of Elizabeth and her intimate advisor Robert Cecil. In essence, and as a matter of historical fact, the impossible challenge for Essex in 1600 (old style) was to destroy Cecil, while at the same time preserving Elizabeth. That challenge is set in revelatory apposition to the problematic challenge with which Hamlet is faced. The Ghost enjoins him to take revenge upon the usurping Claudius, but to leave the Queen unharmed. As will become clear, hermeneutic anagrams in the text of the Ghost’s speech indicate that this injunction, divided as it is between the active and passive, is intended to be interpreted

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(a) in terms of the hendiadys of Gertrude-and-Claudius, and (b) as the source of Hamlet’s tragic predicament. The final stage of Essex’s self-destructive quarrel with Elizabeth extended over several years, and the desperate, futile march in February 1600 (old style) took place after long periods of indecision and discussion.12 Only then did Essex, hampered by his own procrastination and by circumstantial factors, finally take action in order to separate the Queen from the ageing Burghley and his politically astute son Robert Cecil. Robert Cecil, who had in effect usurped Essex’s putative role as consort to Elizabeth, was the foremost of the political enemies who had “come between him and his election”, and had blocked his advancement. An anagrammatic reading of Hamlet would suggest that the play reflects the challenge presented to Essex in terms of a tragic hero’s melancholic procrastination in the face of the irresolvable hendiadys consisting of Elizabeth-and-Cecil. The aesthetic strategy of the play is fashioned accordingly. Shakespeare appears to have conceived of Elizabeth I and Robert Cecil as distinct personages, who when conjoined in political hendiadys, were unassailable because practically inseparable. A violent course of action against Cecil, in isolation, was inconsistent with Essex’s public and personal loyalty to Elizabeth, from whom he had derived his national identity and his earlier power. But Essex owed nothing to the Cecils (who were his bitter political rivals) and whose machinations had effectively ousted him from any viable sphere of influence in relation to the state. Similarly, the challenge imposed upon Hamlet by the Ghost involves the conjoining of Claudius and Gertrude in an irresolvable hendiadys of Gertrude-and-Claudius, a hendiadys in which similarity and difference are inextricably and complexly co-present. An absolute revenge is required in the case of the fratricidal Claudius, but the Ghost draws a problematic distinction with regard to Gertrude: But howsoeuer thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind; nor let thy Soule contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to heauen, And to those thornes that in her bosome lodge, To pricke and sting her.

This interpretation is not offered as mere speculation. Following the precedent of Classical Latin drama, Shakespeare incorporates hermeneutic anagrams throughout the play, which thus becomes self-interpreting. Thus an HENDIADES (sic) anagram identifies the Ghost’s differential exhortations as partaking of the hendiadys which enacts delay. The importance in this context of Cicero’s dictum in procrastinatio et tarditas

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est odiosa will become clear. At the same time, closely associated ELISA REGINA anagrams in usual (elevated) form specifically identify the reference to Elizabeth: But [Howso|Euer thou pursuest this] act, Taint not thy miND; nor let thY Soule contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to heaueN, [AnD to those thornES that In her bosome LodgE], To pricke [and stinG hER].

H-E ND-Y A D-ES

A S-I-L-E

A-N I G-ER

The gesture is corroborated by (and in turn corroborates) the rhetorical hendiadys in the little language of the Ghost’s “thy mind … thy soule” and “pricke and sting”. This is not to suggest an allegorical link in the strict sense between Elizabeth and Gertrude, or between Cecil and Claudius. Writing in the Graeco-Roman tradition, Shakespeare instead sets the envisaged hendiadys of Elizabeth-and-Cecil in revelatory apposition to the dramatic hendiadys of Claudius-and-Gertrude. Similarly, the challenge to the procrastinating Essex set by the one-in-two of Elizabeth-and-Cecil is brought into quasi-anagrammatic apposition in relation to the challenge to Hamlet set by the inseparable conjugation of Claudius-and-Gertrude. In the absence of an anagrammatic reading, these readings would of course remain merely speculative, and would have no place in the present study. But to reiterate, in due accord with Senecan precedent Hamlet is found to be imbued throughout with hermeneutic anagrams which explain, interpret, corroborate, and poignantly elaborate upon the speech and action of the drama, both overall and locally. It is thus that the Ghost’s exhortations to Hamlet to take revenge against Claudius and not Gertrude are interpreted in the hermeneutic HAMLET REVENGE! In addition, HENDIADES (sic) and GERTRUDE anagrams are incorporated in the text in association with the DELAYE and MELACOLLY anagrams which recur at apt moments as the play progresses. We shall turn to the significance of the HAMLET REVENGE! anagrams in due course. The enjoinder to Hamlet to take revenge on Claudius (with Essex and Cecill in apposition) is categorical. It is corroborated by overt references to “Hamlet” and “Reuenge” (emphasised below) and by Shakespeare’s HAMLET REVENGE! anagrams:13 Gho. Pitty me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall vnfold. Ham. Speake, I am bound to heare. Gho. So art thou to reuenge, when thou shalt heare. Ham. What? Gho. I am thy Fathers Spirit,

Hamlet Doom’d for a certaine terme to walke the night; And for the day [Confin’d to fast in Fiers, Till] the foulE Crimes done in my dayes of Nature Are burnt and purg’d away? But that I am forbid To teLL the [SEcretS of my Prison-HouSE]; I could a Tale vnfold, whose lightest word Would harrow vp thy soule, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like Starres, start from their Spheres, Thy knotty and combined locks to part, And each particular haire to stand an end, Like Quilles vpon the fretfull Porpentine: But this eternall blason must not be To eares of flesh and bloud; list [Hamlet, oh list], If thou didst euer thy deare Father loue. Ham. Oh Heauen! Gho. [Reuenge] [his foule and most] vnnaturall Murther. Ham. Murther? Ghost. Murther most foule, as in the best it is; But this most foule, strange, and vnnaturall. Ham. Hast, hast me to know it, That with wings as swift As meditation, or the thoughts of Loue, May sweepe to my Reuenge.

463

C E-C I LL

SE-S-SE

HAM LE | T H-A M LE T

REU | N GE!

In the conclusion to the Ghost’s speech, however, the problematic hendiadys of Gertrude and Claudius is invoked, and is supported by a plurality of the relevant anagrams. The crime is specifically identified in SINNE and MURDER anagrams at the outset: Thus was I, sleeping, by a Brothers hand, Of Life, of Crowne, and Queene at once dispatcht; Cut off euen in the Blossomes of my [SInne], VN|houzzled, disappointed, vnnaneld, No reckoning madE, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head; Oh horrible, Oh horrible, [Most horrible: If thoU hast natur]e in thee beare it not; Let not the Royall Bed of Denmarke be A Couch for Luxury and Damned Incest. But [HowsoeuER thou pursuest this] Act, Taint not thy mind; nor let thy SoulE contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to [HEaueN, AND to those Thornes] that In her bosome lodge, To pricke AnD sting her. Fare thee well at once; The [Glow-worme] showES the Matine to be neER|e, And gins to pale [His] vneffecT|uall Fire: Adue, adue, Hamlet: Remember me. Exit. Ham. Oh all yoU host of HeaueN! Oh Earth; what els AnD shall I couplE Hell? Oh fie: hold my heart;

SI N N-E

HE ND-I A-D ES H E | N D-I

H E N D-I A-D ES

M U R D ER

G-ER T R | U D-E

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Chapter Six AnD you my sinnewES, grow not instant Old; But beare me stiffely vp: Remember thee? I, thou poore [Ghost, while] memory holds a seate In this distracted [Globe: RemembER thee]? Yea, from the Table of my [MEmory], Ile wipe away alL triuiall fond Records, All saVves of Bookes, All formes, all presures past, That youth anD obseruation COppied therE; And thy Commandment aLL alonE shall liue Within the Booke and Volume of mY BrainE, Vnmixt with baser matter; yes, yes, by Heauen: Oh most pernicious woman! Oh Villaine, Villaine, smiling [Damned Villaine]! My Tables, my Tables; meet it is I set it downE, That one may smile, and smile and be a VilL|aine; At least I’m sure it maY be so in DenmarkE; So Vnckle there you are: now to my word; It is; Adue, Adue, Remember me: I haue sworn’t.

A-D-ES H-E N-DI A ME D L ES A CO LL Y-E

G-ER T R V D E

G ER T R V D-E

D E L A-Y-E

The cluster of HENDIADES anagrams associated with Gertrude is inaugurated in the pivotal negative conjunction in “But howsoeuer thou pursuest this”, a marker of the differential challenge which (as Shakespeare’s hermeneutic anagrams reveal) lies at the heart of Hamlet’s predicament: But [Howsoeuer thou pursuest this] act, Taint not thy mind; nor let thy SoulE contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to [HEaueN, AND to those Thornes] that In her bosome lodge, To pricke AnD sting her. Fare thee well at once; The [Glow-worme] showES the Matine to be neER|e,

HE ND-I A-D ES

H E N D-I A-D ES

G-ER…

It is thus that Shakespeare’s hermeneutic ESSES and Latin ISSE ESSE (“Essex himself”) anagrams in the covert dimension of the text of Hamlet’s speeches have the effect of setting Essex’s Tragique Scene in revelatory apposition to The Tragicall History of Hamlett Prince of Denmarke. The recent history of Essex’s downfall (as told and retold in the immediate aftermath) becomes a contemporary source-text in its own right. It would seem that Edward S Le Comte was correct when, following a tendency established by a number of earlier commentators, he speculated that “in some degree … Hamlet is a memorial to Essex”.14

4. Cicero’s Sixth Philippic The aesthetic strategy of the Hamlet of 1601 is based upon Cicero’s dictum in tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est (“procrastination and

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slowness are hateful”), a vivid instance of rhetorical hendiadys which may well have been known to Shakespeare as a schoolboy. An anagrammatic reading of the play reveals that Shakespeare is fully aware of the non protinus (“not immediately”) that is inevitably inherent in hendiadys. As noted in Chapter One, hendiadys is also a figure of indecision, offering two or more alternative courses in the guise of one. And while the single occurrence of a single word, x, does not disrupt the flow of time, the potentially infinite interplay of “x and y” is capable of giving rise to a hiatus in temporality. The inter-textual protocols of the anagrammatic poetic require Shakespeare to bring into formal apposition to his text Cicero’s Sixth Philippic, in which Cicero (addressing the Roman Senate) points to the danger of delay in dealing with the threat posed by Antony. The passage cited by Shakespeare occurs at Philippics 6.7 (my emphasis): Nec vero de illo sicut de homine aliquo debemus, sed ut de inportunissima belua cogitare. Quae cum ita sint, non omnino dissolutum est, quod decrevit senatus; habet atrocitatis aliquid legatio; utinam nihil haberet morae! Nam cum plerisque in rebus gerendis tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est, tum hoc bellum indiget celeritatis. Succurrendum est D. Bruto, omnes undique copiae colligendae; horam eximere nullam in tali cive liberando sine scelere non possumus.

Cicero’s gesture in tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est is designed to offer an example of inappropriate delay, as figured in the linguistic trope itself. The potentially separable dictum complexly enacts the concept of temporal deferral. At the simplest level, it takes longer to say tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est than to say (for example) mora mala est. Cicero marks the trope as an exercise in hendiadys in the singular verb est, which finds a one-in-two in the plural of tarditas et procrastinatio. Shakespeare adopts a similar course in ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ in “Loue and Constancie is dead”, where the designedly singular verb “is” translates Latin est. In a summary exchange in the final scene of the play, Shakespeare brings Cicero’s text into apposition by incorporating CICERO, TARDITAS, PROCRASTINATIO, and HENDIADES anagrams in a speech in which the hendiadys of “my King, and …my Mother” is brought overtly into contention, and at a summary moment when tardiness and procrastination are established in the drama and in Hamlet’s language. The hendiadys of “kil’d my King, and whor’d my Mother” (for example) is a primary marker of the tragic process, and by this stage in the play such prevarications in hendiadys have become cumulatively discomforting. In the first annotated extract below, Shakespeare’s CICERO and TARDITAS anagrams (only) are shown:

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Chapter Six Hor. Why, what a King is this? Ham. Does it not, [Thinks]|t thee, stand me now vpon. He that hath kil’d my King, And whoR’D my Mother, Popt In betweene [Th’ election And my hopeS], [Throwne out his] Angle foR my propeR life, AnD with such [Coozenage; Is’T not perfect conscience, To] quIT him with this Arme? And IS’t not to be damn’d To let thiS Canker of our nature come In furthER euill. Hor.It must be shortly knowne tO him from England What is the issue of the businesse there.

T A-R-D I-T-A-S C I C ER O

T-A T-A-R R D D-I-T IT-A A-S S

In the second extract below, the closely associated CICERO and PROCRASTINATIO anagrams are indicated, together with the conspicuous ESSES anagram which connects Essex’s “England” with Hamlet’s Denmark: Hor. Why, what a King is this? Ham. Does it not, thinkst thee, stand me now vpon. He that hath kil’d my King, and whor’d my Mother, Popt in betweene th’ election and my hopes, Throwne out his Angle for my [PRO]|per life, And with such [Coozenage; is’t not peR|fect conscience, To] quit him with this ame? And IS’t not to be damn’d To let (Th)Is Canker of our NATure come In furthER euill. Hor.It must be [Shortly knowne tO him from England What iS the issue of the businesSE there].

C I C ER O

PRO C-R A-S TI-NAT I O S-E S-SE

Shakespeare’s primary HENDIADES anagram is so disposed as to take effect in expressive counterpoint to the hendiadys of “kil’d my King, and whor’d my Mother” and “th’election and my hopes”: [HE that hath kil’d my King, aND whor’d my Mother, Popt In betweene th’ election AnD my HopES],

HE-ND I-A-D-ES

The forma of the HENDIADES anagram in this instance is unusually protracted, being drawn out in the text by intervening instances of overt, spoken hendiadys. To borrow a phrase out of context from John Kerrigan, Hamlet’s delay is in this respect co-extensive with the text. The generic extension of the figura extensa is also coterminous with the conspicuous manifestations of hendiadys in the overt dimension of the text. The dynamics of the anagram are thus self-referential in their imitation of Cicero’s tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est. The shared condensa is so disposed as to identify “this Canker of our Nature” with hendiadys:

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CICERO; HENDIADES: AnD Is’t not tO be Damn’d / To let tHIS CankER of our NaturE ComE

This richly anagrammatic exchange also contains CICERO and PHILIPICKE (sic) anagrams which specifically identify the source-text: Ham. Does it not, thinkst thee, stand me now vpon He that bath kil’d my King, and whor’d my Mother, [Popt in betweene] tH’election and my hopes, Throwne out (h)|Is Angle for my proper Life, And with such coozenage; Is’t not Perfect conscience, To quit him with this arme? And Is’t not to be damn'd To let this CanKer of our naturE come In further euill. Hor. It must be shortly knowne to him from England What is the issue of the businesse there.

C I C ER O

P-H I-L I-P I C-K-E

The shared figura condensa of the relevant anagrams is located in a section of Hamlet’s speech which is poignantly imbued with instances of hendiadys (a cognitive tendency that Horatio does not share): CICERO; PHILIPICKE; HENDIADES; TARDITAS; PROCRASTINATIO: [HE thaT hath kil’d my King, AND whOR’d my MotheR, POpT IN betweene th’ EleCTION AnD my hopES]

It is thus that an anagrammatic reading reveals that this exchange between Hamlet and Horatio in the final scene of the play has the effect of summarizing the drama so far, and of preparing the way for the dénouement, which is itself structured in the manner of hendiadys. It is thus that the play only becomes an integral whole, a coherent work of art, when it is viewed throughout – locally and overall - in the light of Cicero’s tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est.

5. Hendiadys In due accord with long-standing convention, Shakespeare typically constructs his plays around a prior linguistic devise. An anagrammatic reading of Troilus and Cressida, for example, reveals that the drama is informed throughout by the prior conceit that finds a revelatory resemblance in warre and whore.15 Twelfth Night is similarly informed by the perception that John Marstone (sic) “mars tone”.16 Coriolanus is shaped by the prior onomastic conceit that identifies its hero as Coriole-

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anus (in the sense of boy-whore).17 In Othello, Iago is conceived as the demonic agent of James I’s recently published Daemonologie. His name in Latin (I! ago) means “Go! I drive”. And Othello’s view of Desdemona is based upon the prior devise that finds a tragic misreading in non Desdemona sed demona (“not Desdemona but a Demon”). Othello is thus informed throughout by the structure of not/but (and its variants) in the little language of the play, and by negative conjunction (including not white but black, not Venetian but Moor, not young but old, not courtier but soldier, and not wife but whore) in the overall conception and in localised dramatic action.18 In its little language, in its dramatic development, in its theme, and in its anagrammatism, Othello is found to be everywhere informed and unified by the not … but of non Desdemona sed demona. Similarly, Hamlet is informed in every respect by Cicero’s hendiadis and tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est. The prevalence of rhetorical hendiadys in the language of Hamlet has not gone unnoticed by commentators, and a number of more or less unsuccessful attempts have been made to understand its relevance to the play.19 In ‘Hamlet and the Court of Elsinore’ (1956), for example, R A Foakes rightly points out that there are more than 240 doublets in Hamlet, and suggests that their weight gives the Court an “ostensible stateliness and nobility”.20 In The Question of Hamlet (1959), Harry Levin claims, that the doublets in the play are “doubtless more ornamental than functional”. Levin comes closer, however, when he adds that they “charge the air with overtones of wavering and indecision”.21 George T Wright narrows the field of vision from doublets to rhetorical hendiadys in his admirable article ‘Hendiadys and Hamlet’, but again is unable to identify the ultimate function of the device. Terence Hawkes comes closer in his summary of the more recent “linguistic” accounts of Hamlet, when he refers to “the coherence-sapping rhetorical device of hendiadys (the use of disconcerting repetition and self-questioning) …which has … been taken up as a major key to the play”.22 He bases the latter claim primarily on Wright’s essay and Frank Kermode’s development of it in Shakespeare’s Language.23 Kermode’s interpretation is important in that connects the delays of Hamlet and Hamlet with Shakespeare’s language, if not with the structure of hendiadys itself. He notes in general terms that “the movement of the play … imitates and depends on the varying movement of language”. As Brian Vickers has pointed out, however, Shakespeare’s commitment to hendiadys is by no means unique.24 We have seen that it is present in Belleforest and in Cicero’s prose. At the same time, hendiadys was a familiar feature of Christian daily prayer. In particular, it is

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conspicuously present in Cranmer’s General Confession in the Book of Common Prayer (1552), the communal recitation of which was an everyday event. Cranmer’s tendency to hendiadys is readily apparent:25 A generall confession, to be sayd of the whole congregacion after the minister, knelynge. ALMIGHTY and most mercyfull father, we havu erred and strayed from thy wayes, lyke lost shepe. We have folowed too much the deuises and desyres of oure owne hearts. We have offended against thy holy lawes. We have left vndone those things whiche we oughte to haue done, and we haue done those thinges which we ought not to haue done, and there is no health in us: but thou, O Lord, haue mercy upon us miserable offendors. Spare thou them, O God, which confesse theyr faultes. Restore thou them that be penitent, according to thy promyses declared vnto mankynde, in Christe Jesu oure Lorde. And graunt, O most merciful father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sobre life, to the glory of thy holy name. Amen.

