tributable to the fanatical
anxiety of the supporters of the Pembroke theory to extort, at all
hazards, some sort of evidence in their favour from Shakespeare's text.
{416}

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 y