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From: Chaswe@AOL.COMSent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 8:03 PMSubject: Re: [NABOKV-L] CHW to SKBIn a message dated 09/11/2006 17:51:58 GMT Standard Time, skb@BOOTLE.BIZ writes:Rowse cited the so-called ‘Will sonnet’ where the bard writes that his lover (Emilia) “ ... hath Will ... and Will in overplus” meaning she was, to use a Scouse idiom, as happy as a dog with two dicks.
Jansy subsequently asked if ‘Will as penis’ could be connected with the slang ‘Willie?’ It’s plausible but more likely just one of those coincidences that confound the etymologists. As I mentioned earlier, almost ANY noun can emerge euphemistically as the ‘one-eyed snake!”Rowse was a prominent and idiosyncratic academic, but at least one of his feet was made of clay. I very seriously doubt that Shakespeare intended a treble-entendre of this nature when writing his sonnet, and was simply saying that Emilia had two lovers called William, and perhaps also that where there's a will, or two wills, there's a way. Don't tell me that "way" is another Elizabethan bit of Anglo-Latin bawdy. I cannot think of a single instance of Will being used in the willie sense pre the naughty seaside postcards of late Victorian England. But I can't find my Partridge, and I haven't looked in the OED.As for shag, I can no more believe that VN would employ, or invest with meaning, cheap English slang of this kind than that he would ever use an American word as ugly as blooper.Agree that almost any noun can acquire a submerged significance. "Johnson" surprised me as much as it puzzled the Dude, and I wonder how the Doctor might have reacted.Frankly, I cannot think of any instance at all of what would conventionally be called smuttiness in any work written by Vladimir Nabokov. I just don't think his mind worked like that, but perhaps, as usual, someone can correct me. Joyce, possibly; VN, no.All best,CharlesSearch the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB
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