As we shall see, Shakespeare’s THOMAS CRANMER anagrams in Hamlet’ “To be or not to be” soliloquy have the effect of specifically identifying Cranmer’s role in relation to the play and its mediation between the Anglican and Roman Catholic eschatologies.26 After Hamlet has killed Polonius and perhaps assumed responsibility for the death of Ophelia, Cranmer’s words of confession, expressed in hendiadys, are poignantly apt: we haue erred and strayed from thy wayes, lyke lost shepe. We haue followed too much the devises and desires of our owne hearts… We haue left vndone those things whiche oughte to haue done, and we haue done those thinges whiche we oughte not to haue done, and there is no health in us. The Ghost is the ghost of Hamlet’s father, who name is also Hamlet. It is typical of the all-embracing thoroughness of Shakespeare’s dramatization of the devise in Cicero’s tarditas et procrastinatio est odiosa that the powerful dramatic conjunction of Hamlet and his father in the vulnerably undifferentiated form of Hamlet-and-Hamlet is also formulated (in the manner of Hermes) as a hendiadys in terms of Fatherand-Son and “the quick and the dead”. It is thus that in the literary and historical contexts, and in the specific context of the Ghost, Shakespeare’s hendiadys is also found to bring key religious texts into revelatory apposition to his own. Throughout the sixteenth century, attempts had been made to resolve the doctrinal differences between the Catholic Church and the Protestant in terms of what in effect was proposed as an

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alliance of one-in-two. It is against this background that the notably pragmatic Church of England under Elizabeth I might have been conceived by contemporaries as what A N Wilson has called a “Church of Hendiadys”.27 Shakespeare’s THOMAS CRANMER anagrams would tend to suggest that his dramatic exploitation of religious and textual hendiadys is derived in part from the life, writings, and death of Thomas Cranmer. Wilson comes unwittingly close when he posits a connection between Cranmer and Hamlet in terms of hendiadys: Cranmer’s words had entered the language. For forty years now, English men and women had attended Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Communion, and baptisms, and weddings, with the prayer-book as the libretto of their life-experiences. And Cranmer’s hendiadys had become music inside their heads: ‘Almighty and most merciful father; we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts … Almighty God … hath given power and commandment, to his Ministers, to declare and pronounce …’ ‘Behold our most gracious sovereign lady Elizabeth … grant her in health and wealth long to live; strengthen her that she may vanquish and overcome all her enemies; and finally after this life she may attain everlasting joy and felicity’. Hamlet, too, is a play that would be half the length were it not for Shakespeare’s addiction to Cranmerian hendiadys. 28

An anagrammatic reading reveals, moreover that Sir Thomas More’s The Supplication of Souls (upon which Stephen Greenblatt speculates in Hamlet in Purgatory) is itself set in a kind of hendiadys in conjunction with Cranmer’s opposing views.29 Underlying these concerns is the possibility of intercessional prayer for the soul of the departed Essex, as postulated in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 146.30 This hendiadys is specifically identified in the thirty-seven line “To be or not to be” soliloquy, in which prominently disposed CRANMER and MORE anagrams are symmetrically disposed in lines 12 and 24 of the speech. Hermeneutic HENDIADES anagrams are co-present in the text, and the speech is introduced by ONEIN-TWO anagrams which are marked and reciprocally corroborated in Shakespeare’s word-play on “to” and two. In accordance with conventional practice, the first line of the speech invites an alternative reading which provides a mutually corroborative thematic prompt: Two be or not two be, that is the question:

The anagrams indicated in the annotated extract below are by no means exhaustive, and (as will become clear) should be read in conjunction with others in this richly anagrammatic soliloquy:

Hamlet [To] be, [Or Not to bE], that [Is the Question]: Whether ’tis Nobler iN the mindE tO suffer The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune, Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to [Dye], to sleepe No [more; and by] a [Sleepe], to say we End The [Heart-akE, and the thousand NaturalL shockes] That Flesh is heyrE too? ’Tis A consummation Deuoutly to be wish’d. To dYE to sleepe, To sleepe, perchance to [Dreame; I, there’s thE rub, For in] that Sleepe of death, what dreames may come, When we haue shuffel’d off This [MOR|tall coile], [Must giue Vs pawse]. There’s the respect That makes Calamity Of so long life: For who would beaRE the Whips and Scornes of TIme, The Oppressors wrong, the poore maN|s Contumely, The pangs of [Dispriz’d louE, the Lawes delAY], The] insolence of office, and [THe spurnes] [That patient merit Of the vnworthy takes], When [HE himselfe might his] Quietus MAke With a bare BodkiN? Who would these fardleS beare To grunt anD sweat vnder a wearY life, But that the dread of something After Death, The vndiscouered [Countrey, from whosE Borne No TrauelleR] returneS, Puzels the will, ANd [Makes vs RathER beare] those illes we haue, Then flye to OthER|s that we know not of. Thus conscience does make cowards of vs all, And thus the natiue hew of resolution Is sicklied o’re, with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard their currants turne away, And loose the name of action. Soft you now, The faire Ophelia? Nimph, in thy orizonS Be all my sinnes remembred.

471 ON E

HE-ND I-A D E-S

I N

T W-O

D E L A YE

S E-L F-E D-E S T-R V C TI O-N

MOR-E M O RE D-E-L-AY

HE N D-Y AD E S

TH O MA S

C R AN-MER O-R

M O-R E

A selection of Shakespeare’s additional HENDIADES, MELACOLY, SELFE DESTRUCTION, DELAYE, PROCRASTINATION, CICERO, and SINNES anagrams is shown in the annotated version of the speech below: [To] be, [Or not to be], that [Is The QuestioN]: Whether ’tis Nobler in the mindE tO suffer The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune, Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to [Dye], to sleepe No [More; and by] a [Sleepe], to say we End The [Heart-akE, and the thousaND NaturalL shockes] That Flesh Is heyrE too? ’Tis A COnsummation DeuoutLY to bE wish’d. To dYE to sleepe, To sleepe, perchance to dreame; I, therE’S the rub, For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,

ON E

D E L A YE

I N

HE-ND I-A D E-S

T W-O

M-E L A-CO LY-E

472

Chapter Six When we haue shuffel’d off This [Mor|tall coilE], [Must giuE vs pawsE]. There’s the respect That makes Calamity of so Long Life: For who would beare the Whips And Scornes of TIme, The Oppressors wrong, the poore maNs COntumeLY, The pangs Of [Dispriz’d LouE], the Lawes delay, The insolencE of Office, And the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthY takes, When [HE himselfe [Might his] Quietus makE] With a barE BodkiN? Who would these FarD|les beare To grunt and sweat vnder a wearY Life, But that the dread of something After [Death, The vn|Discouered COuntrey], from whose BornE No Traueller returnes, [Puzels the wilL, And makes vs Rather beare those Illes wE haue, Then] flYE to Others that we know not of. Thus [Consc|Ience do]|es make Cowards of vs all, And thus the NatiuE hew of Resolution Is sicklied O’re, with the pale cAST of Thought, And enterprI|ses of great pith and moment, With this regard their Currants turN|e away, And loose The name of actION. [Soft you now, The faire Ophelia? Nimph, IN thy OrizonS] Be all my sinNES remembred.

M E M-E L L A A C CO-LY O-L-Y DEL E A Y HE E M N-D E Y L A-D A D-E CO S P L R I-E O C-I-C C E-R R O AST I N S A-T-ION IN NES

D E L A YE

Throughout the play, Hamlet’s soliloquies are found to comprise a dramatically appropriate context for anagrammatic elucidation and specification. At the same time their generic separation from the narrative and from dramatic time and action has the effect both of rendering the impasse of aporia, and of invoking the essentially non-temporal character of hendiadys.31 As already noted, Shakespeare’s eschatological sonnets of this period are found to associate the death of Essex with covert invocations of the afterlife, and in particular - as in Sonnet 146 - of the purging and pining of the “Poore soule” in purgatory. In the historical and literary contexts (and in a discourse in which Apollo and Hermes have equally important parts to play) the striking opening of Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be”, invites an appositional translation of the resonant Latin of Cicero’s aut esse aut non esse.32 This bilingual gesture (which in the period and in context also invokes the poignant motto aut vincere aut mori) is reciprocally corroborative in relation to the multitude of ESSES anagrams with which lines 1-14 of the soliloquy are imbued, with their plural extensae. It will be recalled that the word esse was in the period emblematic of the deep chiasmus of the name ESSEX: 33

Hamlet E

473 S

X S

E

In the manner of Hermes, the English phrase To be, or not to be is thus permitted to invoke aut esse aut non esse and consequently to signify (inter alia): To be Essex or not to be Essex. The MORS anagram in “When we haue shuffel’d off this MORtall coile, / Must giue vS pawse” (which is quoted verbatim from Cicero’s De contemnenda morte, the Latin sourcetext) is aptly disposed in relation to its textual matrix, and at the same time points to the death of Essex. As in the poems appended to Love’s Martyr, concealed anagrammatic representations of Essex are customarily reversed, the letters of the name ESSES being thus presented in elevated form. The reversed anagrams which had customarily registered the elevation of Elizabeth I (and Elizabeth Boyle and Elizabeth Vere) and Essex are perhaps explicable also in terms of the relative infrequency of words beginning with the letter e in English. The (selected) ESSES anagrams shown below are intended to be read in the light of the proemial invocation of the phrase aut esse aut non esse which notionally precedes them, and the MORS anagram which follows: aut esse aut non esse To be, or not to be, that is the Question: Whether ’tis nobler in the minde to Suffer The [Slings and ArrowES of outragiouS FortunE], Or to take Armes against a SEa of troubleS, And by opposing End them: to [Dye], [to SleepE] No [more; and by] a [Sleepe], to say we End The [Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall [ShockeS S That Flesh iS heyrE] too? ’TiS a consummation Deuoutly to be wish’d. To dye to [SleepE], To [SleepE], perchancE to dreame; I, there’S the rub, For in that [Sleepe] of death, what dreames may comE, When we haue [Shuffel’d off thiS [MORtall coilE]], Must giue vS pawse. There’S the respect That makes Calamity of [So long lifE]:

SE-S S-E S-E S-S E

MOR S

S S-ES-S-E ES-S-E S E-S S-E S E-S S-E S-E S E S-E S-E S-S-E S S-E

Shakespeare’s Hermetic dramatization of hendiadys is found to be omnipresent in the language, diction, action, and dramatic structure of the play. Instances of strict rhetorical hendiadys (as in “slings and arrows”) are found to be expressively linked to anagrammatic counterpoint in the surrounding text, and linked also to dramatic manifestations of the concept of one-in-two that comprises the invenio upon which the drama is based.

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But Shakespeare’s strategic exploitation of hendiadys does not stop there. The phrase “To be or not to be” (for example) takes the form of x-or-y rather than x-and-y, and thus extends and modifies the structure of pure hendiadys in terms of an oppositional either/or. For Hamlet the either/or trope is as irresolvable as the one-in-two. Similarly, the verb-based hendiadys of “to dye, to sleepe” invokes the form of a time-evading aporia that is again complexly intransigent. In a sense, the language of the play is designedly imbued with an all-pervasive use of the one-in-two, a gesture which is manifest in the high frequency in the play of conjunctive constructions involving for example and, or, and but (and their variants). The first fourteen lines of the soliloquy, which double as a sonnet-like memorial to Essex, are end-marked by the word pawse in the duplicitous deixis of “Must giue vs pawse”. This proemial memorial then concludes with a covertly incorporated, retrospective reference to Essex’s Tragique Scene, in which ESSES and MORS anagrams are closely associated: When we haue Shuffel’d off this [MORtall coilE, Must giue vS] pawsE.There’s the respect That makes Calamity of [so long life]:

S E S-S-E

MOR S

Here Shakespeare employs the word “respect” in typically duplicitous fashion. In the context of his fourteen-line memorial, respect invokes Latin respicere in the senses of “look back upon”, “contemplate”, “be mindful of”, and “have respect for”. This covert reference to the deceased Essex is corroborated in the final ESSES anagram, the valedictory forma of which stands in revelatory apposition to the departed Essex: SessE: So long lifE

The quasi-couplet beginning “Must giue vs pawse” thus performs the function of the couplet of a typically Shakespearean sonnet in that it caps, encapsulates, and re-contextualizes the preceding lines 1-12 of the soliloquy. In such a context, the protocols of appositional inter-textuality require that a formal inter-connection be established with Robert Chester’s then recently published Love’s Martyr, with particular reference therein to the appended poems by the leading poets of the day. A particular obligation arises as to the conventional quotation of key elements of the poet’s own poem, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’, which has supplied the motif of hendiadys. It is thus that the sonnet-section of Hamlet’s speech (with its

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valedictory ESSES anagrams) is followed by ROBERT CHESTER anagrams which inaugurate LOUES MARTYR and TURTLE anagrams set in expolitio. In the annotated extracts below, the text is sub-divided in the interests of clarity of exposition: To be, or not to be, that is the Question: Whether ’tis nobler in the minde to Suffer The [Slings and ArrowES of outragiouS FortunE], Or to take Armes against a SEa of troubleS, And by opposing End them: to [Dye], [to SleepE] No [more; and by] a [Sleepe], to say we End The [Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall [ShockeS S That Flesh iS heyrE] too? ’TiS a consummation Deuoutly to be wish’d. To dye to [SleepE], To [SleepE], perchancE to dreame; I, there’S the rub, For in that [Sleepe] of death, what dreames may comE, When we haue [Shuffel’d off thiS [MORtall coilE]], Must giue vS pawse. There’S the respect That makes Calamity of [So long lifE]:

S-ES-S-E SE-S S-E S-E S-S S E E-S S-E

MOR S

To sleepe, per|CHancE to [Dreame; I, there’S ThE rub, FoR in] that Sleepe of death, what dreames [MAy come, When we haue shuffel’d off This moR|tall coile, [Must giue Vs pawse]. There’s the [Respect] That makes CalamitY Of so [LOng life: FoR who would BEare the Vvhips] and ScornES of TIme, The oppressoR|s wrong, the poore maNs contumely, ThE pangs of dispriz’d [LOUe], the LawES] delay, The] insolence of Office, and the Spurnes That patient merit of the Vnworthy takes, When hE himselfe might hiS Quietus [MAke With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beaR]|e [To grunt and sweaT Vnder a wearY life], But that the dread of something afteR death, The Vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne No [TrauelleR re|Turnes, puzels the] wilL, And makes vs Rather bearE those illes we haue, Then flye to Others That we know not of. [Thus Conscience] does make Cowards of Vs alL, And thus the natiue hew of Resolution Is sicklied o’re, with The paLE cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard their Currants turne away, And loose the name of action. Soft you now, The faire Ophelia? Nimph, in thy orizonS Be all my sinnes remembred.

S-E S S-E

S-E S E S-E S-S-E

LO V-ES

LOU-ES

T V-R T L E

S E-S S-E

CH-E-S-T-E R

MA R T Y R

MA R T-Y R

S ES-S-E

L O V E-S

R O BE R T-E

T-V R T-V T R-T-L L E E T-V R T-LE

The shared condensa is once again found to be sited in an appropriate part of the text:

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Chapter Six ESSES, LOVES MARTYR, HENDIADYS, TURTLE HELL, PURGATORY, HEAVEN: The OppressoRs wrong, The pooRE MAns contUmeLY, The pangs of dispriz’d LOUe, The LaweS delaY

Shakespeare fulfils conventional requirements by citing the ER … RE formulations which inform the text of ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’: [The] Vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne No [TrauellER RETurnes, puzels the wilL, And makes vs RathER beaRE] those ilL|es we haue, Then flyE to Others that we know not of.

