In my Description I refer to my ill-luck in attempting to get my book, Let Shakspere Die!, published by mainstream publishers.  I had to pay to get it published.  It did not surprise me.  “Shakespeare” is a big industry.  Little is known about the Stratfordian, and it is relatively easy to write a book about him because literary criticism accepts any amount assumptive nonsense: it is ‘Shakespeare’, the name, that sells the books.  When I read John Michell’s book, Who Wrote Shakespeare, in 1995, I became strongly convinced – even on the brief evidence the author presents for the candidature of Roger Manners, 5^th Earl of Rutland – that the chief evidence against him – his necessary prodigy (1576-1612) – marked him out for me as the likely author, for I had long thought that his early work was that of a gifted teenager amazed at his own poetic facility, positively euphoric amid a cascade of irridescent words and rhymes.  Mid-book (135 I think) Michell alludes to anagrams being a popular pastime, which made me feel as though punched in the belly, for when I had entered the University of Keele as a mature student (26), I was very excited when I found in the back of C.J. Sissons’s The Complete Works tributary verses to Sh.  My excitement was occasioned by my conviction that, because I had found the King James Bible so sonorously beautiful, that all people of the Elijean[1] age would speak and write poetry.  But, how quickly was my enthusiasm dashed.  I found them uniformly eccentric – grotesque even – confusing and bathetic.  And then, reading Michell’s reference to anagrams, the penny dropped: probably all the tributary verses were anagrams, and not praising Sh. at all!  Very quickly I found that Hugh Holland’s sonnet, line 6, read: ‘Turn’d all to teares’, and anagrammed: ‘Relates to Rutland’, with a coincidence of 1 in 11,115,232,128,000 (11 million plus, I think).  Later, I found three very long anagrams in the tributary verses, one of 72 letters, all proving that the real subject of the verses was Rutland, not Sh.  There are a great many anagrams in the Preliminary Matter to the First Folio (the tributary verses a part thereof) yet to be discovered.

         As I progressed in my SAP studies, I would send material to the Folger Library, just to amuse them; and I am sure that they considered me a harmless crank (Samuel Schoenbaum, a late guru of Orthodoxy, averred that all heretics were ‘cranks with theories’).  But I was confident I would solve it for, with that one anagram, I had.  When the time came for me to enlighten the Secretary and the Board of the Folger Library, I posted among a few articles, the article below: ‘But Me No Buts’, an incontrovertible proof of the authorship of Roger Manners, 5^th Earl of Rutland.  I got this reply from the Secretary (12 March 08): ‘Our Editorial Board has recommended against publication of your essays, “Aristo Strife” and “Further to Rollins” (I had already had ‘But Me No Buts’ rejected).  It is our belief that the authorship question has long been settled by the weight of solid historical evidence and sound scholarship, and that we are not interested in publishing material that seeks to re-open it.  Thank you for your interest in SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly].  I still believe that the letter was essentially strategic, in that they wished not to have the status quo disturbed. It reminded me of that excellent film, The Insider (with Russell Crowe and Al Pacino), in particular when the Seven Dwarfs swore on oath before Congress: “I do not believe that nicotine is addictive”, when they had in fact added ammonia to the tobacco to make it even more addictive.
        I sent copies of my book, Let Shakspere Die!, to several scholars, and received a reply from only one, Diana Price (author of Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography), who is not really an Orthodox writer at all for, like a great predecessor, Sir George Granville Greenwood, she writes works proving that Sh. could not possibly have been the author of the canon.  From the Orthodox I received but a reverberate silence.  But I was not surprised.  I had criticised them, accusing them of complacency, equivocation and mendacity, likening them to prisoners in a black hole who mistake their anoxia for the divine afflatus.  This is not as extreme as you might think: most of the argument for Sh. is assumptive[2]: read Diana Price and Sir GGG.
        Another reason I was impelled to a Blog is that I shall be 78 in May and I have prostate cancer.  I have been given a good prognosis.  The weight and worry has been – and remains – that I shall die suddenly and the work in progress be lost; and, in effect, I am presenting this material in a Blog to pray in aid all the help I can get (especially consultations of conscience of publishers).  Recently, I have been given great encouragement from an unexpected source – my nephew in Perth, Australia, Mr David Dutton jnr (David, snr is my brother).  He is the first person that I know to have read it and, he has started it again!  I can quite see my getting it published in Oz – ‘A publisher once there in Ozz/ Was noted for raising his schnozz/ At heretical type/ He considered but tripe/ Laying him flat, no pulse and quite frozz’.
        Here are two sonnets, the first entitled ‘Rod in More Titty’, for Rutland is in hilariously obscene form.  It is a species of Puzzle Poem, which I am convinced that our poet read to a coterie of friends for their ‘solution’ and, thereby, their entertainment.  The second is the very first of several ‘King James’ sonnets in which the monarch is burlesqued.  I use a word of (I believe) my own coinage – risotherapy: healing by means of laughter, from Latin risere to laugh.

