"It is difficult, with any decency, to be more explicit about all those wills -- The meaning is not at all difficult to follow, once the veil of humbug is removed from the eyes."
     This is the assessment of A. L. Rowse, Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1954. The all-seeing professor continues:

"Store's account" -- let's face it -- means simply the number of men the lady had accomodated. There are other plays on words throughout the sonnet, "come," "things of great receipt," "hold," "a something sweet" -- drop the Victorian humbug and we may laugh as the Elizabethans laughed. . .from the story we learn two things: that the lady, though no better than she should be, had not yet consented to take the poet; and secondly, the tremendous fact that the name of the author of the Sonnets was Will.

     So much for the naughty Prof. Rowse, that scourge of humbug.

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