T-V R-T L

T-V R-T-L E E

ER-RE ER-RE

Shakespeare thus appears to connect the martyrdom of Essex (in the form of Love’s Martyr) with the hendiadys of the Catholic martyr Thomas More and the Protestant martyr William Cranmer. The eschatological dimension of the play is informed throughout by this hendiadys, which is especially significant in its relation to its thematic interest in the afterlife. A brief account of the historical background must suffice for present purposes. Cranmer had sought to escape death at the hands of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I by purporting to affirm his adherence to Catholic doctrine – as for example in his declaration of a belief in what he called “a place” of purgatory: “Furthermore, I believe that there is a place of purgatory, where souls departed be punished for a time, for whom the Church doth godly and wholesomely pray, like as it doth honor saints and make prayers to them”. Despite his self-betraying attempt to resolve the irresolvable, Cranmer’s signed submissions were unsuccessful. He was put to the stake and died a Protestant martyr. While the PURGATORY anagrams in the play are presented in terms of the one-in-two of a Catholic-and/or-Protestant hendiadys that puzels the will, Hamlet is evidently not a play “about” religious issues. Nor, as we have seen, is it a play “about” the Earl of Essex. When Shakespeare’s text is read as it was intended to be read (i.e. in its overt and covert dimensions), The Tragicall History of Hamlet is found to comprise a revenge tragedy that complies with Classical precedent in its appositional references to contemporary issues. As noted above, the text of the play is conventionally self-interpreting, and is found to contain aptly located HAMLET REUENGE!, HUBRIS and NEMESIS anagrams. In effect, the revelations, clarifications, and elaborations contained in the covert dimension are capable of functioning as the utterances of an interpretative chorus. The notional function of Hermes in relation to the drama is thus aptly hermeneutic. The theme which is common to all of the referential

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contexts of the tragedy is hendiadys, and it is hendiadys that unites and mediates between the otherwise apparently disparate elements of the drama. But for Shakespeare (and for the conventionally participating Hermes) hendiadys is not limited to the specifically rhetorical device of one-in-two. In a typically Shakespearean gesture of quasi-anagrammatic inter-textuality, the linguistic entity x-and-y (in all its semantic complexity) is set in revelatory apposition to a plurality of referential contexts within the play. In accordance with conventional protocols, Shakespeare’s dramatization of hendiadys is never overtly revealed, but when the dramatist’s hermeneutic HENDIADES anagrams are read in counterpoint to the action, and when the play is viewed in the light of its aesthetic dedication to hendiadys, the tragedy becomes a unified whole. A brief review of Shakespeare’s dramatization of hendiadys may be helpful at this point. The play opens (for example) in the one-in-two of an exchange between Barnado and Francisco in which these two characters are initially presented as isolated selves or souls in search, as it were, of the comforting hendiadys of comradeship. At the outset, they confront each other as “other” and as separate entities, but their relationship comes gradually to assume the one-in-two form of Barnado-and-Francisco: Bar. Who’s there? Fra. Nay, answer me. Stay and unfold your selfe. Bar: Long liue the King. Fra. Barnado? Bar. He. Fra. You come most carefully vpon your houre. Bar. ‘Tis now struck twelve

The two terms of the hendiadys, Barnado and Francisco, seek to associate themselves with each other in order, ultimately to attain a comforting concord. Their confrontation at the outset (in lines 1-2) soon moves towards a synchronous conjunction: You come most carefully vpon your houre … ‘Tis now struck twelve.

Within a few lines, Barnado and Francisco are settled into a conjoined hendiadys of “quiet … not a mouse stirring”: Bar. Haue you had quiet guard? Fra. Not a mouse stirring.

Similarly, when the Ghost appears, the interaction of Marcellus and Barnado again dramatizes the one-in-two of hendiadys of “speak to it … Mark it”:

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Chapter Six Mar. Thou art a scholar – speak to it, Horatio. Bar. Looks a’ not like the King? Mark it Horatio.

Here the conjoined terms x and y seem capable of working as one, but when confronted by the Ghost, x-Marcellus and y-Barnado deliver exhortations in hendiadys which speak to the heart of the tragedy One term is active (speak to it, Horatio), and the other passive (Mark it Horatio). Here, in little, is rehearsed (a) the Ghost’s active-and-passive exhortations to Hamlet in relation to Claudius (“Reuenge his … Murther”) and Gertrude (“leaue her”), and (b) Hamlet’s own consequential aporia of the active and the passive. It is only when the play is read or viewed in terms of what psychologists of perception call a “top-down” expectation of hendiadys that its formal unity becomes clear. That unity will be found in the totality of the drama, in the “little language” of the play, and in smallscale dramatic interactions which might otherwise be considered incidental, and it will be interpreted and corroborated throughout by means of hermeneutic anagrammata. The fact that Shakespeare is found to incorporate HENDIADES anagrams at appropriate points in the action of the play is of considerable significance. In Act 2, Scene 2, for example, the one-in-two of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is manifest in the minutiae of dramatic interaction and is interpreted for the reader in mutually corroborative HENDIADES anagrams. Here Hamlet is greeted by the one-in-two of Rosincran-and-Guildensterne, who proclaim their one-in-two status as self-confessed “indifferent Children of the earth”. Shakespeare’s HENDIADES anagrams are methodically disposed, the second and third extensae beginning in the line in which the first and second (respectively) end: Ros. God saue you Sir. Gui. Mine honour’d Lord? Ros. My most deare Lord? Ham. My excellent good friends? How do'st thou Guildensterne? Oh, Rosincrane; good Lads: [How doe yE both? Ros. As] the iN|different ChilD|ren of the earth. Gui. Happy, In that we are not ouer-[happy: on Fortunes] Cap, we Are not the very Button. Ham. Nor the Soales of her Shoo? Ros. Neither my LorD. Ham. Then you liue about her wastE, or in the middle of her fauour? Gul. Faith, [Her priuateS], we. Ham. In the secret parts of Fortune? Oh, most truE: she is a Strumpet. What’s the Newes?

H-E | ND I A | D E | S

H E N

Hamlet Ron. None my LorD; but that the World's growne honest. Ham. Then Is Doomesday neere: But your newes is not true. Let me question more in particular: what (h)Aue you my good friends, Deserued at thE [HandS of Fortune], that shE sends you to Prison hither? Gui. PrisoN, my Lord? Ham. Denmark’s a Prison. Ros. Then Is the World one. Ham. A gooD|ly one, in which there are many ConfinES, Wards, and Dungeons; Denmarke being one o’th’ worst.

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D | I A D-E-S

A proemial figura condensa is located in the first and second lines, and is expressively derived in hendiadys – i.e. in part from Rosencrantz’s contribution, and in part from Guildenstern’s: HENDIADES: Ros. SAuE you Sir. / Gui. MINE Honour’D LorD

An additional HENDIADES condensa is conventionally located in the ominous textual matrix at the end of the HENDIADES extensae: A gooDly onE, In whicH there arE many CoN|fines, Wards, and DungeonS;

This condensa is shared and thus expressively associated with the names of ROSINCRAN and GUILDENSTERNE (who are together ironically epitomized as “a goodly one”): HENDIADES: ROSINCRAN: GUILDENSTERNE: A GooDly oNE, In whicH TheRE aRE many CoNfinES, WardS, ANd DUngeONS

There is dramatic poignancy in the contagion which is apparent in the one-in-three of Hamlet’s cognitive bias towards hendiadys in “Confines, Wards, and Dungeons, Denmarke being one”. The pairing of Voltemand and Cornelius is similarly found to be exponential in its structural accordance with the principles of hendiadys. In Hamlet’s exchange with Gertrude at the end of Act 3 Hamlet is careful to observe the Ghost’s inaugural injunction in “nor let thy Soule contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to heauen”. The

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HENDIADES anagrams in this dialogue are again consequential upon those in the Ghost’s speech: Gho. But [Howsoeuer thou pursuest this] act, Taint not thy mind; nor let thy SoulE contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to [HEaueN, AND to those Thornes] that In her bosome lodge, To pricke AnD sting her. Fare thee well at once; The [Glow-worme] showES the Matine to be neER|e, Ham. Not this by no meanes that I bid you do: Let the blunt King tempt you againe to bed, Pinch Wanton on your cheeke, call you [His] MousE, AND let [Him for a pairE of reechie kisses], Or padling In your necke with his [damN]’D Fingers, Make You to rauell All this matter out, That I essentially am not in maD|nesse, But madE in craft. ‘Twere good you let him know, For who that’S but a Queene, faire, sober, wise, Would from a Paddocke, from a Bat, a Gibbe, Such deere concernings hide, Who would do so, No in despight of Sense and Secrecie, Vnpegge the Basket on the [Houses] top: Let thE Birds flye, aND like the famous Ape To try Conclusions In the Basket, creepe And breake your owne necke Downe. Que. BE thou assur’d, if wordS be made of breath, And breath of life: I [HauE No life to breath What thou has]|t saiD|e to me. Ham. I must to England, you know that? Que. Alacke I hAD forgot: ‘Tis so concluded on. Ham. This man shall set mE packing: Ile lugge the GutS into the Neighbor roome, Mother goodnight. Indeede this Counsellor Is now most still, most secret, and most graue, Who was in life, a foolish prating Knaue. Come sir, to draw toward an end with you. Good night Mother.

D IS S T R A C T-I ON

HE ND-I A-D ES

H E N D-I A-D ES

H-E ND I A D E S

H-E N-D Y-A D E S

H E-ND I A-D E-S H-E-N D I AD E S

Confronting Gertrude (who, though alone, remains inseparably problematic in her hendiadys with Claudius), Hamlet adds to the customary one-in-two of his little language in “Sense and Secrecie” an expanded one-in-three in “faire, sober, wise” and “a Paddocke … a Bat … a Gibbe”). The conspicuous chiastic repetition in “Mother goodnight … Good night Mother” marks (inter alia) the fulfilment of Hamlet’s obligation to “leaue her to Heauen”. The DISTRACTION anagram (from Latin dis-traho) speaks to the distraction snd self-division of madness, and is typically related via Latin traho to de-traho (“drag away, drag out”) in

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Hamlet’s vernacular version in “Ile lugge the guts”. Similarly, traho also connects with the protraction of pro-traho in “Come sir, to draw toward an end with you”. In Act 4, as a preliminary to the play’s final hendiadys of sword-andcup, Claudius and Laertes contemplate the latter’s proposed duel with Hamlet. Laertes declares that he will avenge his father’s death by anointing the tip of his sword with poison. But the calculating Claudius seeks the one-in-two assurance of “a backe or second” – an example of hendiadys that has its consequences in the dénouement. At this crucial point in the text the dramatic invocation of hendiadys is marked by double HENDIADES anagrams: Laer. I will doo’t, And for that purpose Ile annoint my [Sword: I bought aN VnctioN of a MountebankE] So [MORtall], I but dipt a knife in it, Where iT drawes blood, no Cataplasme so rare, Collected from ALL Simples that haue Vertue Vnder the Moone, can saue the thing from death, That is but scratcht withall: Ile touch my point, With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly, It may be death. Kin. Let’s further thinke of this, Weigh what conuenience both of time and meanes May fit vs to our shape, if this should faile; And that our drift looke through our bad performance, ‘Twere better not assaid; therefore this Proiect Should [Haue a backe or second, that might hold, If this] [Should blast IN proofe]: Soft, let me seE Wee’l make a solemNE wager oN your commings, I ha’t: when in your motion you are [hot and DrY, As] make your bowts more violent to the END, And that hE calS for drinke; Ile haue prepar’d him A Challice for the nonce; whereon but sipping, If he by chance escape your venom’D stuck, Our purposE may hold there; how sweet Queene. Queen. One woe doth tread vpon anotherS heele, So fast they’l follow: your Sister’s drown’d Laertes.

S I-N-N-E MOR T ALL

H E N D-Y A-D E-S

S-IN NE H END I A D E S

As noted in Chapter One, one condensa is located at the beginning of the extensae, in close counterpoint to the description of hendiadys that is contained in the phrase “a backe or second”: HENDIADES: A backE or secoND that might Hold, If thiS shoulD blast in proofE

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As the play moves to a climax, the external hendiadys of Hamlet’s initial challenge and the dramatized internal hendiadys of his selfdistraction, self-detraction, and self-division are now reformulated in terms of a hendiadys of sword-and-cup. In the literary and historical contexts, and in the emblematic vocabulary of the period, a large number of different vessels were used to represent the vagina and a large number of long, pointed objects were used to represent the penis. There is nothing unconscious, therefore, in Shakespeare’s decorously unobtrusive adoption of the vaginal cup – introduced at the bequest not of Hamlet but of Claudius – as the agency that is in due course responsible for Gertrude’s death. There is thus a tragic justice in the dénouement, a justice which arises from the hendiadys of sword and cup. Hamlet does indeed kill Claudius. And it is Claudius and not Hamlet who has already become responsible for poisoning the cup which kills Gertrude. The Ghost’s words are remembered to the last: But [Howso|Euer thou pursuest this] act, Taint not thy miND; nor let thY Soule contriue Against thy Mother ought; leaue her to heauen, AnD to those thornES that in her bosome lodge, To pricke and sting her.

H-E ND-Y A D-ES

In the final scene the stage directions for the duel indicate a quasiemblematic assemblage of persons and props. On this occasion, Shakespeare’s customarily doubled HENDIADES anagrams speak first to Hamlet’s inner or psychic hendiadys (which has manifested itself in terms of self-distraction and self-division), and secondly to the hendiadys of Claudius-and-Gertrude: Enter King, Queene, Laertes and Lords, with other Attendants with Foyles, and Gauntlets, a Table and Flagons of Wine on it. Kin. Come Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me. Ham. Giue me your pardon Sir, I’ue done you wrong, But pardon’t as you are a Gentleman. This presence knowes, And you must needs haue heard how I am punisht With [Sore] [DIStraction]? WhaT I haue done That might youR Nature honour, And ex|CepTION Roughly awakE, I [HEere proclaime was] mad|Nesse: Was't Hamlet wrong’D Laertes? Neuer Hamlet. If Hamlet from him|[selfe be tane away: And when he’s not himselfe, Do’s wrong Laertes, Then [Hamlet doES] it not, Hamlet denies it: Who does it then? His madnessE? If ’t be [So,

S-I N-N E

S

HE-N D I A-D ES

H E

Hamlet Hamlet Is of the] FactioN that is wrong’D, His mad|NessE is poore Hamlets Enemy. [Sir, In this Audience], Let my Disclaiming from a purpose’d euill, FreE me so farre in your most generouS thoughts, That I haue shot mine Arrow o’re the house, And hurt my Mother. Kin. Come Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me. Ham. Giue me your pardon Sir, I’ue done you wrong, But pardon’t as you are a Gentleman. This presence knowes, And you must needs haue heard how I am punisht With [Sore] [DIStraction]? WhaT I haue done That might youR Nature honour, And ex|CepTION Roughly awakE, I heere proclaime was madnesse: Wa’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Neuer Hamlet. If Hamlet from him|[Selfe bE tane away: And when he’s not himseLFE, [Do’s wrong Laertes, Then] Hamlet does It not, Hamlet denies it: Vvho does it then? HIS Madnesse? If’t be [So, Hamlet Is of the] FactiON that is wrong’d, His mad|nesse is poore Hamlets Enemy. [Sir, in this AudiencE], Let my disclaiming From a purpose’d euill, Free me so farrE in your most generous thoughts, That I haue shot mine Arrow o’re the house, And hurt my Mother.

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N D I-A D E-S

DIS-T R-A-C-TION

D I V-IS I-ON S-E L-F E

Having thus again connected present action with the fatal hendiadys imposed by the Ghost upon Hamlet at the outset, Shakespeare now dramatizes the tragic resolution of that one-in-two. It is a different Hamlet who cries out in offence at his mother’s poisoning, and kills Claudius. It is only when his mother has died, and can come to no further harm, that the Ghost’s one-in-two injunction inhibits Hamlet no longer. His revenge on Claudius is now prompt and active, as reflected in the diction of his speech (emphasised below). Shakespeare’s hermeneutic IRE anagrams (defining Hamlet’s sinne) speak to Hamlet’s sudden galvanisation: Que. No, no, the drinke, the drinke. Oh my deere Hamlet, the drinke, the drinke, I am poyson’d. Ham. Oh Villany! How? Let the doore be lock’d. Treacherie, seeke it out. Lae. [It is heRE] Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art [Slaine], No Medicine IN the world can do thee good. [In thee], theRE Is Not halfe] an houRE of life; The Treacherous Instrument is in thy hand, Vnbated and envenom’d: the foule practise

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I-RE

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Chapter Six Hath turn’d it [Selfe] on me. Loe, heere [I lye, NeueR to risE] agaiNE: Thy Mothers poyson’d: [I can no moRE], the King, the King’s to blame. Ham. The point envenom’d too, Then venome] to thy worke. Hurts the King. All. Treason, Treason. Kin. O yet defend me Friends, I am but hurt.

S-I N-NE

I R-E I-RE

At this point the fateful hendiadys of sword and cup becomes predominant, and an emphatic plurality of hermeneutic HENDIADES anagrams is accordingly deployed in the text: Ham. [HEre thou incestuous], murderous, DamN|ed Dane, Drinke off this Potion: Is thy Vnion heere? Follow my Mother. King Dyes. Laer. [He Is] iustly seru’d. It is A poyson temp’reD by himselfE: Exchange forgiuenesse with me, Noble Hamlet; Mine and my Fathers Death come not vpon thee, Nor thine on me. Dyes. Ham. Heauen make thee free of it, I follow thee. I Am Dead Horatio, wretched Queene adiew, You that looke paEe, and tremble at thiS chance, That are but Mutes or audience to this acte: Had I but time (as this fell Sergeant death Is strick’d in [His] Arrest) oh I could tell you. But let it bE: Horatio, I am dead, Thou li’st, report me aND my causes right To the vnsatisfied. Hor. Neuer beleeue It. I Am more an Antike Roman then a DanE: [Heere’S] yet some Liquor left. Ham. As th’art a man, giue mE the Cup. Let go, by HeaueN Ile haue’t. Oh gooD Horat|Io, what A woundeD namE, (Things standing thuS vnknowne) shall liue behind me. If thou did’st euer hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicitie awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in paine, To tell my Storie.

H-E N D | | I A-D E S

H E N D | | I A-D E-S

H E ND | I A-D-E S

H E N D-I-A-D-E S

Hamlet’s last request to Horatio contains the penultimate condensa of the preceding HENDIADES anagrams, and has the effect of confirming the dramatist’s theme. Hamlet’s “storie” is thus defined as one which is shaped by hendiadys:

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HAMLET; HENDIADES: And iN this HArsh worlD Draw Thy breatH In painE, To telL My StoriE.

Typically, this condensa of the HENDIADES anagrams is capable of textual extension and of thus becoming the locus of the culminating shared condensa for the thematically central anagrams of the play, including those which name the play (HAMLET) and its author (WILLIAM SHACESPERE): AbsenT thee froM feliC|itiE AwhilE, And IN thiS HArSH WorlD Draw thy breatH In PainE, To teLL My StoRiE.

As already noted, shortly before the dénouement a key exchange between Horatio and Hamlet is the locus of a richly anagrammatic, summary reminder of Hamlet’s predicament and a preparation for the end that is shortly to ensue. This exchange is thus a natural setting also for hermeneutic anagrams which remind the reader at this point of the relevance of Essex’s Tragique Scene to the tragedy of Hamlet. A forwardfacing DEVEREUS anagram is paired with an upward-facing ROBERT anagram, and is followed by a DEFER anagram: Hor. Why, what a King is this? Ham. [Does] it not, thinkst theE, stand me now vpon. He that hath kil’d my King, And Vvhor’d my Mother, Popt in betweene th’ Election and my hopes, Throwne out his Angle foR my propeR lifE, And with [such cozenage]; is’t not perfect conscience, To quit him Vvith thiS arme? And is’t not to Be [Damn’d [TO let this CankeR] of our naturE come In FurthER euill. Hor. It must be [shortly knowne to him from England What is the issue of the businesse there.