 

Rod in More Titty

Sonnet 65

Since brasse, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundlesse sea,

                        But sad mortallity ore-swaies their power,
                        How with this rage shall beautie hold a plea,
                        Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
                        O how shall summers hunny breath hold out,
                        Against the wrackfull seidge of battring dayes,
                        When rocks impregnable are not so stoute,
                        Nor gates of steele so strong but time decayes?
                        O fearefull meditation, where alack,
                        Shall times best Iewell from times chest lie hid?
                        Or what strong hand can hold his swift foote back,
                        Or who his spoile or beautie can forbid?
                           O none, unlesse this miracle have might,
                           That in black inck my love may still shine bright.

 Another Puzzle Poem to be shared with close friends.  Francis Meres alluded[3] to the ‘mellifluous’, ‘hony-tongued’, ‘sugred Sonnets’: they are – covertly - disjunctive, obscene, subversive, et al - – Rutland’s sonnets were read ‘among his private friends’, for there is cogent textual evidence in his collection, 65 but one. It is very likely that the members of the group read from scriveners’ copies.  One can imagine Rutland presiding with ebullient comedic input.  After the Essex Revolt, when he was imprisoned in the Tower, it was reported[4] that our poet was “much missed at Court”.  The tit-ride theme, with anagrammic tit-related wit, may suggest that the addressee is not King James; but the suggested ‘miracle’ of the couplet strongly indicates the putative betterment of what is modest (the King’s cocklet and its performance), with the climactic envoi that the addressee – culo-lodged – ‘may still (ever) shine bright (poke away, cocklet quite resurgam)'. There are sixteen sets of double consonants, but, what their significance?  Eight of the sixteen are double ls – and therefore ironically phallic -  three ss, and one each of e, m, n, o, and t.  What his purpose is defeats me: any ideas?  He might in some way be burlesquing Hasty (King) Jim.  Perhaps their doublings are meant to indicate the desiderated doubling of amorous effort (of the royal love-stick) lacking in the King.  The four quatrains are expressed interrogatively: marks at 4, 8, 10 and 12; the questioning a preparation – and heightening (an apt felicity) – of line 13’s ‘miracle’.  Indeed, the classical Ovidian analogy acts as fantasy does in the best jokes: the more outlandish, the funnier. [A joke using fantasy has perennial surprise: “Tired with all these I betook myself on a walking holiday in the Swiss Alps.  It was August, and even when three miles up, the very air a cooling tonic, like the fragrant farewell of a vintage Reisling with a gentian farewell, the scenery encompassing, its poetry dramatic-dark, tinged with danger. Finding myself on a narrow pass, a three-mile drop beetling down to Darmstadt, I had scarce adjured myself to be specially careful, when an apparition of long-legged beauty slid round the narrow corner ahead, sun-kissed blonde hair adrift like Galatea's redder mop, bronze thighs rippling, blue eyes smiling, corsage provocative, somewhat amused at my wide-eyed rapture, for, truly, I didn’t know whether to toss myself off or to block her passage!”  This joke, unforgettably delivered by Max Miller, one of our bravest bawdy comedians, epitomizes the effect that Rutland chiefly sought – that divine communion wherein all evil and misfortune are forgotten, when the God of laughter enfolds us in blessed nonentity.]

