ing 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_.

Impulsively Shakespeare brings his fantastic pretension to a somewhat
more practical issue in the concluding apostrophe:

Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me--for my name is Will. {423b}

That is equivalent to saying 'Make "will"' (_i.e._ that which is
yourself) 'your love, and then you love me, because Will is my name.'
The couplet proves even more convincingly than the one which clinches the
preceding sonnet that none of the rivals whom the poet sought to displace
in the lady's affections could by any chance have been, like himself,
called Will. The writer could not appeal to a mistress to concentrate
her love on his name of Will, because it was the emphatic sign of
identity between her being and him, if that name were common to him and
one or more rivals, and lacked exclusive reference to himself.

Loosely as Shakespeare's sonnets were constructed, the couplet at the
conclusion of each poem