D-E V E R E U-S

T-R E B O-R

D E F-ER

Essex is further specified in forward-and-backward ESSES and ESSE anagrams and in ESSE ISSE anagrams. The overtly stated epithet “my Mother” is correlated with Essex’s Elizabeth I by means of the customary upward-facing ELISA REGINA anagrams: Hor. Why, what a King is this? Ham. Does it not, thinkst thee, Stand me now vpon. HE that hath kil’d my King, And whor’d my Mother, Popt in betweene th’ [Election and my hopeS], Throwne out hiS [AnG|lE foR] my proper life,

S E S S

E-S S

AN I G-E-R

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Chapter Six And with such cozenagE; is’t not perfect conscience, To quit him with thiS arme? And iS’t not to be damn’d To let this canker] of our nature come] In further euill. Hor. [It must be] [Shortly knownE] to him from [England What [Is the issue of the busineSSE] there.

E

E S

A-S I L-E

S-E SSE

IS-SE

The shared condensa is again aptly located ESSES, ISSE ESSE ELISABETH, ROBERT DEVEREUS, DEFER: IS’t noT tO BE DAmned to LEt THiS cankER of oUR natuRE comE In FurthER EVilL

This close linking of Essex with news “from England” is reiterated at the moment of nemesis. In the annotated extract below, a selection (only) of Shakespeare’s elevated ESSES anagrams, and ISSE ESSE anagrams, and parallel NEMESIS and HENDIADYS anagrams is shown. The NEMESIS anagram in Othello is comparable: 34 Ham. O I dye Horatio: The potent poyson quite ore-crowes my spirit, I cannot liue to [Heare the [Newes]] from [England, But I do prophesie th’ElectioN lights] On Fortinbras, he ha’s My Dy|Ing voycE, So tell him with the occurrentS more AnD lesse, Which hauE solicited. The rest IS silence. O, o, o, o. Dies. Hor. Now cracke a Noble heart: Goodnight Sweet PrincE, And flights of AngelS [Sing theE] to thy rest,

N E M-E S IS

H E-N D-I A-D E-S

S-E S-S-E

The memorial to Essex in the elevated form of SESSE is conspicuous in the closing words: Goodnight Sweet PrincE, AngelS [Sing theE] to thy rest, S E S S E

The retrospective effect is to confirm the appositional importance of Essex’s topical “Tragique Scene” in relation to the play, and to consolidate hendiadys as prime cause in relation to Hamlet’s tragic development towards nemesis, as its central theme:

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HAMLET; ESSES; HENDIADES; NEMESIS: So Tell Him with thE occurrentS MorE AND leSSE, Which HAuE solicitED. The rest IS SILencE.

Here again, Essex is immanent in the drama. To “tell him” is identify him by subscribing his name in anagram, and “more and lesse” is a final salute to the figure of one-in-two: So tell him with thE occurrentS more and lesSE S E S SE

6. The newes from England An anagrammatic and chronogrammatic reading of contemporary texts reveals that in the late 1590s many Englishmen, presuming upon the imminent death of the ageing Elizabeth I (and aware that James was a potential king-in-waiting), projected their hopes for renovatio on to the coming of the year 1600. In 1599, for example, the coming of the new saeclum would have entailed a quasi-mystical transformation in emblematic terms from the entropic register of MDLXXXXIIII to the neoPlatonic perfection of MDC. For the Earl of Essex and his circle, which included Henry Wriothesley, it would doubtless have appeared desirable for time, and particularly for regnal time, to be indeed renewed. In practice, the year 1600 proved a false dawn (an example of what Frank Kermode in The Sense of an Ending calls apocalyptic disconfirmation), and the years 1600-1603 appear to have taken effect as a kind of interregnum. Between the beginning of the century and Elizabeth’s death in 1603, time was out of joynt in the sense that the virtual interregnum was characterized by an undesired mismatch between the then predominant registers of time – namely the regnal and the centurial. In Sonnet 59 (apparently composed in 1600, old style) Shakespeare contemplates the year ‘MDC A.D.’ and describes the “ADmiring praise” with which some people have welcomed it. The concept of calendar apocalypse is thus caught succinctly in the poet’s invitation to an alternative reading in terms of “A.D.-admiring praise”. As shown below, in line 10 the “composed wonder” is that of the iconic emblem in MDC. Shakespeare’s hermeneutic BETH, ESSES and IAMES anagrams specifically identify the underlying theme. In the final analysis, the covert object of the poet’s A.D.-admiring praise is James VI of Scotland:

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Chapter Six If their [BEe nothing new, but That whicH] is, HaTH beene before, how are our braines beguild, Which laboring for inuention beare amisse The second burthen of a former child? Oh that record could with a back-ward looke, Euen of fiue hundreth courses of the [Sunne], Show me your image in some antique booke, Since Minde at first in Carrecter was Done. That I might see what the old world could say, To this CoM|poseD wonder of your frame, Whether we are mended, or where better they, Or whether reuolution be the same. Oh sure [I am the wits of former daies], To subiects worse haue giuen AD-miring praise.

BE-T-H

S E S-E

S-E S MCD S-E

B-E TH

S-S-E S-S-E

CMD

I-AM-ES

S-E-S S-SE

The first quatrain of Sonnet 59 speaks to the unwelcome “second burthen” and laboured re-birth of a seventeenth-century Elizabeth, a reiteration of her former persona as a sixteenth-century Elizabeth. The expectation of a redemptive James I of Scotland was thus cruelly dashed. The original reader will have recognised the conventionally plural and anonymous phrase “the wits of former daies” as an ironical reference to Virgil, and to lines 4-7 of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue: Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas; magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna. Iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto. Now the last age of Cumae’s prophecy has come; The great succession of centuries is born afresh. Now too returns the Virgin; Saturn’s rule returns; A new begetting now descends from heaven’s height. (Tr. Guy Lee)

The poet, seeking an apt invenio (“labouring for inuention”) for his poem on the year MDC, looks amiss at Virgil’s lines (an otherwise obvious choice for the occasion) because they contain the disappointingly resonant words Iam redit et virgo (“Now too returns the Virgin”). It is Elizabeth who, in terms of the Eclogue, is “born afresh” in the centurial apocalypse. True to his conventional obligations, Shakespeare translates Virgil’s nascitur in terms of birth and re-birth. The proemial BETH anagram in the opening line is an ironical quotation from the similarly located BETH anagram in the first stanza of the first of Sir John Davies’ then very recently published Hymnes to Astraea (1599):

Hamlet Early [BEfore the day doTH] spring, Let us Awake my Muse, ANd sing; It Is no time to Slumber, So many Ioyes this time doth brinG, [[As time will faiLE] to numbER].

489

B BE-TH E T H

A S I LE

AN I G ER

The monogram ER in line 5 of Davies’ poem is detachable, and is designed to invite an alternative reading in the form of “time will faile to numb ER”.35 Shakespeare’s sonnet points to the perhaps unfortunate accuracy of this prognosis. Playing in his usual manner on the words which and witch, and accompanying this word-play with his customary WHORE anagrams, the poet makes his feelings known. The first line now contains the alternative reading in “If their be nothing new, but that Witch…” A selection of the relevant anagrams is shown below: If their [BEe nothing new, but That [WHicH] is, HaTH] beene before, how are OuR braines beguild, [WHich laboring fOR inuention bearE] amisse The second burthen of a former child?

B-E-T-H

WH O-R E

WH-OR-E

Ultimately, the poet overcomes the professed difficulty arising from Virgil’s lines, and is able in a final nomination to refer to the Eclogue and thus to identify James with Virgil’s putative Augustus (conventionally, the highest honour): Oh sure [I AM the wits of former daiES], To subiects worse haue giuen admiring praise.

I-AM-ES

At the end of Hamlet, Essex’s personal, prior nomination of James VI of Scotland as successor to Elizabeth is set in apposition to Hamlet’s nomination of Fortinbras. When James Stuart is substituted for Fortinbras in the text, the close correspondence between the dying Hamlet’s position and Essex’s becomes vividly clear. In effect, Shakespeare allows Essex the final word: I cannot liue to heare the newes from [England, But [I do prophesie th’election lights]] On James Stuart, he hA’s My dying voyce, [So tell him with thE occurrentS more and lesSE], Which haue solicited.

I A-M E-S

S-E-S-SE

E S S E-S

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Notes 1

Shakespeare uses the phrase “their Tragique Scene” in ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ (1601) to describe the recent history of Elizabeth and Essex. See Chapter One. 2 For concealed chronogram (Horace’s apices numerales) see Chapter Two. 3 See example Lukas Erne, Beyond The Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), Ch. 3. 4 Shakespeare’s identification of the sources of his plays follows traditional practice. Compare for example the similarly located attributive anagrams in, for example, The Tempest (see Chapter Four), Twelfth Night (see Chapter Five), and Othello (see hapter Six). 5 On Shakespeare’s melancholy see J Dover Wilson’s historically important What Happens in Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1935. See also Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare’s Sources: Comedies and Tragedies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), 112. 6 On the thematic importance of thwarted ambition in Hamlet, see A P Staber, “Melancholy, Ambition, and Revenge in Belleforest’s Hamlet”, PMLA, 81 (1966): 207-13. 7 Michael Davies, Hamlet: Character Studies (London: Continuum, 2008), 69. 8 G A Hayes-McCoy, “Tudor Conquest and Counter-Revolution”, in T W Moody (ed.), Early Modern Ireland: 1534-1691 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 127-129. 9 See Arthur F Kinney (ed.), Tudor England: An Encyclopaedia (New York: Garland, 2001), 187-188. 10 Janet Dickinson, Court Politics and the Earl of Essex: 1589-1601 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), Ch. 3. 11 For rhetorical hendiadys in Hamlet, see George T Wright, “Hendiadys and Hamlet”, PMLA, 98 (1981): 168-193. While Wright offers no explanation of the function of hendiadys in the play, his article is historically important. 12 On indecision on the part of Essex and his followers in relation to the rebellion itself, see Janet Dickenson, Court Politics and the Earl of Essex: 1589-1601, Ch. 3. 13 Shakespeare’s HAMLET REUENGE! anagrams of 1601 are accompanied by THOMAS LOGE (sic) anagrams, which presumably refer to Lodge’s attack on Shakespeare in Wits miserie, and the worlds madnesse discouering the deuils incarnat of this age (1596). As Malone pointed out in 1778, Lodge appears to refer to a Hamlet-play which pre-existed Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and in particular talks of “ye ghost which cried so miserally at the Theator like an oisterwife, Hamlet reuenge”. A selection of Lodge’s SHA(C)KSPER anagrams is shown in the annotated extract below. you [SHall know him by this, he is A [Soule lubber]], his tongue tipt with lying, his Heart steeld against charity, he walKS for the most Part in black vndER colour of grauity, & looks as Pale as the Uisard of ye ghost which cried [So miserally at ye Theator like an oistER|wife, Hamlet, reuenge: He is full of infamy & [SlandER], insomucH as if he ease not his stomACK

Hamlet

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in detracting somwhat or Some man before noontide, he falS into a feuer that holds him while supPER time· he is alwaies deuising of Epigrams or scoffes, and grumbles, murmures continually, although nothing crosse him, he neuer laughes but at other mens harmes, briefly in being a tyrant ouer mens fames, he is a very Titius (as Virgil saith) to his owne thoughts… The SHA(C(KSPER anagrams are marked and inaugurated by means of duplicitous deixis in “you shall know him by this”. It is possible that Lodge is referring to an earlier play written in whole or in part by Shakespeare. On Shakespeare as the author of an Ur-Hamlet, see Margrette Jolly, The First Two Quartos of Hamlet: A New View of the Origins and Relationships of the Texts (Jefferson NC: McFarland), 2014. An earlier Hamlet by Thomas Kyd has been widely promulgated. Shakespeare’s clear KYD(D) anagram in the Ghost’s speech would appear, however, to comprise a local acknowledgment of Kyd’s ghost in The Spanish Tragedy: Thy [KnottY and combineD] locks to part, K-Y-D or K-Y-D And each particular haire to stanD an enD, D See also note 3. 14 Edward S. le Comte, ‘The Ending of Hamlet as a Farewell to Essex’, ELH, 17 (1950): 87-114, at 87. See also J Dover Wilson, The Essential Shakespeare: A Biographical Adventure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 102-104. 15 For Shakespeare’s word-play on war/whore, see Gail Kern Paster (ed.), Thomas Middleton: Michaelmas Term (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 84. 16 See Chapter Seven. 17 Shakespeare finds in the name Coriol-anus the Latin diminutive coriole (“little leather” or boy-whore) and Latin anus (in the sense of English anus). There is thus a poignant dramatic irony in Volumnia’s demonstration of her pride in her son in Act 2 Scene 1: Vol. Good Ladies let’s goe. Yes, yes, yes: The Senate ha’s Letters from the Generall, wherein hee giues my Sonne the whole Name of the Warre: he hath in this action out-done his former deeds doubly. Coriolanus is thus given the “hole-name of the whore”, and the play is composed around the prior devise. 18 See Chapter Six. 19 See Thomas MacAlindon, Shakespeare’s Tragic Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 280. 20 R A Foakes, “Hamlet and the Court of Elsinore”, Shakespeare Survey, 9 (1956): 35-43, at 36, 43 (n.3). 21 Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 49. 22 Terence Hawkes, Introduction, The Cambridge Shakespeare Library Volume Two: Shakespeare Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 6. 23 Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (London: Penguin, 2000), 103.

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24 Brian Vickers, Counterfeiting Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 178-180, 526-537. 25 On hendiadys in Cranmer’s General Confession, see Daniel Swift, Shakespeare’s Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 37-38. See also Daniel Swift, ‘The Book of Common Prayer’, in Andrew Hadfield (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of English Prose: 1500-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 576-591, at 584-585. 26 See Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press), 2001. 27 A N Wilson, The Elizabethans (London: The Arrow Press, 2012), 366. 28 Wilson, The Elizabethans, 366. 29 Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory, 134-150 and passim. 30 For Sonnet 146, see Chapter Four. 31 On the allegedly atemporal or non-temporal character of hendiadys, see for example Ned Lukacher, Time-fetishes: The Secret History of Eternal Recurrence (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 78-79. 32 Several editions of M. Tullii Ciceronis Tusculanarum quaestionum seu disputationum libri quinque were published in England in the 1590s. The phrase aut esse aut non esse occurs in Book I (headed De contemnenda morte). Shakespeare’s invocation of De contemnenda morte (“In contempt of death”) is marked inter alia by his verbatim translation of Cicero’s aut esse aut non esse in “To be or not to be”, and in his verbatim re-writing of Cicero’s thematic MORS anagrams. A selection of the latter are shown in the annotated extract below, in which the key phrase aut esse aut non esse is also emphasised: Quid? [Miseries] quam Omnino numquam fuisse? ita, qui nondum nati sunt, miseR|i iam sunt, quia non sunt, et noS, si post [MORtem miseri futuri sumuS], miseri fuimus ante quam nati. ego autem non commemini, ante quam sum natus, me miserum; tu si meliore [MemOR|ia eS], velim scire, ecquid de te recordere. Ita iocaris, quasi ego dicam eos miseros, qui nati non sint, et non eos [Miseros], qui [MORtui sunt. Esse ergO eoS] dicis. Immo, quia non sint, cum fuerint, eo miseR|oS esse. Pugnantia te loqui non vides? quid enim tam pugnat, quam non [MOdo miseR|um, sed omnino quicquam esse, qui non sit? an tu egressuS porta Capena cum Calatini, Scipionum, Serviliorum, [Metell|ORum, sepulcra videS, miseros putas illos? Quoniam me verbo premis, posthac non ita dicam, [Miser|Os] esse, sed tantum miseR|oS, ob id ipsum, quia non sint. Non dicis igitur: “miser est M.Crassus”, sed tantum: “miser M.Crassus?” Ita plane. Quasi non necesse sit, quicquid isto modo pronunties, id aut esse aut non esse. an tu dialecticis ne imbutus quidem es? in primis enim hoc traditur: omne pronuntiatum (sic enim mihi in praesentia occurrit ut appellarem axioma, - utar post alio, si invenero [Melius) id ergO est pronuntiatum, quod est verum aut falsum. cum igituR diciS]: “miser M.Crassus”, aut hoc dicis: “miser est Crassus”, ut possit iudicari, verum id falsumne sit, aut nihil dicis omnino. Age, iam concedo non esse [Miseros],

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qui mortui sint, quoniam extorsisti, ut faterer, qui Omnino non essent, eos ne miseR|oS quidem esse posse. quid? qui vivimus, cum [MORiendum sit, nonne miseri sumuS]? quae enim potest in vita esse iucunditas, cum dies et noctes cogitandum sit iam iamque esse moriendum? 33 Essex’s quintessential and quintuple neo-Platonic emblem is the devise which is evoked in Marston’s Essex-poem, ‘A Narration and Description’, and is described in lines 13-14. An elevated ESSEX anagram is comprised within the potentially separable motto “Xtracture of deuinest ESSencE”: Lo now; th’[[Xtracture of deuinest ESSencE], X-ESS-E The Soule of heauens labour’d Quintessence, In line 13 the name ESSEX is divided into two parts: the first comprises the ESSE in “ESS-nceE” (where essence is a synonym of the noun esse); the second is the X (Greek chi) in “th’Xtracture” (i.e. “the X-drawing”) of the chiastic emblem: E

S X

E

S

See also Bellamy, “Ben Jonson and the Art of Anagram”. 34 See Chapter Five. 35 See Bellamy, “Ben Jonson and the Art of Anagram”.

