Sonnet 136: If Thy Soul Check Thee That I Come so Near
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If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will, And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there, Thus far for love my love-suit sweet fulfil. Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love, Aye, fill it full with wills, and my will one. In things of great receipt with ease we prove Among a number, one is reckoned none. Then in the number let me pass untold, Though in thy store's account I one must be, For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold That nothing, me, a something sweet to thee. Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will. |
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If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
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If your soul were to rebuke you for allowing me to come so near to you...
'Soul' here as in many previous instances in these sonnets is used in the sense of 'conscience' or 'inner being', or even 'mind', and at first glance it sounds like Shakespeare is simply suggesting that his mistress's soul may rebuke her for allowing him to come so near to it, her soul: to be so near to her emotionally. The sonnet soon makes it obvious though that what is actually implied is that her soul may object to him coming so near to her physically, in other words, to him having sex with her. |
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Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will,
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...then swear to your blind soul that I am your Will.
The soul is blind because like the mind or the heart – to which, as we have seen, it is closely related in Shakespeare's poetry – it does not have the physical capacity to see for itself, being enclosed within the body. Instead it relies on the eyes to receive information about what happens in the world around it, or otherwise uses its imagination or the vision of 'shadows' – internal images or dreams – to 'see'. Several sonnets play on this idea in one way or another, most recently Sonnet 113: Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind, And that which governs me to go about Doth part his function and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out; For it no form delivers to the heart Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch; Of his quick objects hath the mind no part, Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch; or, earlier on in the series, Sonnet 27: For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see, Save that my soul's imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view... Meanwhile, here in Sonnet 136, the name Will returns with a double meaning: as in Sonnet 135, Shakespeare starts off clearly referring to himself by his name, while also immediately inviting the secondary sense of 'desire': the line can and almost certainly should be read as both: 'I am your William', and 'I am your desire', or 'I am what you want'. It is telling and not without significance though that Shakespeare uses the subjunctive here and suggests that the mistress swears "I was your will," rather than asserting "I am your Will," which would also scan. It implies a degree of doubt that this is in fact so, both on the part of the poet and of his mistress, whereby the rest of the poem makes it clear that, the many 'wills' his lady grants access to notwithstanding, this Will should be the one she loves. |
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And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there,
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And desire, lust, a penis, or a man called Will is allowed there, in that place where I come 'too near', which again is by implication your vagina.
The same caveat as we discussed with Sonnet 135 applies relating to the use of capitals and italics for the word 'will' in the Quarto Edition: we cannot be at all certain that they are Shakespeare's, but we should nonetheless take note of the fact that unlike the first 'Will' in the line above, this 'will' here is kept in lower case and without italics, which, if authorial, is significant, because it then emphasises the meanings of 'desire', 'lust', and 'penis' over the name William, and suggests, rather crudely, one might once again argue, that as a general rule the lady's vagina admits penises of all sorts. |
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Thus far for love my love-suit sweet fulfil.
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So to this extent or to that same extent, fulfil or meet my suit of love, meaning my plea or my wooing, or my request to have access to you, and do so for love, by implication for love of me, though similarly possible is for love of 'will' generally, which would then mean, for your well known love of cock, as we might today similarly crudely put it.
'Sweet' may be either an adjective to the 'love-suit' in a poetic inversion, so the line reads 'fulfil my sweet love-suit', or it could also be understood as a term of endearment for the woman, so it reads 'fulfil my love-suit, sweet mistress of mine'. Or it could even be read as an adverb to 'fulfil', then yielding: 'fulfil my love-suit sweetly', as in pleasurably, enjoyably: as ever, Shakespeare is more than likely to understand and therefore intend all three meanings simultaneously. |
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Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love,
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William and/or cock is going to satisfy and also fill up the most precious place of your love, which is your vagina...
Shakespeare puns on and toys with 'treasure' often in subtly different ways, not always sexual. But several sonnets do like this here associate 'treasure' with either a woman's or a man's most intimate part, for example Sonnet 6 where he counsels the young man to make a woman pregnant so as to produce an heir: Make sweet some vial, treasure thou some place With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-killed. Or Sonnet 52, where 'treasure' acts as a metaphor for the young man and by implication, we there noted and explained, intimacy with him: So am I as the rich, whose blessed key Can bring him to his sweet uplocked treasure The which he will not every hour survey For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. |
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Aye, fill it full with wills, and my will one.