2  mortallity:  a compound conceit: i.e ‘all’ (= penis: see 2.5,6; 15.13, et al) in ‘mort-ity’, a tit-ride.  Its exuberant cogency is qualified by the verb   ore-swaies: i.e. ‘oscillates irregularly over’.  A ‘mortallity’ that ‘ore-swaies’ not only brasse and stone, but also earth and sea, is not easily grasped. Further, Rutland repeats the tit-conceit by encryptions at 10 and 11. 
3  with: against.   rage: the antecedent of ‘this rage’ is the riotous phonetic tit-ride of line 2; and ‘rage’ strongly suggests ‘approaching orgasm’.  The power over brasse, stone, earth, and boundlesse sea, that works slowly over generations by a natural process of decay, is suddenly and dramatically increased to a ‘rage’ which, because inapposite, lends credence to the cryptic content of line 2.   beautie: with irony, the royal cocklet not a whopper.   hold a plea:  since the ‘beautie’, King James’s Wee Bitty, is in midst of an action that cannot, for long, ‘hold out against’ excitation, the covert meaning is cogently upheld.
4  action: instinctive discipline.  Lines 3-4 read, covertly: ‘How against this tit-ride rage shall a wee bitty cock hold out when, against such heavenly excitation, its action is no stronger than a flower?’  Without the ‘all-in -mort ity’ conceit, ‘this rage’ (of Time’s relentlessness) is clearly overstated.
5-6  convey an image of raw sexuality: the innocence of a young girl’s developing sexuality (summers hunny breath (5) is represented as importunate libido enduring the wrackfull seidge of (6) uncontrolled male lust (battring penises (dayes (6)): see 12.2n.: ‘night’, female orifice, anagram of ‘thing’: ‘day’, counterpart of ‘night’, male penis).  The storm of lust further qualifies the ‘rage’ of ‘beautie’s’ susceptibility when its ‘action is no stronger than a flower’ (4), for our joyous poet introduces a late-teen girl with hunny breath who rouses all the combative cocks (dayes) of summer, for O, how shall she hold out what she wants in even rocks impregnable are not so durable nor gates of steele so strong when all her urge is to ope her gate and grant her hot summer pilgrim sanctuary?  After a luscious tit-ride and young limbs scorching the hay – what next?  Answer - Puzzles, to augment pleasure with laughter.
9  O fearefull meditation reprising 64.11’s cryptic ‘rue-my-nate’, Rutland cranks up the questioning:   alack: perhaps ‘a lack’, hinting at the King’s wee bitty.
10  times: decr. ‘emits’, (sexual) effusions.   best Iewell: probably the King’s ‘little gem’, with typical Rutlandian hilarity’.   times chest: anagrams ‘tit schemes’: the question suggesting that the royal cocklet would lie hid, quite disappearing amid the comforting paps (for a tit-ride is best accomplished upon a rod of length); the reading confirmed by implication of the following line. 
11  swift foote: anagrams ‘off-tits woe’, reprising our poet’s  ‘rue-my-nate’ (64.11) similar woe. The Puzzlers would no doubt be required to solve these two last witty anagrams (of s. 65), both confirming the veracity of the ‘rod-in-more-titty’ deception of line 2.  The line implies: ‘Or what instinctual hand shall sublimate his off-tits woe...’.
12  spoile: COD 1n. ‘stolen goods’; DED: n.7 ‘Waste material thrown up by an excavation’, reprising ‘the firme soile’ (64.7).  Further, ‘soile’ anagrams ‘O-piles’ (see 10n.): an obviously successful excavation.   beautie: King James’s little gem (at least as an excavator?).  
13-14  Cf. 63.14: ‘His beautie shall in these blacke lines be seene,/ And they shall live, and he in them still greene’: his wondrous miniature shall at least be ‘seene’ in black ink and, further, he shall remain upright and perform his office.
13  O none: revealing graphic O+O = buttocks, arse.  These puzzle elements can seldom be ignored.   unless this miracle have might a clear, covert, ironical reference to King James’s wee bitty rod that certainly lacks ‘might’; and hence our poet’s wish 
14  That in black inck: anagrams ‘back Clink’ (the Clink a 16c prison in Southwark), referring, of course, to the King’s short stay in our poet’s culo.   my love: the King’s miniature wonder.   may still shine bright: may continue to be tumescent.  For the semantics of ‘shine bright’: see 18.5; 33.9; 55.3: ‘shine’ – often associated with ‘bright’ – has almost everywhere in the Sonnets this sexually-tumescing meaning. The putative miracle – that ‘my love’ may continue to grow and perform with tumescent eagerness and stamina – strongly suggests King James as performing the office, remaining in back Clink, with action durable, not wilting like a flower.  It is also important to remember that Rutland and Southampton became estranged after the Essex Revolt.  The couplet’s  irony suggests that King James’s ‘little wonder’ may provide the wished-for miracle, begetting this rendition: “O none, unlesse this miracle have might,/ That in back Clink my love be ever found – upright!”

 

Sonnet 87

Farewell thou art too deare for my possessing,

                        And like enough thou knowst thy estimate,
                        The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:
                        My bonds in thee are all determinate.
                        For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
                        And for that ritches where is my deserving?
=                      The cause of this faire guift in me is wanting,
                         And so my pattent back againe is swerving.
                         Thy selfe thou gav’st, thy owne worth then not knowing,
                         Or mee to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking,
                         So thy great guift upon misprision growing,
                         Comes home againe, on better judgement making.
                            Thus have I had thee as a dreame doth flatter,
                            In sleepe a King, but waking no such matter.

Headnote. 