CHAPTER SEVEN TWELFTH NIGHT

Jo. Marstone the last Christmas he daunct with Alderman Mores wives daughter, a Spaniard borne. Fell into a strang commendation of hir witt and beauty. When he had done, shee thought to pay him home, and told him she thought he was a poet. ‘Tis true, said he, for poets fayne and lye, and soe dyd I when I commended your beauty, for you are exceeding foule. —John Manningham, Diary entry: 21st November 1602

1. Date The authorial date of composition of Twelfth Night is specified in the clear MDCI chronogram which is conventionally located in the first lines of the play: 1 If Musicke be the fooD of Loue, play on Giue me ex|Cesse of It:

M D C I

In accordance with Horace’s illustrative dicta concerning concealed chronogram or apices numerales, the higher-order Roman numerals are provided exclusively from numeral letters at the beginning or end of words. The accustomed reader perceives an effect of intermittent irradiation in the text, an effect which is of the essence of chronogram and which Horace defines by the technical term coruscatio. Overall, the chronogram is constructed incrementally from a sequential plurality of discrete textual matrices, in accordance with the analytical method that Horace describes as incrementio. As always in Shakespeare, the chronogram is apt to the play and to the speech, here invoking the Pythagorean axiom that number “in time” is music.

Twelfth Night

495

The incremental matrices of the chronogram (which on this occasion are two in number) are framed and connected in accordance with authorial clues and duplicitous deixis in the ambient text. The logic of incrementio in the chronogram is concealed and encapsulated in the implied deictic sequence, “If MD be, then give me CI (so as to yield MDCI)”, a typically duplicitous arithmetical formula in the manner of the apices numerales. In the reconfigured extract below, the respective matrices of the chronogram are enclosed within curled brackets: If {Musicke be the fooD} Of Loue, play on, Giue me {Ex|Cesse of It}

Here, the higher-order numeral letters MDC establish the epochal date MDC (which in the period is emblematically imbued with the Christian concepts of Millennium, Deus, and Christ). In order to complete the chronogram, therefore, the poet requires (as expressed in “Giue me”) an extra numeral letter I which exceeds MDC by one, and which is provided by the acrostic letter I in the conventionally “pro-numeral” pronoun “it”. In accordance with the rules and dispensations of concealed chronogram (as distinct from the debased form of overt chronogram), the medial letter C in the word excesse is rendered eligible for chronogram construction by virtue of the deemed sub-division of the word ex|cesse (sic) into two distinct elements, namely: (a) the prefix ex; and (b) the newly released word cesse. The C of cesse is then deemed to occupy an acrostic position in relation to the word Cesse (sic), and is thus deemed capable of supplying a viable numeral letter in the context of the chronogram. The accustomed reader can be confident that the poet intends such a reading because the effect of this notional sub-division is to foreground the relevance for the effusive Orsino of the wittily hyperbolic word cesse, which is invoked in the now obsolete sense of “rations impressed to feed an army”. It is thus that the Classical trope that Frederick Ahl calls “Word within Word” (and Helen Vendler in relation to Shakespeare’s sonnets calls “word-inside-word”) is customarily invoked in anagrammatic text. This analytic recourse to what would otherwise be an ineligible (because medial) letter is pursued not out of mere

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chronogrammatic expediency but in order to corroborate the word-withinword figure which points (in a finely decorous gesture) to an appetite of Orion-like proportions. Here and elsewhere I use the word “corroborate” in the sense of “mutually strengthen”. It should be mentioned here that ORION anagrams in the text reveal that Orsino’s appetites are dramatized in terms of the anagrammatically affiliated Orion. Official dates of record in the period were based upon the year as measured from 25 March. The first recorded performance of Twelfth Night is cited as 2 February 1601 (old style). If the chronogram is to be relied upon, therefore, the play was composed between 25 March 1601 (old style) and 2 February 1601 (old style). It takes its place in the chronological sequence: (1) The Phoenix and the Turtle; (2) Hamlet; and (3) Twelfth Night.

2. Authorship Shakespeare incorporates a proemial signature-anagram in usual form (i.e. WILL SHACESPERE) in the opening lines of the play, the customary locus of signatory, invocatory, dedicatory, and thematic anagrams in Classical and Renaissance texts. Orsino’s speech serves as a potentially separable and richly anagrammatic induction which offers (inter alia) the opportunity for the inclusion of such anagrams: If Musicke be the food of Loue, play on, Giue me excesse of it: that surfetting, The appetite may sicken, and so] dye. That straine agen, it had a dying fall: O, it came ore my eare, like the sweet sound That breathes vpon a banke of Violets; Stealing, and giuing Odour. Enough, no more, ’Tis not so sweet now, as it was before. O [Spirit of Loue], How quicke And fresh art thou, That notwithstanding thy CapacitiE, Receiueth as the Sea. Nought enters there, Of [What validity, and Pitch so ERE, But fall]es Into abatement, and low price Euen in a minute; so fuLL of shapes is fancie, That it alone, is high fantasticall.

S-H-A C-E S P-ERE

W I LL

3. Sources The primary narrative source of Twelfth Night is generally taken to comprise Barnabe Riche’s ‘Apolonius and Silla’. This interpretation is

Twelfth Night

497

corroborated by the attributive BARNABE RICHE, and APOLLONIUS and SILLA anagrams which are incorporated in the proem: If Musicke be the food of Loue, play on, Giue me excesse of it: that surfetting, The appetite may sicken, and so dye. That [Straine agen, It had a] dying falL: O, it came ore my eare, Like the sweet sound That [Breathes vpon A banke] of Violets; Stealing, and giuing OdouR. Enough, No more, 'Tis not so sweet now, [As it was] BeforE. O spirit of Loue, how quicke and fresh art thou, That notwithstanding thy capacitie, [Receiueth [as] the] Sea. Nought enters there, Of what valid|Ity, and pitCH so erE, But falles into abatement, and low price Euen in a min|Ute; so full of shapes is fancie, That it alone, is high fantasticall.

S-I-L L A

B-A R-N A-B-E

R I-CH-E

A P-O LL-O N-I-U-S

The shared condensa is once again set in a textual matrix which is decorously complimentary to the author of the source-text: BARNABE RICHE; APOLLONIUS; SILLA: O, It CAme ORe my eARE, LIke tHE sweet Sound That Breathes VPoN A BAnke of VioL|etS

An anagrammatic reading reveals that Shakespeare’s rendering of Malvolio’s overweening presumptuousness and ensuing punishment is based on the story of Apollo and Marsyas, as recounted by Ovid in Metamorphoses 6.382-400. All of the instances of metamorphosis in Ovid’s poem are accompanied by METAMORPHOSIS anagrams. In the present instance the first such anagram is marked by the forma in me mihi detrahis (“you draw me from myself”), a phrase that is of particular significance in relation to Twelfth Night: Sic ubi nescio quis Lycia de gente virorum rettulit exitium, satyri reminiscitur alter, quem Tritoniaca Latous harundine victum 385adfecit poena. quid [ME mihi detrahis?] inquit; a! piget, a! non est clamabat tibia TAnti. clamanti cutis est sumM|os direpta per artus, nec quicquam nisi vulnus erat; cruOR undique manat, detectique Patent nervi, trepidaeque sine ulla 390pelle micant venae; salientia viscera pOS|sis et perlucentes numerare In pectore fibraS. illum ruricolae, silvarum numina, fauni

ME TA M OR P OS I-S

498

Chapter Seven et satyri fratres et tunc quoque carus Olympus et nymphae flerunt, et quisquis montibus illis 395lanigerosque greges armentaque bucera pavit. fertilis inmaduit [MadefactaquE terra caducas] concepiT lacrimas Ac venis perbibit imis; quas ubi fecit aquaM, vacuas emisit in auras. inde petens rapidus ripis declivibus aequOR 400Marsya nomen habet, PHrygiae liquidissimus amnis. Talibus extemplO redit ad prae|Sentia dictIS vulgus et exstinctum cum stirpe Amphiona luget. Mater in invidia est.

M-E T-A M OR PH O-S-IS

The sub-division of summ|os and pos|sis has the effect of freeing the word-within-word os (“bone”), a physiological reference that is closely linked to the indecent metathesis in Ovid’s play on perlucentes and perculentes. Ovid’s METAMORPHOSIS anagram originates in Marsyas’ comically plaintive cry in the apt locus of quid me mihi detrahis? (in effect, “Why are you flaying me?”). Arthur Golding follows customary practice by incorporating METAMORPHOSIS anagram at precisely the same points in the text, originating in “Why flayest thou me so”: When one of Lyce (I wote not who) had spoken in this sort, Another of a Satyr streight began to make report, Whome Phebus overcomming on a pipe (made late ago By Pallas) put to punishment. Why flayest thou [ME so, Alas], he cride, iT irketh me. Alas a sorie pipe Deserveth not so cruelly My skin from me to stripe. For all his crying ORe his eares quight Pulled was His skin. Nought else he was than One whole wounde. The griesly bloud did spin From every part, the SIneweS lay discovered to the eye, The quivering veynes without a skin lay beating nakedly. The panting bowels in his bulke ye might have numbred well, And in his brest the shere small strings a man might easly tell. The Countrie Faunes, the Gods of Woods, the Satyrs of his kin, The Mount Olympus whose renowne did ere that time begin, And all the Nymphes, and all that in those mountaines kept their sheepe, Or grazed cattell thereabouts, did for this Satyr weepe. The fruitfull earth waxt moyst therewith, and [Moysted did receivE Their Teares, and in hir bowels deepe did of the same conceyve, And when that she had turned them to water, by And by She sent theM forth againe aloft to see the open Skie. The River that doth rise there|Of beginning there his race, In verie deepe and shoring bankes to Seaward Runnes apace Through PHrygie, and according as the Satyr, sO the Streame IS called Marsias, of the brookes the clearest in that Realme.

ME T-A M OR-P-H O SI-S

M-E T A M O R PH-O-S IS

In accordance with his usual practice, Shakespeare ensures that attributive OVIDIUS and METAMORPHOSIS anagrams are also present in Orsino’s proemial speech. The co-presence of hermeneutic APOLLO and

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MARSYAS anagrams ensures that the informing mythical theme of the play is, in accordance with customary practice, registered at the very outset: If Musicke be the food of Loue, play on, Giue me excesse of it: that surfetting, The [APpetite may sicken, and sO] dye. That straine agen, it had a dying faLL: O, it came ore [My Eare, like the sweet sound That breathes] vpon A banke [Of VIolets]; Stealing, anD giuing OdouR. Enough, no MORe, ‘Tis] not So sweet now, as It VvAS be|Fore. O Spirit of Loue, how quicke and fresh art thou, That notwithstand|Ing thy capacitie, Receiueth aS the Sea. Nought enters there, Of what validity, and pitch so ere, But falles into abatement, and low price Euen in a minute; so full of shapes is fancie, That it alone, is high fantasticall.

AP-O LL M O A R S-I-AS

O-VI D I-V-S

M-E T-A MOR F O-S I S

Both of the source-authors are duplicitously and graciously saluted in the two-line condensa which is shared with BARNABE RICHE, APOLLONIUS, and SILLA anagrams: OVIDIUS, APOLLO, MARSYAS, METAMORPHOSES: O, It caME ORe MY eARE, Like the Sweet SounD /ThAT breathES VPon A banke OF VIOLetS

The source-passage in Metamorphoses is brief enough, but as will become clear, key words and phrases from it are disseminated throughout the play in such a way as to establish a formal, appositional interconnection between the texts.

4. John Marston’s satires An anagrammatic reading of the relevant texts reveals that the eccentric and puritanical Marston had from the beginning of his career as a satirist attacked Shakespeare covertly for his alleged moral depravity – a depravity that (as we have seen) is traceable in the covert dimension of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The title of Marston’s anonymously published Willobie His Avisa (1594) had contained the traditionally obscene invective of Will “O” be. In both editions of The Scourge of Villanie (1598 and 1599), Shakespeare is covertly epitomized in the character of Luscus as an adulterer, as a practising homosexual, and (failing all else) a

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masturbator. These accusations are found to correspond to the revelations contained in the covert dimension of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which had apparently been widely circulated in manuscript form. Having in As You Like It responded mildly to the satirist in the person of Jacques (whom Shakespeare depicts in retort as a mere cipher or O), Shakespeare returns to the task in his exquisitely apt depiction of Marston as Malvolio in Twelfth Night, in which Shakespeare’s Apollo is set against Marston’s Marsyas. 2 As will become clear, Malvolio’s riddling “M.O.A.I.” represents the stage-by-stage, rotational, acrostic excoriation of the flayed Satyr/Satyrist in the form of “M|A|lvol|I|O” – a direct reference to Marsyas’ querulous Quid me mihi detrahis? Accordingly, MARSTONE (sic), SATYRE, SATYRIST, MALVOLIO, and MARSYAS anagrams are incorporated in close association in the proem: If [Musicke be the food of Loue, play on], Giue me excesse of it: that surfetting, The appetite [May sicken, and so] dye]. That straine agen, it had A dying fall: O, it came oR|e my eare, Like the Sweet sound That breathes vpon a banke of ViOL|etS; Steal|Ing, and giu|Ing odour. Enough, nO more, ’Tis not so sweet now, AS it was before. O [[Spirit] of Loue], how quicke And fresh arT thou, That notwithstanding thY capacitie, Receiueth as the Sea. Nought enters therE, Of what valid|Ity, and pitch so ere, But falleS into abatemenT, and low price Euen in a minute; so full of shapes is fancie, That it alone, is high fantasticall.

M A L V-O-L I-O S-A-T Y R I S-T

M A R-S TON-E

M A R S I AS

S-A-T Y R-E

Marston had based his signature anagram in the opening lines of Willobie His Avisa on the ostentatiously self-regarding name-play that finds the god MARS concealed within MARS|ton. The signature anagram (in the form of MARSTON) is closely linked to MARS anagrams. The ironically named Vertues birde of Willobie His Avisa is Elizabeth Vere, and conventionally located ELISABETH VERE anagrams are accordingly also present in the second and third stanzas of the proem. In accordance with contemporary practice, the ELISEBETH (sic) anagram is set in elevated (i.e. reversed) form: 3 Let [MARtiall men], of [MarS] his] praise, MAR-S Sound warlike Trumpe: let lust-led youth, Of wicked loue, write wantON layes; Let sheepeheards sing, their sheepe coates ruth: The wiser sort, confesse it plaine,

MAR-S T ON

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That these haue spent good time in vaine. My sleepie Muse that wakes but now, Nor now had wak’t if one had slept, To [VERtues praisE] hath past her vow, To paint the RosE which grace hath kept, Of sweetest RosE, that still doth spring, Of [VERtues birdE] my Muse must sing. THE BirdE that doth ResemblE right, [The TurtleS faith In constant LouE], The faith that first her promise plight; No change, nor chance could once remoue: This haue I tr’id; This dare I trust, And sing the truth, I will, I must.

VER-E

V-ER E

VER-E

VE

THE-B-E S-I-L-E

R-E

VE R E

In accordance with convention, the figura condensa of the MARSTON anagram reveals the underlying truth that (notwithstanding his overt declaration to the contrary) Marston’s satire will be aggressive in character: MARSTON: MarT|iall meN, Of MARS

Shakespeare’s response in Twelfth Night is to re-interpret the name of Marstone (sic) in terms of one who, like the coarse and musically deficient Marsyas, mars tone. That epithet becomes resonantly poignant in relation to the satirist when Shakespeare ridicules Marston’s aspiration to the divine status of MARS in terms of his true likeness to the ridiculously overweening SATYR MARS|yas, who (as reported by Ovid) challenged Apollo to a musical contest, was defeated, and was flayed alive by the god as a punishment. In this context, Shakespeare’s articulation of the name of the Satyr Mars-yas involves an anagrammatic re-writing of the god Mars, and once again the gesture is founded upon “repetition with revelatory variation”. Marston is not Mars, but Marsyas (with the usual play on as/asse and arse). An anagrammatic reading of the play reveals that Twelfth Night is designedly located in an ultimately Apollonian universe of exquisite music and song in which Malvolio-Marstone “mars tone”, and Shakespeare-Apollo punishes the absurdly pretentious (and officious) Marston-Marsyas-Malvolio.

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5. Title The play’s title, Twelfth Night, is specifically identified in plural PRO FESTO EPIFANIE anagrams as referring to the Feast of Epiphany. In view of the MDCI chronogram in the opening lines, it is possible that the play refers to the Eve of Epiphany on 5 January 1601 (old style). In Shakespeare’s England the night before Epiphany was one of the three principal festivals of the Christmas cycle.4 Invoking the ecclesiastical epithet Pro festo Epifanie, Shakespeare takes care to incorporate in Orsino’s speech four FESTO anagrams (set in anagrammatic expolitio), and single PRO and EPIFANIE anagrams: 5 If Musicke be the food of Loue, play on, Giue me excesse of it: that sur|[fetting, The appetite may sicken, and so] dye. That straine agen, it had a dying [fall: O], it came ore my eare, like the sweet sound That breathes vpon a banke of Violets; Stealing, and giuing Odour. Enough, no more, ’Tis not so sweet now, as it was be|[Fore. O] spirit of LouE, how quicke and fresh art thou, That notwith|Standing thy capacitie, Receiueth as the Sea. Nought enters There, Of what validity, and pitch sO [Ere], But [FallES into] abatemenT, and low [PRice Euen in a minute; sO] full of shapes Is FANcIE, That It alonE, is high fantasticall.

FE S T O

F E S-T O

F E S T O PR O

F-ES-T O

E P I-FAN I-E

The shared figura condensa of the PRO FESTO EPIFANIE anagrams is again aptly located, and is again capable of independent existence and of notional reconfiguration in the form of a quasi-anagrammatic device. In accordance with customary practice, the condensa then stands in revelatory apposition to the phrase that is self-referentially concealed within it. On this occasion Shakespeare invokes the traditional inversion of hierarchies (divine, social, sexual) in the Roman Saturnalia and in later versions thereof: PRO FESTO EPIPHANIE: Nought EnterS there, Of whaT validity, and PItcH so erE, But Falles IntO Abatement, And low PRicE

The implication is that nothing, however powerful (Latin validus) or elevated (in pitch), can enter the mundus inversus of the ensuing play without suffering hierarchical inversio. That dimension of the drama is

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merged with the inversio that is implicit in Marsyas’ absurd challenge to Apollo, in Marston’s equally absurd challenge to Shakespeare, and in the inversio that transforms Mars into the lowly Marsyas. The long-standing literary contretemps between Shakespeare and Marston appears to have been expressed exclusively in terms of concealed anagram. Its character can be readily assessed by reference to Marston’s comments in Robert Chester’s Love’s Martyr on Shakespeare’s ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’. Shakespeare’s exquisite poem ends in prayer, and Marston’s typically ungracious invective follows immediately afterwards, on the opposite page:6 To this vrne let those repaire, That are either true or faire, For these dead Birds, sigh a prayer.