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Indeed, or forever, fill it – your vagina – full with penises, mine being one among them.
'Aye' can mean either 'yes, absolutely, indeed' or 'forever' and interestingly the Quarto Edition here spells it 'I', which is very likely to be intentional. Both are pronounced exactly the same, but the emendation to 'Aye' or 'Ay' which is generally adopted to aid today's reader's understanding almost entirely erases the pun on Will as the speaker. Once that is taken into consideration, the line can mean two quite distinct things: 1 – Absolutely, or do forever, go ahead, fill your vagina up with penises, but let my penis be one among them. 2 – I, William, am able to give your vagina the equivalent of many penises, and yet I have only the one. The first reading is a fairly meek concession that the lady's vagina is for everyone and he among these many is or wishes to be be but one; the second reading amounts to a super-confident brag about Will's own sexual prowess, as his one cock can deliver the pleasure of however many the lady may crave. Again, both readings are quite likely to be fully intended, though Shakespeare now proceeds to strongly emphasise the former: |
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In things of great receipt with ease we prove
Among a number, one is reckoned none. |
When talking about or looking at things of great abundance, we can easily demonstrate that among such great numbers or quantities, one is considered nothing.
Put somewhat differently and again rather more crudely, and I do apologise for this, but our Will leaves us with less and less choice in the matter: among so many men, or such quantity of cock, one more scarcely matters. |
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Then in the number let me pass untold,
Though in thy store's account I one must be, |
And so in among that great number of men you have sex with, let me slip in or go unnoticed, as it were, although strictly speaking in the accounts of this great wealth of lovers you have I would have to be counted as one, quite possibly also because the letter and therefore word 'I' on paper looks like the number 1.
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For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
That nothing, me, a something sweet to thee. |
Do consider or count me as nothing, but if it pleases you to do so – or simply please – hold that nothing, which is me, as something that is sweet to you, something that you like and enjoy, as a 'sweet nothing', so to speak.
The punning of course continues, this time on the word 'nothing' which in Shakespeare's day generally and in Shakespeare specifically is a euphemism for female genitalia. 'Nothing' literally means 'no thing' for which here read 'no penis', ergo: vulva. A famous example of this appears in Hamlet Act III, Scene 2, when the prince chooses to sit down next to Ophelia rather than next to his mother to watch the play-within-the-play that the actors are about to perform at his request, and he teases her: HAMLET Lady, shall I lie in your lap? OPHELIA No, my lord. HAMLET I mean, my head upon your lap? OPHELIA Aye, my lord. HAMLET Do you think I meant country matters? OPHELIA I think nothing, my lord. HAMLET That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs. OPHELIA What is, my lord? HAMLET Nothing. (We did in fact discuss the exact same exchange with Sonnet 98, there with an interest in the word and concept 'lap', rather than, as here, 'nothing'.) Once we once again take this into account, the line then takes on an additional meaning: For the sake or purpose of your vulva, hold me, or more specifically my penis, and if it pleases you – which by insinuation above and also here it clearly does – then even this 'nothing' which is me, my worthless or unimportant person, being represented by my magnificent cock held in your hand, can be some 'thing' that is sweet, as in pleasurable, enjoyable, to you. |
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Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will. |
Just make, or make only, my name your love, and then love this love of yours always, and that way you love me because my name is Will.
Or, again put somewhat more crudely and more directly, but certainly implied by this: just love cock, as you do, and continue to do so, and then you love me, because my name is Will which as these two sonnets have amply shown is another word for cock. |
In Sonnet 136, William Shakespeare part develops, part reiterates the 'argument', such as it is, of Sonnet 135, that in amongst an abundance of men whom he suggests his mistress is having sex with, he should at least be one, and that she should think of him as her possibly principal lover, mostly on account of his name, Will, which here as in the previous sonnet is treated as synonymous with 'desire', 'the intention to have that desire met', 'the male sexual organ with which this is accomplished', and 'the name of the man or men to whom said sexual organ belongs', as well as the future tense when some or any of this is likely to happen.
The only sense of 'will' present in the previous sonnet that does not come into play here is the female sexual organ, but that does not make this sonnet any less salacious, because for this, Shakespeare here finds another commonly used euphemism at the time, which he latches onto and puns on for a couple of lines instead.