The opening ‘Farewell’ indicates the spring of 1603 when James Stuart, King James VI, came down from Scotland, hunting all the way - calling at Belvoir Castle, Rutland’s seat – on the way to London there to be later crowned King James the First of England.  It is most probable that Rutland was meeting England’s future king for the first time; and given such a momentous encounter (for our poet), one would expect him to quell the ebullition of his laughing daemon; but one cannot escape the sexual statement of the couplet: he has ‘had’ the Scottish king, and so the import of the poem is more than a discussion of status under an image of legal privilege and granting.  Further, some ten of the King James sonnets – burlesquing the monarch – suggest sexual intimacy over no short period of time, and 148, one of the latest and wittiest (though their chronological order yet to be established) – and the King’s visit to Belvoir in the summer of 1603, and again for Rutland’s funeral on 12 August 1612, and his appointment as ambassador to Denmark, summer 1603 (residing at the Castle of Kronborg Slot, Elsinore), suggests monarchical regard.
        The covert content of 87 is daringly witty and cryptologically seamless.  But for whom was it written?  The Essex Circle had lost some of its luminaries (Essex himself having suffered execution), and Southampton not yet released from the Tower (one of the King’s first executive acts); but Rutland had been accepted by the King-to-be, and so our poet’s audience (of puzzlers) probably met privately with discretion, although it is not impossible – such his reckless desire for laughter – that he convened his audience at the King’s court.  Rutland and Southampton were estranged at this time, evidenced by the Altercatory Sonnets; but given Rutland’s audacious nature and his love of joking, it would appear that he still enjoyed the friendship of close intimates.  After his arrest for his (peripheral) involvement in the Essex Revolt, he was reported to be very much missed at court.
        The poem is noted for its twelve feminine rhymes.  There are two highly significant anagrams and, as usual, the poem’s obscenity is redeemed by its intrepid, hilarious wit.
1  Farewell   indicates a departure; and revealed in the couplet that of no less a person than a king, indicating James Stuart, King of Scots, who had called at Belvoir Castle on way down to London where he would be crowned King James the First of England; thus dating the poem to March, 1603: see Hn. above;  deare  elevated, exalted, possibly high, with ironic aspersion of the King’s ‘wee bitty penis’ (see 148’s anagram (from ‘what they see aright’): ‘thy hag-hit wee tarse (Sc. penis)’.  Implied in possessing is sexual intimacy.  The word is the first of twleve feminine endings. 
2  Already a king, James Stuart would obviously be aware of his supreme human status.  Obliquely, however, Rutland probably infers the King’s knowledge of his own ‘wee bitty’, for estimate can mean (COD²) ‘the assessment of the worth of someone or something’ (‘thing’ = pudend, m. or f.): it also introduces words appertaining to finance, commerce and the law; as well as having a sexual meaning, immediately qualified in
3  The Charter of thy worth  ‘Charter’ = privilege, commercial legality/ freedom; ‘worth’ = standing, penis (see 37.4; 39.1; 60.14; 82.6; 83.8, et al; also corroborated by ‘worth’ (9, below) and ‘it’ (10)).  The line ironically suggests King James’s penile ineffectualness: ‘the privilege of thy (unworthy) penis gives thee (all-too-quick) releasing’, indicating that the monarch’s rod has not sufficient length to satisfy his does.    
4  My bonds in thee are all determinate  ‘bonds’ = bindings, legal controls;  all: penis (phonetic ‘awl’, piercing instrument);  determinate: pronounce ‘dee-terminate’: ‘dee’ a Scottish word for ‘die’ (come/ ejaculate); ‘terminate’ = ‘ended’: our poet covertly asserts that his bindings of the King’s wee rod in his culo are all short-lived (determinate) for His Majesty has climaxed all too soon and cancelled the bond.
5  Although overtly hold and granting have legal meanings, repectively of ‘legal right’ and ‘a deed of possession (conveyance)’, the line vividly expresses Rutland’s problem of maintaining purchase on the King’s elusive cocklet; and ‘granting’ anagrams (the rib-tickling) ‘ring gnat’, quite within our poet’s risotherapeutic remit, asking, in effect, Why should I bother seeking purchase on thy miniscule rod?