Marston’s verdict on Shakespeare’s poem - O Tædium! - is duplicitously conveyed in the first line of his poem:

O

[Twas A mouing EpicedIUM!

T-A-E-DIUM!

The indecently emblematic O (here signifying arse-hole) is prominently located in the versal apparatus of Marston’s poem, and is mutually corroborative in relation to the scatological implications of motion in “Twas a mouing Epicedium” (with the conventional sound-play on pisse which typically marks concealed scatological invective of the period). 7

6. Gascoigne’s aliquid salis The play’s several affiliations with the Feast of Epiphany and its attendant festivities have not gone unnoticed, but speculative generalizations in this context have proved inconclusive. In particular, commentators have quite understandably failed to trace any clear link between the conventions of the Feast and the ultimate themes of the drama. As a result the play has been misunderstood. Shakespeare’s PRO FESTO EPIFANIAE anagrams (with FESTO set in fourfold expolitio) should not be interpreted as referring exclusively to the particular occasion for which the comedy may perhaps have been written. Other anagrams in Orsino’s speech reveal that the emphasis upon PRO FESTO should be viewed as serving to identify the thematic and strategic importance in the play of the Saturnalian attributes of the feast. Here

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Shakespeare appears to have pursued the traditional etymological association of the words Saturn and Satyr, possibly in relation to the concept of Twelfth Night as a kind of “Satyr Play” in the ancient Greek tradition. The proem to Twelfth Night is of particular interest in that Shakespeare takes the trouble to explain therein the literary principle that he adopts in relation to the play. Shakespeare’s discovery of the thematic and aesthetic aptness of the topoi of mutatio and inversio is (as will become clear) a self-consciously cultivated example of rhetorical invenio and of the founding (but covertly invoked) conceit known in the period as the devise. We have seen that in the context of rhetorical theory (as generally in works of literature, philosophy, history, or religion) it is unsafe to rely merely upon the overt dimension of pre-Enlightenment text. It is thus that our post-Enlightenment understanding of the word devise is found to require re-contextualization in relation to the anagrammatic poetic. Rhetorical devices and practices are now found to be inseparably relevant to both the overt and covert dimensions of text, and to their interaction. It is certainly true that invenio is a widely used, historically important term that is overtly defined and discussed by Classical rhetoricians, and subsequently by English theorists including Thomas Wilson, Sir Philip Sidney, and George Puttenham. But a full understanding of invenio can only be gained when it is recognised that all of these writers appear to conceive of invenio in terms of some prior anagrammatic or quasianagrammatic devise, a devise that belongs to the realm of HermesMercury.8 In addition, its full implementation necessarily involves anagram and word-play in the covert dimension of the text. It is in this context that George Gascoigne’s treatise entitled Certayne Notes of Instruction (1575) comprises an important source-text in relation to Shakespeare’s implementation of invenio in Twelfth Night. Gascoigne begins thus: The first and most necessarie poynt that ever I founde meete to be considered in making of a delectable poem is this, to grounde it upon some fine invention. For it is not inough to roll in pleasant woordes, nor yet to thunder in Rym, Ram, Ruf, by letter (quoth my master Chaucer) nor yet to abounde in apt vocables, or epythetes, unlesse the Invention have in it also some aliquid salis. By this aliquid salis, I mean some goode and fine devise showing the quick capacitie of a writer …9

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The role of concealed anagram and the prior anagrammatic devise in relation to invenio is self-demonstratively revealed in Gascoigne’s carefully disposed INVENIO anagrams: To grounde it upon some fine [INVEntion. For it is Not Inough tO] roll in pleasant woordes

INVE-N-I-O

For it is not inough … unlesse the [InventioN haVE iN it alsO] some aliquid salis

I-N-VE-N-I-O

The second of these examples is indicative. When the covert dimension of Gascoigne’s text is read in combination with the overt, it becomes clear that it is the INVENIO anagram itself that constitutes what the author calls “some aliquid salis”. This phrase thus takes on a deictic function in relation to the anagram, with effect that the anagram and the duplicitous deixis which runs in counterpoint to it are mutually corroborative. Of course, Gascoigne’s hermeneutic INVENIO anagrams do not in themselves comprise the prior anagrammatic device or “fine devise” which informs the passage. Gascoigne’s implementation of Latin invenio (“I find”) on this occasion is grounded on the fine devise which breaks up invenio and finds concealed therein the potentially indecent Latin expression in venio (as for example in the phrase in cunnum venio).10 In pursuance of the conventional indecencies of Classical and Renaissance pedagogic discourse, Gascoigne composes his introduction duplicitously in terms of the in venio of PENIS in cunnum and the aliquid salis of SEMEN. 11 Gascoigne’s prose anagrammata are typical of the age in their construction and disposition. The first PENIS anagram is typically marked by duplicitous deixis in the comic mode of “the most necessarie point that ever I founde”: The first and most necessarie [Poynt that Ever I founde meete to be considered iN making of a delectable [poem Is thiS], to groundE it upon some fine inventioN. For It IS] not inough to roll in [Pleasant woordEs], nor yet to thunder in Rym, Ram, Ruff, by letter (quoth my master Chaucer) Nor yet to aboundE In apt vocableS, or e|[Pythetes], unlessE the InventioN have in It also [SomE aliquid saliS. By this aliquid salis, I MEaN] some goode and fine devise showing the quick capacitie of a writer …12

In English legal usage the verb to devise meant (and still means) “to pass on property though a will”, and the noun devise refers to that which passes through a will. For Gascoigne and his original readers, that which

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passes through a will (in the sense of “penis”) is (in the generic context) recognised as SEMEN. When the SEMEN anagram is substituted for its textual matrix, the mutually corroborative connection between aliquid salis and in venio is revealed: [SomE aliquid salis. By this aliquid salis, I MEaN] some goode and fine devise SEMEN - some goode and fine devise

The “point” of Gascoigne’s discourse is that a devise is like semen in that it is capable of engendering and giving full form to a perfect poem in which the parts and the whole are pleasingly and coherently bodied forth. It is thus that Gascoigne’s own fine invention in this brief passage is found to be based in part upon the word-within-word devise that finds the sexually suggestive phrase IN VENIO concealed within both Latin INVENIO and English INVENtIOn. In the absence of such an informing foundation, Gascoigne adds, the poem will fail: What theame you so ever you do take in hand, if you do handle it but tanquem in oratione perpetua, and never study for some depth of devise in the Invention, and some figures also in the handlyng thereof: it will appear to the skilfull reader but a tale of a tube.

The reference here to “some figures also in the handlying” is a reference inter alia to anagramma figuratum. When construed in relation to binary text, Gascoigne’s remarks come close to defining the customary aesthetic implemented by Shakespeare in his poems and plays. What is especially interesting in relation to Twelfth Night is that the passage is closely marked in Orsino’s proemial opening speech, in which mutually corroborative GEORGE GASCOYNE, INVENTION, INVENIO, SEMEN, PENIS, and ALIQUID SALIS anagrams are also incorporated. The proemial speech is a tour de force of Shakespeare’s anagrammatic art. The attributive and quoted anagrams are associated in the text with conventionally “concealed” verbatim quotations from the prior text, including those which re-distribute Gascoigne’s “quick capacitie of a writer” in the form of “O spirit of Loue, how quicke and fresh are thou, That notwithstanding thy capacitie, Receiueth as the Sea”: [If Musicke be the food of Loue, play oN], [GiUE me] excesse of it: that surfetting, The appetite may sickeN, And so] dye. That [StrainE a|[Gen], It had a dying fall:

G A S

G

I-N UE N I

S-E

Twelfth Night O, it CaME] Ore mY Eare, like the sweet sound That breathes vpoN [A bankE Of Violets; SteaL|ing, and] giuing OdouR. Enou(Gh), no morE, ’Tis not so sweet now, as It was before. O spirit of Loue, how QUIcke anD fresh art thou, That notwithstanding thy capacitie, Receiueth as the [Sea. Nought enters] there, Of what validity, And [Pitch so ere, But falles] [INto] abatement, and Low pricE EUEN In a minute; sO full of shapeS IS fancie, That it alone, is high fantasticall.

507 C-O-Y E O N-E O R-G-E

IN UEN-I-O

S A L I-S

ME A N L I QUI-D

P E N-IS

To reiterate: in Orsino’s speech Shakespeare cites Gascoigne on invention as an authority in relation to his particular practice in Twelfth Night. In accordance with the protocols of quasi-anagrammatic inter-textuality, the dramatist translates verbatim key words and anagrams from the sourcetext. Textual apposition follows from these transpositions. In the present instance, Shakespeare marks the appositional inter-connection by dividing and concealing Gascoigne’s phrase “quick capacitie” in the form of “quick and fresh” and “thy capacitie” respectively, and by setting these quotations in close association with the anagrams described above. As will become clear, Shakespeare’s citation of Certayne Notes of Instruction – a well-known literary treatise of the day - is found to support his comic ridicule of John Marston as Malvolio/Marsyas. Quoting Gascoigne’s advice, and following it, Shakespeare reveals that he will base his play around the prior onomastic devise that finds in Iohn Marstone a selfloving, overweening, puritanical Satyr-ist who, like Marsyas, “mars tone”.

7. He who mars tone Marston’s portrayal of Shakespeare as Luscus in The Scourge of Villanye (1598 and 1599), was designedly scandalous and in Sonnet 112 Shakespeare refers to his satirical attack as “vulgar scandal”. The poet’s anger and despair is expressed in the sonnet’s Orphic MYSTERY, SINNE, IRE, and SADNESSE anagrams, a selection of which is shown below: Your loue and pittie doth th’impression fill, Which vulgar scandall stampt vpon my brow, For what care [I who calles me] well or ill So you oRE-greene my bad, [MY] good alow? MY You are my all the world, and [I muST striuE], ST-E To know my [Shames and praises from youR toungE], R None else to me, nor [I to NoNE aliuE[, I-E

I RE

I

I S R-E I-N-NE

508

Chapter Seven That my steel’d sence or changes right or wrong, [In so profound Abisme] I throw all caRE Of others voyces, that my Adders sence, To cryttick and to flatterer stopped are: Marke how with my neglect [I doe] dispence. You are so strongly [In my purpose] bred, That all the world besides me thinkes [Y’aRE] dead.

R E I-RE

I RE

I RE

Y-RE

The cause of the poet’s anger is specifically identified in MARSTONE, SATIRE, and SCOURGE (of) VILLANIE anagrams. Again, a selection only of the relevant figures is shown below: Your loue and pittie doth th’impression fill, Which [Vulgar [SCandall stampt vpon my brow, For what care]] I whO calles me well or ilL So yoU ore-greene my bad, my good a|Low? You aR|e my all the world, ANd I must striuE, To know my shames and praises from your tounGE, None else to me, nor I to none aliue, That [My steel’d sence] or changes right or wrong, In so profound Abisme I throw all care Of others voyces, that my AddeRS sence, To cryttick and TO flatterer [Stopped Are]: Marke how with my NeglecT [I doE dispence. You aRE] so strongly in my purpose bred, That all the world besides me thinkes y’are dead.

SC O U R GE M A RS TO N-E

V I-L L AN-I-E

S-A T-I RE

In addition, Shakespeare points specifically to Marston’s Luscus in a proemial LUSCUS anagram, the forma of which is comprised in “Loue and pittie doth th’impresS”: Your [Loue and pittie doth th’impress]|ion fill, Which Vulgar SCandall stampt Vpon my brow, For what care I who calleS me well or ill, So you ore-greene my bad, my good allow?

L V-SC-V S

The sonnet is informed by the prior word-within-word devise that finds IRE concealed within the word sat|IRE. For example, the extensa of the IRE anagram in lines 11-12 (see above) is expressively coterminous with the IRE particle of the extensa of the SAT|IRE anagram in lines 11-13. A similar tendency may be traced throughout the sonnet, in which both IRE and SATIRE anagrams are set in closely related expolitio:

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Your loue and pittie doth th’impression fill, Which vulgar [Scandall stampt vpon my brow, S For whAT care] I who calles me well or ill AT-I [So you oRE-greene my bad, my good alow? RE S You Are my all The world, and I must striue, A-T-I To know my [Shames And praises from youR toungE], S-A R-E None else To me, nor I to none aliue, T-I That my [steel’d sence] or changes Right or wrong, R In [So profound AbismE] I throw All care E S-A Of others voyces, That mY Adders sence, T-Y To cryttick and to flatterer [Stopped Are]: S-A RE Marke how with my neglecT I doe dispence. T-I You aRE So strongly in my purpose bred, RE S ThAT all the world besides me thinkes Y’aRE dead. AT-Y-RE

The shared figura condensa is aptly located: Your LOuE and pittIE doTH th’ImpressiON FilL, WhicH VUlGAR SCAndalL STampt vpON MY broW

It should perhaps be added that Booth describes Sonnet 112 as “incomprehensible”, adding: “I suspect that what we have in Sonnet 112 is an unfinished poem or one that Shakespeare abandoned in frustration”.13 The poem is also largely incomprehensible to Vendler, who compounds its difficulties by substituting “thinkes th’are dead” for “thinkes y’are dead” in the concluding line. Once again, it is only by recognising the deemed interventions of Hermes in the text that the sonnet can be understood. For example, Shakespeare’s English words frequently invite “transposition” in terms of translation, and (as we have seen) significant translations are often marked by verba perplexabilia. Superficially, the couplet of Sonnet 112 is perplexing indeed - and designedly so: You are so strongly in my purpose bred, That all the world besides me thinkes y’are dead.

In Latin the word finis (“end”) is used in a range of contextually relevant, alternative senses: it may for example signify “purpose” or “death”. When Latin finis meus is substituted for my purpose in line 13, the “point” of the couplet is revealed: You are so strongly in finis meus bred, That all the world besides me thinkes y’are dead.

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The poet, claiming to be beset by adversity, turns naturally to the Book of Job, and to the patience of Job in the face of affliction, and thus to Job’s question aut quis finis meus, ut patienter agam? (Vulgate 6.11-12): 11. Quæ est enim fortitudo mea, ut sustineam? aut quis finis meus, ut patienter agam? 12. Nec fortitudo lapidum fortitudo mea, nec caro mea ænea est.

In the Geneva Bible the word ænea (“bronze”) is translated as “brasse”: 11. What power haue I that I should endure? or what is mine end, if I should prolong my life? 12. Is my strength the strength of stones? or is my flesh of brasse?

The foregoing interpretation is confirmed by Shakespeare’s hermeneutic FINIS, JOB, and PATIENCE anagrams: Your loue and pittie doth th’impression fill, Which vulgar scandall stampt vpon [my brow, [For what care I who calles]] me well or ill So you ore-greeN|e my bad, my good alow? You are my all the world, and I must striue, To know my shames and [praiseS from your tounge], None else to me, nor I to none Aliue, That my steel’d sence or changes righT or wrong, [In sO profound Ab]|isme I throw all care Of others voyces, that my Adders sENCE, To cryttick and To flatterer stopped are: Marke how with my neglect I doe dispENCE. You are so strongly in my purpose bred, That all the world besides me thinkes y’are dead.

F-I N I S

P A T I P I-O-B ENCE A T I-E-NCE

The original reader of Sonnet 112 was familiar with Job 6, in which Job’s plight and patience are evoked. The whole of this book is brought into formal apposition to the sonnet. The sufficiently interested twenty-first century reader may care to refer to Job 6 at this point, perhaps in the Geneva Bible. The biblical text is of more than usual importance in this context. The poet’s claim to a sense of mortification, of isolation, and of being in need of the “loue and pittie” of his friend (whose inactivity in this respect may also be hinted at in “all the world besides me thinkes y’are dead”) is thus put into perspective. The poet is, however, fully aware of the fundamental difference between his situation and that of Job, for Job was in every respect “an vpright and iust man, one that feared God, and eschewed euill”. The poet,

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in contrast, does not attempt to dispute the satirist’s allegations of wickedness. His “patience” is that of the evil man who turns a deaf ear to justified criticism. Here again, the phrase “my Adders sence” is no mere passing allusion to Psalm 58. The words of the psalm stand in revelatory apposition to the text of the sonnet: The wicked are strangers from ye wombe: euen from the belly haue they erred, and speake lyes. Their poyson is euen like the poyson of a serpent: like ye deafe adder that stoppeth his eare. Which heareth not the voyce of the inchanter, though he be most expert in charming.

The poet’s obligation to quote a word or phrase verbatim from the appositional text is fulfilled in his repetition of the Psalmist’s “adder” in “my Adders sence”. The word deafe is also transposed, but it makes its appearance in the sonnet as the deafness that is defined in my Adders sence. This transposition is paired with that which cites Job’s “flesh of brasse” in terms of “my steel’d sence”. It is against this background that Shakespeare’s literary response to Marston in Twelfth Night is put into context. As in As You Like It, his comic rebuttal of Marston’s satire in Twelfth Night is characterized by its relative tolerance. But in Twelfth Night, the dramatist’s attitude to Marston is expressed in terms of the magnanimity of an all-powerful and supremely self-confident Shakespeare-Apollo in relation to the ridiculously overweening Marston-Marsyas. As already noted, Shakespeare had painted Marston as Jaques in the margins of As You Like It, where the unpleasant satirist is epitomized with good-humoured obscenity as either a “Foole” (i.e. asse and hence arse-hole) or a mere cipher (i.e. the symbol O, and hence arse-hole). Inge Leimberg (all unwitting of concealed anagram) is perceptive in relation to the emblematic O in relation to As You Like It: 14 In As You Like It it is the badge of the bitter fool, Jaques, who in his splendid isolation and misanthropy is akin to Malvolio; so, too, is the image of the cypher in As You Like It akin to the “M.O.A.I.” sequence in Twelfth Night : Jaq. . . . I was seeking for a fool when I found you. Orl. He is drowned in the brook. Look but in and you shall see him. Jaq. There I shall see mine own figure. Orl. Which I take to be either a fool, or a cipher. Jaq. I'll tarry no longer with you…

The Jacques-Marston of As You Like It is indeed one and the same as the Malvolio-Marston of Twelfth Night.

