A curious sonnet

I lover Shakespeare and I have read most of his plays, but not studied all of them in great depth, and some I haven’t studied at all, merely read to myself. I haven’t read all of his sonnets, in fact, I confess I have read only  a few thoroughly which in a way is a wonderful thing because it means I am still discovering them. One I had never come across before (shame on me an English scholar!) is Sonnet 135, and I was fortunate to come across it on a wonderful site which gives a detailed commentary to the poem.

I read it through a couple of times, and understood the puns and plays on words, or so I thought. For example, I know Shakespeare uses his own name Will in a pun with the verb will… but I didn’t realise although really I should have done that ‘will’ can be a name for a part of a man’s body – we even use it today, as willie, although few men now would be called Willy’! Men of my dad’s generation named William, were, and I’m sure still are called it, but no doubt their children and grandchildren give a little private snigger whenever they hear it.

Enough of that; here is the sonnet and I have included some of the meanings of ‘will, at the end with a link to the web-site I’ve borrowed it from:

Sonnet 135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in over-plus;
More than enough am I that vexed thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

William Shakespeare

This is fascinating:

The meanings of will which recur throughout the poem are as follows.
1. Wish, desire; thing desired.
2. Carnal desire, lust, sexual longing.
3. The auxiliary verb denoting a future tense, as in ‘it will be so, thou wilt vouchsafe’.
4. Willfulness, obstinacy, determination.
5. A slang term for the male sex organ. As in – this night he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour. AW.IV.iii.14.
6. A slang term for the female sex organ.
7. The name ‘William’.

The italicisation of some of the ‘will’s in the Q text implies an effort to distinguish them in meaning from those presented in ordinary script. The difficulty with following the typescript rigidly is that the Q text is generally very arbitrary in such matters, in some sonnets italicising a word while in others, where the use seems to be exactly comparable, a plain typeface is used. In this sonnet the italicised Wills could relate to its uses where the predominant meaning is the name ‘William’. However even that explanation is doubtful for its occurrences in lines 2, 11 and 12 only obliquely fits that meaning. I have compromised by omitting the italicisation and retaining the capital letters for those instances of ‘Will’ in which it is found. Readers in any case have to bear in mind the large numbers of meanings which the word carries, and allow in each case the relevant suggestions to filter into their minds

http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/135