Sonnet 135: Whoever Hath Her Wish, Thou Hast Thy Will

With Sonnet 135 William Shakespeare embarks on an exercise in making as much use of – and mischief with – his own name as poetic acrobatics will allow.

He doesn't entirely avoid, one might argue, falling off the flying trapeze of rhetorical invention and into the safety net of his overall benign, endearing nature, by occasionally misjudging the fine balance there is to be kept between 'bawdy' and 'lewd', though that in itself is obviously a matter of taste.

The near compulsive punning on 'Will' with six different meanings continues into and throughout Sonnet 136 and will later be picked up again briefly, which does pose the question whether he attaches more significance to the name he shares with many men of his era than simply some self-conscious sexual innuendo...