Sonnet cxxxvi.
The same equivocating conceit of the poet Will’s title to identity with the lady’s ‘will’ in all senses is pursued in Sonnet cxxxvi. The sonnet opens:
If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will, [422b]
And will thy soul knows is admitted there.
Here Shakespeare adapts to his punning purpose the familiar philosophic commonplace respecting the soul’s domination by ‘will’ or volition, which was more clearly
expressed by his contemporary, Sir John Davies, in the philosophic poem, ‘Nosce Teipsum:’
Will holds the royal sceptre in the soul,
And on the passions of the heart doth reign.
Whether Shakespeare’s lines be considered with their context or without it, the tenor of their thought and language positively refutes the commentators’ notion that the ‘will’ admitted to the lady’s soul is a rival lover named Will. The succeeding lines run:
Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. [423a]
Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love;
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.
In things of great receipt with ease we prove
Among a number one is reckon’d none:
Then in the number let me pass untold,
Though in thy stores’ account, I one must be;
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.
Here the poet Will continues to claim, in punning right of his Christian name, a place, however small and inconspicuous, among the ‘wills,’ the varied forms of will (i.e. lust, stubbornness, and willingness to accept others’ attentions), which are the constituent elements of the lady’s being. The plural ‘wills’ is twice used in identical sense by Barnabe Barnes in the lines already quoted:
Mine heart, bound martyr to thy wills.
But women will have their own wills.