Sonnets 135 and 136 could be considered a pair that belongs together, but since each of these poems can stand on its own and since the argument is not so much carried through, built upon, and concluded, as simply recycled, I am inclined to treat them as separate pieces expressing more or or less the same thing.
What they express though is really quite startling. We have on previous occasions felt that William Shakespeare wasn't entirely flattering about, or let alone tender towards, his Dark Lady in these poems, but Sonnet 135 already cranked up the tone towards a fairly crude set of remarks about her vagina being "large and spacious," and Sonnet 136 now more than suggests, it effectively declares, this Dark Lady to be promiscuous to say the least.
What is entirely fascinating about this particular poem though is that actually, when looked at closely, William Shakespeare here is nowhere near as judgmental about this as we today might think we would expect him to be. He does not in that sense admonish her, or even question her right to have sex with as many Wills, or admit to her 'nothing' as many 'somethings', as she chooses: he mostly just says, I want to be in on this, and the way you can justify to yourself having sex with me too is by equating me with what you want, which in any case you can do easily because I and what you want are called the same, namely 'Will'.
It is once again both highly personal and disconcertingly generic at the same time. And it also somewhat baffles because both these sonnets make it sound as if the woman was refusing our Will, when admitting many other Wills, or indeed men of any name, and while this is of course entirely possible, one does wonder whether simply arguing that 'I should be one of them' is the best way to win a lady's heart... — Then again, neither of these two sonnets suggests that Shakespeare is primarily concerned with winning the lady's heart.
And so, much as Sonnet 135, Sonnet 136 may leave us a bit nonplussed. Unless we take what we have more or less at face value and acknowledge, as we have done before: when Shakespeare does something unusual with his language, his style, it is normally for a reason.
In these two sonnets he does something highly unusual. He goes into punning overdrive. He blatantly hyper-stylises his sonnet out of all empathic proportion and creates an artifice that has, so we certainly get the impression, nothing at all to do with the heart, little, in actual fact, with desire, not much at all with real passion, and a lot with what the mind can do with words. Both these sonnets, though neither philosophical nor intellectual, are fundamentally cerebral. And yet they both come along with an uncharacteristic macho swagger. They sound like Shakespeare, who abhors heavy make-up, ludicrous wigs, hyperbole, and overuse of the poetic commonplace, has had a bit more ale than is entirely conducive to his otherwise fine judgement, gone rummaging through his costume trunk, put on a magnificent codpiece, and is now strutting around in front of his drunken mates, poking fun at his mistress, at poetry, and at himself while showing off his verbal powers. One could even imagine – at high conjecture, I warrant – a wager: 'Ey, Will, how many wills of different sense canst thou put in one such sonnet of thine?'
Do they tell us anything significant and truthful about the Dark Lady or about Shakespeare's feelings towards her? It's hard to see what. You keep hearing me say "everything is conjecture, except the words," and the words themselves here put such a great distance between us, the reader and listener, and the person these two sonnets are written to and about, and with this distance create such a distortion – to the point of caricature – of our poet, that we would either have to say: Will Shakespeare in these two sonnets turns grotesque, or Will Shakespeare with these two sonnets shows his situation up as being grotesque.
Either that, or he is having a bit of fun. That too is a possibility we cannot rule out, and it is one that we are perhaps a little apt to forget: not all of these sonnets need to be read as dead serious. And it could well be that the principal reason these two poems in particular faze us is that faced with their barrage of bawdy banter we suffer a sense of humour failure: we want our Shakespeare to be meaningful, profound. So when he makes lewd jokes with or about his woman – who clearly isn't exactly a wallflower – that he is cock enough for a whole bunch of men, then the pedestal that we put him on appears to wobble.
Fear not though: topple it won't. With Sonnet 137 and the poems that follow, Shakespeare steers himself back into serious, as opposed to merely frivolous, reflections on such troubles of the heart as stem from said heart deceiving itself deliberately to accommodate a love that it can scarcely make sense of.
But one thing about these two awkward fellows of sonnets appears to remain and remain confirmed to be true: this mistress of Shakespeare's is not just a Dark Lady, she is also a bit of a dark horse...
The only sense of 'will' present in the previous sonnet that does not come into play here is the female sexual organ, but that does not make this sonnet any less salacious, because for this, Shakespeare here finds another commonly used euphemism at the time, which he latches onto and puns on for a couple of lines instead.
