Sonnet 4/IV "Unthrifty loveliness"

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beautyies' legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And, being frank, she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable Audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.


Quatrain 1

1 Un-thrif/ty love/liness, // why dost / thou spend >
2 Upon / thy self / thy beau/tie's le/gacy?
3 Nature’s / bequest / gives no/thing // but / doth lend,
4 And, be/ing frank, // she lends / to those / are free.

Quatrain 2

5 Then, beau/teous nig/gard, // why / dost thou / abuse >
6 The boun/teous lar/gess gi/ven thee / to give?
7 Profit/less u/surer, // why dost / thou use >
8 So great / a sum / of sums, // yet canst / not live?

Quatrain 3

9 For ha/ving traf/fic // with / thy self / alone,
10 Thou of / thy self / thy sweet / self dost / deceive.
11 Then how, // when na/ture calls / thee to / be gone,
12 What ac/cepta/ble Au/dit canst / thou leave?

Couplet

13 Thy un/used beau/ty must / be tombed / with thee,
14 Which, u/séd, // lives / th’ exe/cutor / to be.


Q1-3 indict the FY with questions, the dark answer to which follows in the C.

The S makes a sustained economic argument in the poem in favor of the paradox of investment: the more you give, provided you give in the right way, the more you get. The FY’s "loveliness" is not unthrifty; he is so with his loveliness (hypallage). There are three epithets in the sonnet in the “abusive vocative” (W)--"Unthrifty loveliness," "beauteous niggard," and "[p]rofitless usurer"--all three of which reveal the presence of forensic and epideictic rhetorical genres. Unless the FY follows the S's deliberative advice, he is guilty of a crime for which he can be blamed.

4.1-4

Compound words are very interesting metrically in English: the "un" of "unthrifty" can be stressed, provided one notes the word as a compound. Again, emphasizing the privative delivers the privation the world will experience without the FY's progeny. Foot 3 after the caesura can be scanned variously, depending upon performance: throughout, I have stressed the “why” of “why dost” to deliver the hysteria of the S’s perplexed anxiety over the FY's self-annihilating narcissism. The S continues his economic metaphor here: the FY’s beauty is a legacy—that is, an inheritance from nature—that he is supposed to give or spend upon others, not hoard. The question in lines 1-2 (and those coming) may or may not be rhetorical. One hears a S who really does not understand his friend’s disposition toward his own beauty. The enjambments inside the questions, propelling the syntax forward over the line, enact the S’s hurried confusion. Nature is, of course, personified here as female. V points out that she is one "who benevolently circulates her currency," and that she is replacing God as an origin of life: "homily has been secularized."

4.5-8

The quatrain, this poem, and the sub-sequence play upon an antithesis between the use and abuse of the gift of beauty: the rhyme in lines 5 and 7 is the most forcefully sonic indicator of that difference. Not to use beauty is to abuse it and oneself. Abuse, especially self-abuse, has onanistic connotations. As the British say, the FY is a wanker.

The S deepens the antithesis between the first two and a half feet of lines 5-6—“beauteous niggard” and “bounteous largess”—by ensuring that the first noun phrase is an oxymoron (again, hypallage), but the second is not. As B point out, both adjectives are disyllabic by syncopation. The FY's beauty is an unmixed blessing; his abuse of it, though, is mixed. Notice the combined effects of prosody and sentence structure. B explains the ambiguity of "live" here as livelihood and immortality. The FY is a profitless usurer since he denies himself both. The polypteton in line 6, the repetition of a word in a different form—“given . . . give”—is “a vital weapon in Shakespeare’s rhetorical armoury” (W).

4.9-12

The opening of Q3 puts to rest any doubt about the FY’s sexual crime—"having traffic with thyself alone." In doing so, the FY deceives himself of his "sweet self" (cf. 1.8). The rhetorical question of lines 11-12 are peculiar: Line 11 beings as a “how” question before its dependent clause—"when nature calls thee to be gone"; after it, though, line 12 ends as a “what” question. A spends quite a bit of time explaining that this is WS's grammatical error, without noting that the figure of anacolouthon disrupts syntax, beginning a sentence one way, then starting partially or completely over. In WS, it indicates the confusion of a character. (King Lear, for example, loses his syntax as he loses his cool when he threatens his daughter.) As the S articulates the FY's vice to him, it becomes clearer yet more perplexing to the S himself.

"Audit" is capitalized and italicized in Q, and the metaphor of judgment as an economic audit runs throughout the sequence. According to R, line 12’s "acceptable" takes its primary stress is on its first syllable, acceptable, but he offers no explanation how one determines when that is or is not the case. (Other editors follow suit. B says that reading words with their modern accent "deadens the rhythm of the line," but he may only be "norming" the scansion. My scansion maintains stress on the question words, and here allows the contemporary pronunciation to deliver trochaic disturbance in the first two feet of line 12.

4.13-14

The C combines the economic inheritance metaphor with the self-entombment one: the unused inheritance of beauty, which is an abuse of beauty, is entombed with one. Were that beauty to be used, though, it would be an executor of beauty’s future; that is, the FY’s progeny would himself decide how and to whom to use the FY’s gift of beauty to him, thus allowing both the FY's progeny and the FY himself to be.