The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [3475]
Elizabethan meanings of ‘will.’
In two sonnets (cxxxv.-vi.)—the most artificial and ‘conceited’ in the collection—the poet plays somewhat enigmatically on his Christian name of ‘Will,’ and a similar pun has been doubtfully detected in sonnets cxxxiv. and cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity in form of the proper name with the common noun ‘will.’ This word connoted in Elizabethan English a generous variety of conceptions, of most of which it has long since been deprived. Then, as now, it was employed in the general psychological sense of volition; but it was more often specifically applied to two limited manifestations of the volition. It was the commonest of synonyms alike for ‘self will’ or ‘stubbornness’—in which sense it still survives in ‘wilful’—and for ‘lust,’ or ‘sensual passion.’ It also did occasional duty for its own diminutive ‘wish,’ for ‘caprice,’ for ‘good-will,’ and for ‘free consent’ (as nowadays in ‘willing,’ or ‘willingly’).
Shakespeare’s uses of the word.
Shakespeare constantly used ‘will’ in all these significations. Iago recognised its general psychological value when he said, ‘Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners.’ The conduct of the ‘will’ is discussed after the manner of philosophy in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ (II. ii. 51-68). In another of Iago’s sentences, ‘Love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will,’ light is shed on the process by which the word came to be specifically applied to sensual desire. The last is a favourite sense with Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Angelo and Isabella, in ‘Measure for Measure,’ are at one in attributing their conflict to the former’s ‘will.’ The self-indulgent Bertram, in ‘All’s Well,’ ‘fleshes his “will” in the spoil of a gentlewoman’s honour.’ In ‘Lear’ (IV. vi. 279) Regan’s heartless plot to seduce her brother-in-law is assigned to ‘the undistinguished space’—the boundless range—‘of woman’s will.’ Similarly, Sir Philip Sidney apostrophised lust as ‘thou web of will.’ Thomas Lodge, in ‘Phillis’ (Sonnet xi.), warns lovers of the ruin that menaces all who ‘guide their course by will.’ Nicholas Breton’s fantastic romance of 1599, entitled ‘The Will of Wit, Wit’s Will or Will’s Wit, Chuse you whether,’ is especially rich in like illustrations. Breton brings into marked prominence the antithesis which was familiar in his day between ‘will’ in its sensual meaning, and ‘wit,’ the Elizabethan synonym for reason or cognition. ‘A song between Wit and Will’ opens thus:
Wit: What art thou, Will? Will: A babe of nature’s brood,
Wit: Who was thy sire? Will: Sweet Lust, as lovers say.
Wit: Thy mother who? Will: Wild lusty wanton blood.
Wit: When wast thou born? Will: In merry month of May.
Wit: And where brought up? Will: In school of little skill.
Wit: What learn’dst thou there? Will: Love is my lesson still.
Of the use of the word in the sense of stubbornness or self-will Roger Ascham gives a good instance in his ‘Scholemaster,’ (1570), where he recommends that such a vice in children as ‘will,’ which he places in the category of lying, sloth, and disobedience, should be ‘with sharp chastisement daily cut away.’ ‘A woman will have her will’ was, among Elizabethan wags, an exceptionally popular proverbial phrase, the point of which revolved about the equivocal meaning of the last word. The phrase supplied the title of ‘a pleasant comedy,’ by William Haughton, which—from 1597 onwards—held the stage for the unusually prolonged period of forty years. ‘Women, because they cannot have their wills when they dye, they will have their wills while they live,’ was a current witticism which the barrister Manningham deemed worthy of record in his ‘Diary’ in 1602.
Shakespeare’s puns on the word.
It was not only in the sonnets that Shakespeare—almost invariably with a glance at its sensual significance—rang the changes on this many-faced verbal token. In his earliest play, ‘Love