6  that ritches  OED gives several examples of singular ‘riches’ but, with determiner ‘that’ only this example.  Not surprisingly, ‘that ritches’ anagrams ‘tarse hitch’ (Scottish ‘tarse’ = penis), linking 5’s metonym thee (= penis) and 7’s ‘faire guift’ (= upright penis; for ‘faire’ = tumescent: see 5.4; 16.11; 18.7,10; 21.4; 26.10; et al).  For ‘hitch’ OED provides ‘1.b. A little lift or push’; exactly what our beloved, teeth-gnashing poet requires of the dimunitive royal tarse.  One can imagine the hilarity enjoyed by Rutland and his ‘solvers’ as he helped them to elucidate the anagram; and for us (and them) to readily ‘witness’ the efficiency of his risotherapy, enabling us to understand (and forgive) his many obscenities.   deserving: R. accentuates the irony: where is the length (of rod and time) I deserve? 
7  cause  another legal allusion – COD³: ‘an individual’s case offered at law’.  Also = ‘reason, grounds, purpose’.  Rutland implies: ‘The purpose of this upright (faire) guift (the King’s cocklet) in me is futile (wanting)’, but with a poignant glance at his own lack of ‘sauce’ (anagram of ‘cause’) through the misfortune of his erectile disorder.
8  pattent  legal privilege, right of possession.   back againe is swerving  OED1b. ‘back againe’: back to the point of starting; ‘is swerving’ = ‘the royal tarse is failing to perform its office’.  Effectually Rutland complains: ‘And so my right of (anal) possession must hope frustratingly afresh’.
9  Thy selfe thou gav’st  thou granted me thy royal person (flashing the Wee Bitty).   thy owne worth then not knowing  presumably the Scottish King could not quite believe he was to become King of the English. But Rutland includes a rather cruel joke, implying that his guest has no knowledge of his own cocklet’s insufficiency (‘worth’ = penis: see line 3n. above).
10  Or mee to whom thou gav’st it  with mock-modesty Rutland compares his rank (of earl) with the Majesty of James Stuart (already a king and soon-to-be King of England).  What King James has ‘given’ is his ‘worth’ (= penis) – ‘it’.   else mistaking  with play on ‘missed a king’, implying: ‘If thou hadst known thine own worth, I should have missed being tupped by a king’.  Orthodoxy usually disdains to comment on the witty phoneticism, ‘missed a king’, for it would then have become necessary to accept ‘a king’ as Shaxper’s lover: the couplet’s King who has been had!  What!  Shaxper up King James? or (better yet) King James up Shaxper?  An assumption much too far!
11  great guift  pure irony, for Rutland alludes to the royal cocklet.   upon misprision growing  for ‘misprision’ OED gives ‘1. Law.  A wrong action or omission’; specially a misdemeanour or failure of duty on the part of a public official’; and 3. ‘The mistaking one thing, word, etc., for another; a misunderstanding; a mistake’.  Overtly suggests that the Scottish king realises that he has demeaned the royal rod, but with ironic implication that “thy great guift”, a derisory cocklet, is yet doomed to tumescence and mingling “misprision”.
12  Comes home againe  ‘thou thrusteth up my tush again’   on better judgement making  ‘preferring to tup (my culo) than consider vainglorious notions of status’.  Ostensibly, the line extends: ‘Realising thy mistaking, with better judgement making, thou puts on the Majesticals (comes home again)’.
13  Thus have I had thee  Thus hast thou been up my culo.   as a dreame doth flatter  but thy performance unsatisfying, like an insubstantial, concupiscent dream.
14  In sleepe a King  Rutland tries to mitigate the ‘treason’ of his back-door copulation with a king, ascribing their intimacy to a dream, even though he has blabbed the truth in ‘thus have I had thee’ (13), with, again, a possible phonetic witticism in a King, but = ‘aching butt’.   but waking no such matter  ostensibly, ‘Back in the real world, my dream was clearly illusory’; but our wicked, laughter-loving poet concludes with intrepid wit, for ‘no such matter’ anagrams ‘no rectum hast’ – ‘hast’ a variable spelling of ‘haste’, as in 123.12 qv.  ‘Thus have I  had thee as in a dream unchaste, In sleepe a King, but waking – no rectum hast!’ (for another such royal encounter with thy unconscionable Weenie!).

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Elijean: relating to the times of Queen Elizabeth the First and King James the First of England: a compound of ELIzabethan and JacobEAN.

[2] Because the writer of the canon was obviously very well educated, orthodoxy assumes that Sh. was a  pupil at a grammar school in Stratford, when, in fact, there is more evidence for his being illiterate (he could not produce a signature, no book of his has ever been found, and nobody in Stratford ever referred to him as a poet and dramatist.  His father was also illiterate).

[3] Meres, Francis: Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury.  Being the Second Part of Wits Commonwealth (1598), fols 282-2]: “As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in ‘mellifluous’ and hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends”. 

[4] Sykes, Claud W.: Alias William Shakespeare?, Francis Aldor Publisher, London, 1947.