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In Twelfth Night Shakespeare goes further, bringing Marston (the selfloving Satyr) to the dramatic centre in the character of Malvolio, who (though self-ridiculing and amply ridiculed) is again treated with typically Shakespearean compassion. Marston had included in The Scourge of Villanie poems which openly advertised his “self-love” and his dislike of “detraction” (i.e. defamation). Olivia’s reproof is therefore apt: O you are [Sicke of selfe-loue] [Maluolio, And Taste] MA with a distempeR’d appetite. To be generouS, guilT|lesse, R-S-T and of free dispositiON, Is to takE those things foR BirdON-E bolts, that you deemE Cannon bullets: There is no [SlanS der in An allow’d foole], Though he do noth|Ing but RaylE; A-T-I-R-E nor no rayling, In a knowne discreet man, though hee do nothing but ReprouE.

S-A T I-R E S A-T I R-E

To reiterate: in Twelfth Night Malvolio-Marston is dramatized as the overweening satyr Marsyas, who dares to challenge great Apollo to a musical contest, is defeated, and is flayed alive by the god as punishment for his impertinence. The play becomes fully coherent only when viewed in terms of an Apollonian universe of exquisite music and song in which Iohn Marstone is depicted as he who “Mars tone”. The crudely belligerent satirist, who in Willobie His Avisa assumes the redoubtable name of MARS, becomes the absurdly overweening Satyr-ist Marsyas who MARS TONE.

8. The Flaying of Malvolio The anagrammata of Twelfth Night are thus found to reveal a generic integrity in the play which is otherwise hidden from the modern audience and reader, and by virtue of which the “comedic” and the “cruel” cohere. They reveal that the play is based, in Renaissance fashion, upon the myth of Apollo and Marsyas. In the Apollonian world of the drama, the character of Malvolio acts out the hilarious parody of the self-loving and egregiously illiterate John Marston, a comically hubristic Satyr-ist who undergoes nemesis as the Satyr Marsyas at the hands of an Apollonian Shakespeare whose supremacy is manifest in his combination of Apollonian song and Hermetic revelation. Accordingly, Twelfth Night is found to begin and end with embedded figures which invoke the Apollonian Muse, and identify as specifically Apollonian the ordering principle behind the play’s “Musicke” and “Song”, and its dramatic submission to the “golden time” of the sun-god. The play, the characters,

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the audience, and the dramatist are all ultimately required to submit to Apollo, the god whose Renaissance function within the comedic universe may be gauged from Edith Wyss’s description of the frontispiece of Franchino Gafurio’s De harmonia musicorum instrumentorium (Milan, 1518): Apollo, a lute in his left hand, is presiding over the universe. Terra is linked with Apollo by the three-headed snake of Time, whose tail curls into a loop at Apollo’s feet, forming a well-known emblem of eternity. Apollo is attended by the three Graces as allegories of harmony and regeneration. “The power of the Apollonian mind moves these Muses everywhere,” proclaims the caption. From his throne at the summit of the cosmos, Apollo reigns over the revolution of the heavens, over the elements, over time, and over the earth and its inhabitants.15

In this context there is a marked anagrammatic consonance between the ravishing Musicke of Orsino’s opening speech, and the supremely Shakespearean Song with which the comedy ends. These disparate entities exhibit a marked structural isomorphism which becomes readily apparent only when their inter-relatedness within the anagrammatic dimension has been understood. The opening lines contain a revelatory Apollo figure which is fully compliant with the compositional rules: If Musicke be the food of Loue, play on, Giue me excesse of it: that surfetting, The [APpetite may sicken, and sO] dye. That straine agen, it had a dying faLL: O, it came ore my eare, like the sweet sound …

AP-O LL O

In the manner of Classical Latin poetry, a plurality of acrostically identical linguistic entities modelling ApollO is found to populate Orsino’s lines, thus enabling the anagram to be assimilated within the ambient text in accordance with an anagrammatic aesthetic which is one source of the beauty of the speech. The verse has been composed in such a way that Apollo and his unassailably supreme musicianship are inseparably immanent within it: Appetite may sicken, and so dye. / That straine agen, it had a dying fall: O And so dye. / That straine again, it had a dying fall: O Appetite may sicken, and sO Again, it had a dying fall: O A dying fall: O And sO [ApollO]

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The closing lines of the play (comprised in a song which begins with a reference to the Saturnian Golden Age) are similarly embellished: A great while ago the world begon, with hey, ho, the winde and the raine: But that’s [All one, our Play is dO|ne, and wee’LL striue tO] please you euery day.

A-P-O LL-O

The figura condensa is located in “ALL One, Our Play is dO|ne”, and again the acrostic identity of of ApollO in A…O is interwoven in the text: A great while ago the world begon, /with hey, hO, Ago the word begon, with hey, hO A great while agO AgO All one, our play is done, / and wee’l striue tO And wee’l striue tO And wee’l striue to please yOu [ApollO]

The salute to Apollo is accompanied by the dedication to Hermes that is comprised in this gesture of anagrammatic repetitio in pursuit of an overall inclusio. The play is thus boundary-marked at beginning and end by notional herms or meerstones (i.e. mark-stones) which mark and define the territory of Apollo. Whether or not Shakespeare intends a reference to mear-stones as Marstones, the definition of mear-stones is entirely apt to describe Shakespeare’s boundary-marking gesture in relation to the world of Apollo that is created within the play: rectius “mearck-stones” sunt lapides terminales qui uniuscuiusque terras limitant et discernunt. 16 In the scene in which Malvolio struggles with Maria’s riddle, aptly disposed anagrammata of MARSYAS, APOLLO, METAMORPHOSIS, and MARSTONE are deployed in corroborative association with the anagrammatic flaying of Malvolio that is represented in the enigmatic “M, O, A, I”. There is considerable dramatic irony in the disposition of the MARSYAS anagram which is thus also specified as Malvolio’s “name”: [M,O,A,I. This] simulation is not As the formeR: and yet to crush thiS a little, it would bow to mee, for euerY one of these letters Are in my name. Soft, here followeS prose: If this fall into thy hand, reuolue. In my starres I am aboue thee, but be not affraid of greatnesse:

M-A-R S-Y A-S

Shakespeare’s sound-play here on not/knot and former/forma is of considerable importance. It demonstrates the unspoken persistence in the Renaissance of Horace’s term forma in relation to anagramma figuratum.

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The forma of the MARSYAS anagram is comprised in “[M,O,A,I. This]” and it this “simulation” that is knot (i.e. anagrammatically interwoven) as the forma. The anagrammatic co-identification of Marstone with Malvolio and Marsyas is defined in separate MARS and TONE anagrams: [[M,O,A,I. This] simulation is not As the] formeR: and yet [to crush thiS a little], iT would bow tO mee, for euery oNE of these letters are in my name. Soft, here followes prose: If this fall into thy hand, reuolue. In my starres I am aboue thee, but be not affraid of greatnesse:

M-A-R M-A-R S-T-O S TO NE NE

Malvolio’s metamorphosis of Marsyas and Marston is conceived in terms of mutatio and inversio, and is marked in Shakespeare’s hermeneutic METAMORPHOSIS anagram: [M,O,A,I. This simulation is] not as the former: and yET to crush this A little, it would bow to Mee, fOR euery one of these letters Are in my name. Soft, here FOlloweS prose: If thIS fall into thy hand, reuolue. In my starres I am aboue thee, but be not affraid of greatnesse:

M ET-A-M-OR FO-S IS

The condensae of the associated MALVOLIO and MARSYAS anagrams are conventionally shared in order to register the allegorical interconnection. In this instance the letters of the names of Marstone and Marsyas are concentrated pithily and ironically within the phrase For euery one of these Letters are in my name”: MARSYAS; MARSTONE; METAMORFOSIS: FOR euery ONe Of TheSE letterS Are In mY naME

The co-presence of a Metamorphosis figure in Malvolio’s speech is found to follow Ovid’s own practice in Metamorphoses. Ovid incorporates METAMOPHOSIS (sic) anagrams at the beginnings and ends of each of the fifteen parts of the poem, and also at those numerous points in the text which tell the story of individual mutations (as for example in the story of Apollo and Marsyas). Shakespeare, following Ovid’s example, incorporates METAMORPHOSIS anagrams at key turning points (involving incidents of mutatio) in the play. In Classical Latin and later anagrammatic practice, ph and f are used interchangeably in order to spell the word Metamorphosis. A separate figura condensa of the METAMORFOSIS anagram is aptly located in the phrase “This simulation is (k)not as the former”:

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Apollo’s part in the drama (and his assertion of dominion over the sun and the seven planets) is signalled in the phrase “In my starres / I am aboue thee”. The o in prose is liberated as an acrostic letter by reference to the Latin etymology of the word: M,O,A,I. This simulation is not as the former: and yet to crush this a little, it would bow to mee, for e-uery one of these letters [Are in my name. Soft, here followes PrO|se: If this faLL intO] thy hand, reuolue. In my starres I am aboue thee, but be not affraid of greatnesse:

A P-O-LL-O

John Marston, the snarling Satyrist, now becomes Malvolio-Marsyas, the Satyr-victim of Shakespeare’s bear-baiting pack. In this context it is helpful to view the speech in the context of the vital comment with which Fabian introduces it: Fab. I, and you had any eye behinde you, you might see more detraction at your heeles, then Fortunes before you. Mal. M,O,A,I. This simulation is not as the former: and yet to crush this a little, it would bow to mee, for euery one of these letters are in my name. Soft, here fol-lowes prose: If this fall into thy hand, reuolue. In my starres I am aboue thee, but be not affraid of greatnesse:

As will become clear, the key phrase in Fabian’s speech is “more detraction at your heeles”, a phrase which is itself nested within the ominous words “might see ... Fortunes”. The phrase “more detraction at your heeles” comprises the forma of a prior, inaugural MARSYAS anagram, the extensa of which is enjambed across the end of Fabian’s speech and the beginning of Malvolio’s: Fab. I, and you had any eye behinde you, you might see [More detraction At youR heeleS], then Fortunes before You. Mal.. M,O,A,I. This simulation is not AS the former:

M-A-R-S Y AS

The figura condensa of this MARSYAS anagram is located in the key phrase:

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MARSYAS: More detrAction At YouR heeleS.

The word detraction is poignant here, creating as it does a typically Hermetic nexus connecting Shakespeare’s text simultaneously with (a) Marston’s poem ‘To Detraction’ and (b) Marsyas’ querulous quid me mihi detrahis? in Ovid’s poem. Marston’s anti-Shakespearean verse forms part of the dedicatory apparatus of The Scourge of Villainie. In the final stanza, Marston incorporates MALEUOLIO (sic) and SHAKESPEARE anagrams in close association. In the annotated version below, the extensae of the MALEUOLIO and WILL anagrams are capitalized and emphasised, and for the sake of clarity the SHAKESPEARE extensa is capitalized in the text, but omitted from the marginal note: To DETRACTION I present my POESIE. FOULE canker of faire vertuous action, Vile blaster of the freshest bloomes on earth, Envies abhorred childe, Detraction, I here expose, to thy al-tainting breath, The issue of my braine: snarle, raile, bark, bite, Know that my spirit scornes Detractions spight. Knowe that the Genius, which attendeth on And guides my powers intellectuall, Holds in all vile repute Detraction. My soule - an essence metaphysicall That in the basest sort scornes Criticks rage, Because he knowes his sacred parentage My spirit is not puft up with fat fume Of slimie ale, nor Bacchus heating grape. My minde disdaines the dungy muddy scum Of abiect thoughts, and Enuies raging hate. True iudgment slight regards Opinion, A sprightly [WIt disdaines Detraction. A partiall praise shaLL] never eleuate My setled censure of mine own esteeme; A cankered verdit of [MALignant hatE [SHAll nere pro]-UOKE me worse my selfe to deeme. SPight of dE|spight, And Rancors vilL|ainiE, I am my selfe, sO is my poesie.

WI LL MAL-E UO L

I-O

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Significantly, Marston is found to commit a gross anagrammatic solecism in his declaration that “I AM my selfe, sO” in which the selfridiculing “I am O” is unintentionally concealed. It is thus that Shakespeare is able to ridicule Marston’s inept anagrammatism in Malvolio’s fumbling attempts to understand the anagrammatic riddle in “M, O, A, I” – a riddle that, as will become clear, is based upon the acrostic flaying of the name Malvolio. The epithet Male-uolio is apt in that Marston’s satirical attacks on Shakespeare involve (inter alia) obscene references to Shakespeare’s phallic ill will. Although Marston manages to incorporate the condensed components of both of his WILL SHAKESPEARE anagrams in the shared condensa in “malignant hate / Shall nere prouoke me worse my selfe to deeme”, his embedded anagrams are as awkwardly composed as his verse. Nevertheless, the satirist’s name-calling is communicated to the world at large; William Shakespeare is Malevolo Shakespeare, and hence “Ill-Will Shakespeare”, and hence (since an ill will was also a deviant penis), “sexually depraved Shakespeare”. Shakespeare adapts Marston’s insulting Malevolo to his own purposes, adopting the name Malvolio as a signal of his riposte to the world at large, and adding the implication that Marston is also (by virtue of Latin volvo) a mal volio or an “ill turner” (i.e. a “homosexual”). The cognomen Malvolio also carries with it the additional sense of a “bad revolver”, and thus in the diction of the period a bad anagrammatist (since turning signified anagrammatizing). There is accordingly some dramatic irony in the sight of the upstart MarstonMalvolio-Marsyas trying unsuccessfully to decipher those anagrammatically detracted and extracted parts of himself which have been created by a process of rotational flaying in M-A-lvol-I-O. It is also helpful in relation to Shakespeare’s deployment of the word detraction to have in mind once again Frank Kermode’s enlightening comments on Shakespeare’s “little language”, which he defines as the “use of a particular word or set of words to give undercurrents of sense to the dramatic narrative”.17 Sir Toby’s earlier use of the linguistically affiliated word “substraction” has already pointed to the potential significance in Twelfth Night of Latin traho (implicit in quid me mihi detrahis) and its English derivatives. It is thus found that hitherto undiscovered themes of the play are implied in the single word “detraction”, a Latinism which speaks simultaneously to Marsyas’ “Quid me mihi detrahis”, to Marston’s (1598) poem ‘On Detraction’, and to the rhetorical device of detractio (which is invoked in the sequential acrostic detractio of MAlvolIO in MOAI).18 Shakespeare’s poetic, absolutely dependent as it is upon the exploitation of a network of revelatory linguistic affinities, is intolerant of

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semantic singularity, and would indeed be vitiated by any attempt at referential singularity. The question to ask, therefore, is not what any particular linguistic entity (such as “detraction” or “MOAI”) means in isolation, but rather what expressive purpose is served by Shakespeare’s aesthetic mediation between (a) the range of all of its possible meanings (for him and for his audience), and (b) the respective referential contexts of those meanings. Now that Shakespeare’s competence as a Latinist in no longer at issue, it is plain that Fabian’s “detraction at your heeles” speaks to the Ovidian context in which Marsyas cries, Quid me mihi detrahis? – and thus to the “cruel” punishment inflicted upon Malvolio. The process of skinning a deer involves hanging it up by its heeles, as in Titian’s painting ‘The Flaying of Marsyas’. The process of flaying then begins with the cutting of the skin around the elevated pair of heeles, thus enabling the hide to be drawn away from each of the two suspended legs, and thence (with some further cutting at the perineum) from the remainder of the body. Fabian’s phrase “detraction at your heeles” also serves as a wittily allusive prompt to the solution of Maria’s anagrammatic riddle. Read in this context, the letter sequence MOAI would aptly describe a process of rotational excoriation based on fore-and-aft acrostichis. The initial letter M of MALVOLIO is the first letter to be cut away, and the other letters of MOAI follow in acrostic rotation – an exercise, as already noted, in detraction. First, the initial acrostic M is stripped away, leaving alvolio. The satyr-satirist is then turned, and the final acrostic O is flayed from him, leaving alvoli. He is turned again, and the newly exposed initial acrostic A is taken away, leaving lvoli. The flaying ceases with the cutting away of the final acrostic I, leaving the raw carcase lvol. The prior conceit involving the systematic peeling away of name and skin is corroborated by Maria’s (hitherto inadequately explained) supplementary word of advice: “M,O,A,I. ... If this fall into thy hand, reuolue”. Maria’s letter also enjoins Malvolio to “cast thy humble slough, and appeare fresh”, an allusion to a snake’s casting of its skin in which the implicit reference to Marsyas is sharpened by a witty ambivalence in the word “fresh”, which in the period meant both “new” and “raw”. By the same token, Olivia’s ‘C ...V...T’ takes on an aptly poignant new meaning. “This winnes him”, says Fabian, “Liuer and all”. It is thus only when the play as a whole is read and re-read as a Renaissance “re-presencing” of the myth of Apollo and Marsyas that it is found to take on the generic integrity which commentators have hitherto sought in vain to identify. A coherent inter-relationship between the cruel and the comedic is established, a consonance in which the tragic-comic

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sacrifice of Malvolio-Marsyas to the god is a necessary pre-requisite for the anagrammatic prosperity of Olivia and Viola. At the end of the play Orsino ordains that all be left in the hands of a benevolent tendency which is strongly suggestive of Apollo’s golden reign over time: When that is knowne, and golden time conuents A solemne Combination shall be made Of our deere soules.

The word “Combination” is a final reminder of the anagrammatic basis of the comedy. The sacrifice of Malvolio has, through an exchange of letters, enabled VIOLA and OLIVIA to prosper, since their names are wholly composed of letters which have in effect been extracted (cut by cut) from M’s ALVOLIO. ). The M that remains is that which acrostically links Malvolio and Marsyas and Marston. Malvolio rightly claims that “there was neuer man thus abus’d”, since Marsyas was not a man but a Satyr. Malvolio’s letter to Olivia is written in reply to Maria’s letter to him, and just before this wittily engineered “exchange of letters” is completed, Olivia reminds the audience of the anagrammatic dimension of the word detraction: Fetch Maluolio hither, And yet alas, now I remember me, They say poore Gentleman, he’s much distract.

