please help me with this sonnet! Help me!

[unclhien]

Hi, I have a question about this poem.

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,'
And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea all water, yet receives rain still
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in 'Will,' add to thy 'Will'
One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'

Can you explain the first two lines for me? I don't understand. I thought 'thou' and 'thy' are synonyms, so what does "thou hast thy 'Will' " mean?
Can you rephrase the first two lines for me?
What about the next two lines?

Thanks.

[wasleys]

Originally Posted by unclhien

Can you explain the first two lines for me? I don't understand. I thought 'thou' and 'thy' are synonyms, so what does "thou hast thy 'Will' " mean?
Can you rephrase the first two lines for me?
What about the next two lines?

Shakespeare methinks, and a sonnet to boot.

It's a very, very long time since I was doing any of his stuff at school, and that was plays rather than sonnets, so I'm not sure I can help much.

First the easy bits.

I thought 'thou' and 'thy' are synonyms, so what does "thou hast thy 'Will' " mean? No, they are different forms of speech connected with you and your(s). This comparison might make it more apparent:

I, me, my, mine.
Thou, thee, thy, thine.

An exception is that you will often find thy -> thine before a vowel (like a -> an).

To boot is an expression still used occasionally and roughly = what's more/as well. In this case I think it is being used rather as a comparative with overplus as a superlative. So roughly ' you have X, lots of X, incredible amounts of X'.

Now that brings us to the question of what X (or rather will) is, and this is where I begin to get into dificulty as my education is now long ago!

The sonnet is obviously quite bawdy and relies on puns created by various meanings of the word will.

As I recall will in the days of The Bard could mean Will (name - indeed his own), will (as in future tense), wish, desire, lust, both male/female genitals, copulation. There are doubtless others in there - you may find Googling helps you find them.

Given this it may be impossible to paraphrase the sonnet in one, definitive way. A lot may depend on how the listener perceived the words in that context (or how the speaker intones them). That, like the double-entendre of today, probably depended on how dirty-minded the listener was. In those days probably very!

How correct my last paragraph is I don't know, it may be that Shakespeare had a specific sequence of meanings in mind, for instance the lines "Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?" seem fairly obvious, others less so.

Michael

[unclhien]

Oh I'm very sorry for posting a bawdy poem here. I don't understand the content before. I don't know it has a sexual innuendo. I am just looking for poems to practice my English and came across this poem.
I'm terribly sorry.

[wasleys]

Originally Posted by unclhien

Oh I'm very sorry for posting a bawdy poem here. I don't understand the content before. I don't know it has a sexual innuendo. I am just looking for poems to practice my English and came across this poem.
I'm terribly sorry.

unclhien,

There is absolutely no need to apologise. This is after all a literary forum and Shakespeare one of the greatest writers in the language. Indeed I hope you were not shocked by the result!

Having said that I was a little surprised as it seemed a strange choice for people to study.

I don't quite know what you mean by 'practise my English' but if you are talking about current international English Shakespeare is perhaps not the best of choices. He was writing some 400 years ago and there have been many changes in the language since then.

Michael