"Be Innocent of the Knowledge, Dearest Chuck'

“Chuck” meant three things – as a noun, the diminutive of Charles and the wooden block you wedge behind a tire to keep the car from rolling; as a verb, the act of throwing or tossing. Not to mention up-chuck. Then I reread Love’s Labour’s Lost and read for the first time Thom Gunn’s Letters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022). In Act V, Scene 2, of the former, Don Adriano de Armado says: 

“The sweet war-man is dead and rotten; sweet chucks,

beat not the bones of the buried: when he breathed,

he was a man.”

 

Sweet is a favorite word of Don Adriano. It shows up sixty-two times in Love’s Labour’s Lost – more than in any of the other plays -- and is most often spoken by the Spaniard. The OED cites this passage and defines the word like this: “As a term of endearment or affectionate form of address. Also formerly: a loved one, esp. a child or spouse.”

 

In a 1997 letter to August Kleinzahler, Gunn reviews one of his friend’s poems, “Late Autumn Afternoons.” He suggests some “extra-literary concern about discretion” and hopes “la petite amie’s husband will read it and say jocularly over breakfast to her, ‘so that’s what all the trouble was about four years ago, dearest chuck.” Then adds:

 

“(‘Dearest chuck’ you will recognize as what Macbeth calls Lady M. Ha ha.)”

 

It comes at the conclusion of Act III, Scene 2:

 

“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,

Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;

And with thy bloody and invisible hand

Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond

Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

Thou marvell’st at my words: but hold thee still;

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

So, prithee, go with me.”

 

This brief speech between husband and wife is delicious. Seeling is borrowed from falconry and means to stitch shut the bird’s eyes with thread as part of the taming process.