The word “distract” is reminiscent also of Sandys’ translation of Ovid’s account, in which the Satyr asks, “Me from my selfe, ah why doe you distract? / Oh! I repent, he cry’d: Alas!” It is only after the exchange of letters (between pseudo-Olivia and Malvolio, and Olivia and Malvolio) has been completed that an Apollonian “golden time” may ensue and a “solemn Combination” be made of the alphabetic letters of Malvolio’s total anagrammatic “distraction”. An exchange of the letters of his name is required in order that Olivia and Viola may find themselves, a process which Olivia (again invoking Latin traho) herself describes indirectly in the little language of the play as “a most extracting frensie”. The virtuosity with which Shakespeare dramatizes Ovid’s version of the myth may thus be gauged from the way in which the Satyr’s plaintive question, Quis me mihi detrahis? (“Why do you detract me from myself?”) is subsumed within the little language of the drama. When their exchange of correspondence has been completed, Malvolio and Olivia engage in a dialogue in which Malvolio asks Olivia, “Tell me ... Why haue you ... Why

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haue you suffer’d me .... Tell me why?” – a sequence which translates Marsyas’ pathetic Quis me mihi detrahis? in a typically Hermetic gesture.

Notes 1

The protocols of concealed chronogram are described in Chapter Two. For Jaques as “cipher” or “O”, see Inge Leimberg, “M.O.A.I. Trying to Share the Joke in Twelfth Night”, Connotations ,1 (1991): 78-95, at 87. 3 On the customary elevation of ELIZA and ELIZABETH anagrams, see William Bellamy, ‘Jonson and the Art of Anagram’, in Richard Peterson (ed.), Jonsonian Soundings (New York: AMS Press), 2015. 4 François Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 148. 5 For the ecclesiastical plays described as Pro festo Epifanie, see Lynette R. Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1995. 6 Marston’s poem is entitled ‘A narration and description of a most exact wondrous creature, arising out of the Phoenix and Turtle Doues ashes’. 7 The customs of Classical and Renaissance invective are described and illustrated in Chapter Four. In the present instance, Marston’s sound-play in “E-pic-edium” (evoking pisse), his word-play on “mouing”, and his use of the anal emblem O, are comparable with Shakespeare’s similar gesture involving “Peace” and “motion” in Act Two Scene Three of The Two Gentlemen of Verona: “Peace here she comes. O excellent motion”. 8 On invenio in Shakespeare’s England, see Roland Greene, Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013), 15-40. 9 Greene, Five Words, 30. 10 J N Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London: Duckworth, 1982), 175-176. 11 The conventional indecencies in pedagogic treatises are discussed in Chapter Three. 12 Greene, Five Words, 30. 13 Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 369. 14 Leimberg, “M.O.A.I.”, 87. 15 Edith Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas in Italian Renaissance Art (Newark: University of Delaware Press), 1996. 16 William Jacobson (ed.), The Works of Robert Sanderson D.D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1854), vol.1, 221. 17 Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (London: Penguin, 2000), 218. 18 On detractio see for example Quintilian, Inst. 9. 3. 58, “quae per detractionem fiunt figurae, brevitatis novitatisque maxime gratium petunt”. Malvolio’s Marstonlike solecisms during his inept riddle-solving are found to revolve around the English equivalents of Latin abstract nouns ending in –io (as for example in the probatio of “probation”, the positio of “position”, and the simulatio of “simulation”. In terms of Classical letter-symbolism, Malvolio’s anagrammatic 2

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“end” is symbolically represented in the genitalia of the letter-group io (an appendage which is excruciatingly vulnerable to the flayer’s anagrammatic knife), and which corresponds to the commonly found abbreviation of John Marstone in “Io. Marstone”.

INDEX

Adams, J N 162, 163, 411, 414, 521 Addison, Joseph 16-17, 38, 44, 54, 197-8 Ahl, Frederick 13, 16-17, 122, 1323, 494 Akrigg, G P V 414 Alexander, Gavin 149 Alexander, Sir William 205-6 Anacreon 164-5, 185, 389 anagramma figuratum 5, 8-9, 18-19, 23, 25, 28-31, 36-39, 53, 79, 91, 103, 122, 133, 251, 262, 369, 505, 512 Anagrams overt, or vulgar 1, 9-10, 14, 23, 42 covert, or concealed 1, 5, 9-12, 16-18, 21, 23-25, 28, 31-36, 38, 55-9, 68, 75-7, 83, 8697, 114, 122, 132-4, 135-7, 150, 177, 182, 191-2, 199, 204, 206, 211-16, 224, 23940, 262, 281-4, 353, 365, 380, 421, 472, 502, 504, 505, 509 apices numerales 37, 86, 98-110, 389, 453, 494-6 Armstrong, David 25-26, 55, 122 Ayo, Nicholas 451 Baldick, Chris 55 Barnes, Barnabe 193, 207, 298-300, 326-7 Barnes, Jonathan 442, 451 Bartsch, Shadi 413 Bate, Jonathan 54, 162 Bauer, Matthias 287-8 Beccaria, Cesare 57 Beentjes, P C 55 Bellamy, William 162, 163, 411

Belleforest, François 455-58 Bennett, H S 414 Bergamo, Giordano da 429-30 Bletnor, Thomas 388-91 Blount, Thomas 414 Boccaccio 138 Booth, Stephen 3, 153, 191, 262-4, 268, 274, 287, 319, 327, 347, 360-1, 413, 506 Boyle, Elizabeth 199, 253, 472 Broedel, Hans Peter 423-4, 430 Bullough, Geoffrey 450 Burrow, Colin 16, 54, 189-90, 410 Burt, Richard 415 Camden, William 9-12, 15 carmen figuratum 173, 283-96, 334, 335, 339 Catullus 28-9, 32, 60-1, 86, 92, 193, 201, 243-4, 248-9, 372 Chapman, George 245 Chaucer 38, 98-100, 172, 183-7, 184, 389, 442, 504 Chester, Robert 474-5, 490 Chronogram, concealed 12, 36-8, 87, 98-110, 208, 237-9, 251, 308-11, 328-30, 359, 363, 38990, 404, 452-4, 487-8, 494-6 Cicero 36, 45-7, 51-2, 392, 457-8, 464-8, 472, 492-3 Clare, Janet 415 Clegg, C S 415 Cohen, Paul S 411 Condensed component; see figura condensa Constable, Henry 207, 298-9, 31122 coruscatio; see Chronogram Cranmer, Thomas 468-70, 475 Daedalus 4, 22, 33

524 Dante 38, 170-72, 178 Davies, Michael 490 Davies, Sir John 133, 156-8, 213-4, 242, 260, 488-9 Derrida, Jacques 24 Devereux, Robert, Second Earl of Essex 12, 40-45, 110, 251, 299, 354, 363-5, 395-402, 453-6, 459-64, 466, 470, 472-6, 485-9 Dickinson, Janet 490 Diogenes 141-2, 223 Donne, John 62 Drayton, Michael 133, 136-48, 36579, 415 Duncan-Jones, Katherine 268, 409 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 3945, 65, 206-7, 253, 328-9, 33748, 452-62, 470, 484-6, 488-9 Elsky, Martin 414 Emmet, Olivia 54, 55, 111 Erasmus 217-21, 222, 228, 234-237 Erne, Lukas 490 Evans, G Blakemore 195, 206-7 Evett, David 414 Extended component; see figura extensa Faivre, Antoine 111 Feeney, Denis 111 figura condensa 7-8, 18, 21, 26, 2838, 42-5, 75-6, 90-5, 116, 147-8, 168, 180-1, 191-4, 211, 212, 214, 217, 220, 226-7, 239, 240, 258, 292, 304, 317, 327, 361, 404, 418, 434-5, 444, 454, 467, 478, 501, 509, 514 figura extensa 6-9, 17-20, 21, 26, 29-38, 42-45, 90-95, 223, 293, 320, 406 figura intexta 26, 38, 82, 184, 275, 285, 287, 290-5 figuratae controversiae 3, 273-4, 276-7, 323, 353 Fitton, Mary 395-401 Foakes, A R 468, 491 Focillon, Henri 412

Index forma 5-20, 25-26, 30, 49, 71-2, 778, 82-3, 90-1, 134, 136, 139, 169, 182, 190, 194, 201, 203-4, 226, 239, 251, 253, 273-4, 2912, 296-7, 307, 323, 345, 354, 373, 387, 398, 400, 408, 419, 422, 453, 466, 474, 497, 508, 514-5, 515 Fowler, Alastair 1, 12, 14-15, 166-8, 175-6, 177-8, 180, 189-90, 409 Foxe, John 415 Friedman, William 16, 20 Friedman, Elizabeth 16, 20 Furdell, E L 390-1, 416 Gascoigne, George 395-9, 503-7 Golding, Arthur 84-5, 161, 227-8, 413 Googe, Barnabe 337-9 Gosson, Stephen 129-31 Greenblatt, Stephen 470, 492 Greene, Robert 133-5 Greene, Roland 521 Grainger, James 94, 111 Grosart, Alexander B 164 Gurr, Andrew 4, 12, 415 Guthrie, W K C 110 Gammond, Gerald 413-4 Harvey, Gabriel 175-6 Harvey, Thomas 55, 82 Harvey, William 133 Hathaway, Anne 74-5, 180-2, 208, 358-60, 387-8 Hayes-McCoy, G A 490 Hazard, Mary 14, 15 Hendiadys 307, 457-89, 490 Heraclitus 426, 439-40, 442 Herbert, George 287-9, 414 Herbert, William, Third Earl of Pembroke 350-52 Hawkes, Terence 491 Hermes 31-2, 36-9, 42, 64-5, 72, 7584, 87-90, 93-7, 98, 108-10, 131, 135-6, 138, 159-61, 185, 186-7, 198-9, 226, 229-30, 239, 248-50, 263, 271-2, 275, 291, 307, 311, 316-8, 344, 372, 398-

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art 9, 418, 424. 444, 469, 472-3, 476-7, 504, 509, 514 Hilliard, Nicholas 237, 411 Holland, Abraham 139 Home, Sir George 335-6 Homer 97, 334, 370 Homeric Hymn to Hermes 37, 75-6, 79-80, 82, 91 Horace 5, 8-10, 18-19, 22, 24-7, 2932, 59-60, 85-110, 135, 168, 200, 238, 261, 269, 278, 454, 494 Hume, Sir George; see Home, Sir George incrementio; see Chronogram Inter-textual apposition 34, 47, 82, 92, 117-8, 121-2, 153, 184-5, 186, 227-8, 228-30, 236, 244-6, 248, 249, 296, 313, 317-8, 337, 344, 383, 424, 448, 465-6, 474, 476, 507, 510 Invective 3, 38, 77, 87, 120, 139, 141, 153, 205-6, 255-62, 265, 268, 352, 386, 412, 443-5, 503, 521 iustificatio; see Chronogram Jaggard, William 181 Jacobson, William 521 Jakobson, Roman 24, 53 James I, King of England 14-15, 47, 70, 328-9, 335-6, 363, 389, 3925, 419, 422-30, Daemonologie 47, 417-45, 468 Jones, Lawrence C 56 Jonson, Ben 159-60, 163, 412, 41920 Kalimi, Isaac 409 Kamen, Deborah 414 Kermode, Frank 45, 251, 412 435 468, 490, 518 Kerrigan, John 196-7, 410 Keuls, Eva C 412 Kinney, Arthur F 490 Klause, John 152, 154 Knollys, William 350 Knott, Betty I 411

525

Kökeritz, Helge 412 Kristeva, Julia 24 Kyd, Thomas 454 Laroque, François 521 Lee, Guy 412 Leimberg, Inge 521 Leishman, J B 196 Levin, Harry 491 Levin-Richardson, Sarah 414 Loades, David M 414 locus princeps 17-18, 27-8 Lodge, Thomas 490-1 Lucretius 16-17, 22, 34-6, 58, 81 Lyly, John 389, 391 Maggi, Armando 450 Maguire, Laurie 197 Manningham, Sir John 494 Marlowe, Christopher 40, 62-4, 126-7, 133, 198, 208, 242-50, 255-62, 279, 298-301, 304-5 Marston, John 65, 70, 132, 146, 159, 198, 352-6, 493, 499-520 Masterton, Mark 414 Mazzio, Carla 112 MacAlindon, Thomas 491 McDonald, Russ 419 Mercury; see Hermes Meres, Francis 91, 132-3, 135-49, 155, 231, 365-78 Middleton, Thomas 413 Milton, John 58-60, 160-1, 189, 195 monumentum figuratum; see Pyramid / Triangle More, Sir Thomas 470-4 Muir, Kenneth 490 Muir, Lynette R 521 Nashe, Thomas 133, 207, 298, 300304 North, Mary 196, 410 Onomancy 44, 65, 114, 196, 201-6, 233-7, 395 Onomastics 9, 115-6, 159, 196-202, 217-9, 231, 233-6, 254, 261, 273, 346-7, 380, 424-6, 467-8, 507 Optatian 12

526 Orpheus 57-75, 110, 210-11 Orphic ritual 210, 223-6, 239, 266, 270-1, 348, 360, 365, 367, 388, 403, 406, 420, 507-8 Outline model: see forma Ovid 11, 16, 32-7, 58, 78-9, 83-6, 115, 121-33, 135-6, 209, 215-6, 226-7, 283, 292-6, 311, 316-9, 322, 347, 352, 372, 385-6, 4979, 500, 514, 516, 518-20 Owen, John 38, 79, 82 Pairet, Anne 133 Paramorph 28 Paster, Gail Kern 489 Peacham, Henry 217 Penitential psalms 407 Pequigney, Joseph 410 Percy, William A 110 Persius 137-41, 370-1 Peterson, Richard S 13, 521 Petrarch 38, 61-2, 138, 165, 195, 200, 271, 280, 292, 300, 312, 317, 348 Pettari, Aaron 12 Pindar 25-6, 97, 334-4 Plato 132, 169, 190-1, 199, 246, 267, 270-1, 322-4, 381 487 Plautus 137-40, 230-33, 278, 372-4 Plutarch 197 Pope, Maurice 411 Post, Robert C 414 Proteus poem 8, 286, 288-97 Puttenham, George 23, 57, 65-8, 75, 93, 260, 284-5, 287-8, 291, 293, 504 Pyramid / Triangle; see Shakespeare (sonnet sequence) Quintilian 3, 93, 521 Reckford, Kenneth J 54 Rhodes, Neil 414 Riche, Barnabe 496-7 Richlin, Amy 111, 163, 412 Ricks, Christopher 14-15, 122, 163, 234, 409, 410 Roche, Thomas P 167, 409 Rypson, Piotr 285, 414

Index Saussure, Ferdinand de 5, 17-18, 23-32, 35-6, 53, 94-5 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 414 Schalwyk, David 450 Schoenbaum, Samuel 414 Scott, William 133, 380-84 Seneca 48 Shakespeare, William Plays As You Like It 245 500, 511 Coriolanus 197-8, 467-8, 491 Hamlet 45-53, 453-93, 496 Henry IV Part 1 142-8, 155 Henry IV Part 2 440 King Lear 69-70, 236, 390 Love’s Labour’s Lost 79 Othello 417-451, 468 Pericles 408 The Taming of the Shrew 209 The Tempest 365, 402-9 The Two Gentlemen of Verona 68-70, 267, 327-8 Troilus and Cressida 467 Twelfth Night 39, 70, 95-8, 467, 494-522 Poems A Lover’s Complaint 395-403 Sonnets 70-75, 106-10, 119-20, 133-7, 154-162, 165-416, 472, 499-50 As pyramid / triangle 26-207, 239, 242, 251, 263, 274, 280, 292, 294-5, 299, 304, 311, 322-3, 331, 335, 336-7, 339, 343-4, 350, 354, 356, 384, 389, 402 Dramatis personae 195-208 Level 1 167, 177-80, 209-42 Level 2 242-74 Level 3 274-311 Level 4 311-36 Level 5 336-55 Level 6 356-89 Level 7 389-95 The Phoenix and the Turtle 3945, 263, 459-61, 474-6

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art Venus and Adonis 113-33, 135, 304, 372, 399 Sidney, Sir Philip 212, 504 Somers, Sir George 403 Southwell, Robert 151-3 Spenser, Edmund 162, 175-6, 184, 195, 199-201, 253, 422 Staber, A P 490 Stanley William 207-8, 350-51 Starobinski, Jean 2, 17, 25, 95 Stephens, Walter 450 Strachey, William 403-4 Stubbes, Philip 408, 416 Technopaegnia 26, 97, 168, 174-5, 284-98, 334-5, 339-40 Thomas of Wimbledon 98-9 Thorpe, Thomas 165-8, 171-2, 195, 208 Tibullus 93-7, 109, 111 Transilition 170-82, 242-3, 251, 253, 263, 270, 274, 280, 298, 311, 322-3, 336, 344, 389, 402 Trithemius, Johannes 175-7, 180 Varro 122, 132, 194-5 Vendler, Helen 1, 3, 15-16, 162-3, 210, 360, 361, 410, 495 Vere, Elizabeth, Countess of Derby 70, 72, 82, 107, 119-33, 158,

527

162, 172, 192, 200-2, 206-8, 214, 251-5, 270, 283, 330-35, 338-49, 352-8, 385-9, 413, 473 Vickers, Brian 41, 55, 468-9 Virgil 57-5, 77-82, 242-30, 307, 336, 340-44 Walker, Julia M 410 Walters, Jonathan 278 Watson, Thomas 162, 170-76, 21923, 410 Weiss, Enid 513 Weiss, Raphael 409 Wheatley, H B 13 Williams, Gordon 161, 163, 266 Wilson, A N 470 Wilson, J Dover 490 Wilson, Thomas 411 Winnick, Roy 16, 54, 414 Wright, George T 490 Wroth, Mary 410n Wyatt, Sir Thomas 358-90 Wriothesley, Henry 2-8, 16, 62-71, 73-4, 82, 113-19, 156-71, 161, 171, 185, 191-4, 201-3, 204208, 209-42, 248-51, 267-70, 272-4, 298, 305-7, 312-19, 326, 328, 335-336, 341