Sonnets 135 and 136 could be considered a pair that belongs together, but since each of these poems can stand on its own and since the argument is not so much carried through, built upon, and concluded, as simply recycled, I am inclined to treat them as separate pieces expressing more or or less the same thing.
What they express though is really quite startling. We have on previous occasions felt that William Shakespeare wasn't entirely flattering about, or let alone tender towards, his Dark Lady in these poems, but Sonnet 135 already cranked up the tone towards a fairly crude set of remarks about her vagina being "large and spacious," and Sonnet 136 now more than suggests, it effectively declares, this Dark Lady to be promiscuous to say the least.
What is entirely fascinating about this particular poem though is that actually, when looked at closely, William Shakespeare here is nowhere near as judgmental about this as we today might think we would expect him to be. He does not in that sense admonish her, or even question her right to have sex with as many Wills, or admit to her 'nothing' as many 'somethings', as she chooses: he mostly just says, I want to be in on this, and the way you can justify to yourself having sex with me too is by equating me with what you want, which in any case you can do easily because I and what you want are called the same, namely 'Will'.
It is once again both highly personal and disconcertingly generic at the same time. And it also somewhat baffles because both these sonnets make it sound as if the woman was refusing our Will, when admitting many other Wills, or indeed men of any name, and while this is of course entirely possible, one does wonder whether simply arguing that 'I should be one of them' is the best way to win a lady's heart... — Then again, neither of these two sonnets suggests that Shakespeare is primarily concerned with winning the lady's heart.
And so, much as Sonnet 135, Sonnet 136 may leave us a bit nonplussed. Unless we take what we have more or less at face value and acknowledge, as we have done before: when Shakespeare does something unusual with his language, his style, it is normally for a reason.
In these two sonnets he does something highly unusual. He goes into punning overdrive. He blatantly hyper-stylises his sonnet out of all empathic proportion and creates an artifice that has, so we certainly get the impression, nothing at all to do with the heart, little, in actual fact, with desire, not much at all with real passion, and a lot with what the mind can do with words. Both these sonnets, though neither philosophical nor intellectual, are fundamentally cerebral. And yet they both come along with an uncharacteristic macho swagger. They sound like Shakespeare, who abhors heavy make-up, ludicrous wigs, hyperbole, and overuse of the poetic commonplace, has had a bit more ale than is entirely conducive to his otherwise fine judgement, gone rummaging through his costume trunk, put on a magnificent codpiece, and is now strutting around in front of his drunken mates, poking fun at his mistress, at poetry, and at himself while showing off his verbal powers. One could even imagine – at high conjecture, I warrant – a wager: 'Ey, Will, how many wills of different sense canst thou put in one such sonnet of thine?'
Do they tell us anything significant and truthful about the Dark Lady or about Shakespeare's feelings towards her? It's hard to see what. You keep hearing me say "everything is conjecture, except the words," and the words themselves here put such a great distance between us, the reader and listener, and the person these two sonnets are written to and about, and with this distance create such a distortion – to the point of caricature – of our poet, that we would either have to say: Will Shakespeare in these two sonnets turns grotesque, or Will Shakespeare with these two sonnets shows his situation up as being grotesque.
Either that, or he is having a bit of fun. That too is a possibility we cannot rule out, and it is one that we are perhaps a little apt to forget: not all of these sonnets need to be read as dead serious. And it could well be that the principal reason these two poems in particular faze us is that faced with their barrage of bawdy banter we suffer a sense of humour failure: we want our Shakespeare to be meaningful, profound. So when he makes lewd jokes with or about his woman – who clearly isn't exactly a wallflower – that he is cock enough for a whole bunch of men, then the pedestal that we put him on appears to wobble.
Fear not though: topple it won't. With Sonnet 137 and the poems that follow, Shakespeare steers himself back into serious, as opposed to merely frivolous, reflections on such troubles of the heart as stem from said heart deceiving itself deliberately to accommodate a love that it can scarcely make sense of.
But one thing about these two awkward fellows of sonnets appears to remain and remain confirmed to be true: this mistress of Shakespeare's is not just a Dark Lady, she is also a bit of a dark horse...
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If you spot a mistake or if you have any comments or suggestions, please use the contact page to get in touch.
To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!