It’s best to read Part Three before Part Four.
5. (4)
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend,
Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Beauty is presented to Harry as a legacy he is obliged to pass on not spend on himself. But again, money for the Elizabethans had a sexual connation as well. ‘Spending upon thy self’ also suggests seminal emission in masturbation. Nature only lends things to us – she never gives them to us. And because she has an open, generous nature gives things to those who are generous and free as well.
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 can’st not live?
‘Beauteous niggard’ = ‘handsome miser’. The ‘bounteous largesse given thee to give’ is the generous gift that Nature has given to Harry. But it is also a compliment on the size of his penis. Shakespeare claims Harry is ‘usurer’ is (a money lender – like Shakespeare’s father was). But Harry is a money-lender who doesn’t make any money. The reason is that he is expending masses amounts of semen in masturbation – but doesn’t produce any life with it.
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 can’st thou leave?
‘The traffic with thyself alone’ is a euphemism for solitary masturbation. The ‘sweet self’ means the sweet baby boy that Harry could produce and which Harry is cheating himself of. When Nature decrees that Harry must die – what ‘audit’ will he have left behind that would be acceptable to Nature? The first syllable of ‘acceptable should be emphasized.
Thy unus’d beauty must be tomb’d with thee,
Which used lives th’ executor to be.
Harry’s beauty will die with him – unless he has a son who can act as the executor of his will and the executor of his beauty.
‘Used’ needs to be two syllables to fill the line.
6. (5)
Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same,
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
Time has produced Harry’s lovely eyes which everyone gazes at. But that same time will wreck havoc with those same eyes like a tyrant and make unbeautiful which is so excellingly beautiful now.
For never resting time leads Summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checkt with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty ore-snow’d and bareness every where.
Time will do exactly the same thing to Harry as it does to Nature itself. It leads summer on to winter and destroys him. It stops the flow of sap (Harry’s sexual energies) and makes the leaves fall from the trees (Hair fall from the head). ll the beautiful plants will be covered with snow (white heads and beards) and gardens will be bare of plants (heads will become bald.)
Then were not summer’s distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
If the beautiful blooms of summer were not distilled into perfume and captured in glass bottles, the result of beauty would be lost along with beauty itself – and no-one would remember it.
But flowers distill’d, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.
‘Leese’ = ‘lose’. But flowers turned into perfume, though they meet with Winter, lose simply their outward show. Their inner essence lives on.
So, if Harry impregnates a woman, his own essence would live on after he has died.
7. (6)
Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty’s treasure ere it be self kill’d.
Winter makes things ragged: this is called a ‘transferred epithet.’ Shakespeare warns Harry not to fall into the hands of death before he has impregnated a woman. He should make ‘sweet some vial’ – a woman’s womb – and should honour this womb with his semen before he wastes and kills his sperm through masturbation.
That use is not forbidden usury
Which happies those that pay the willing loan:
That’s for thy self to breed an other thee,
Or ten times happier be it ten for one,
The usury laws in 1590 had not settled down. Money lending had been officially illegal – but Elizabeth was forced to allow them so business could continue – but insisted that a lender did not charge more than 10% of the money for the loan. (Shakespeare’s father charged much more!)
So this ‘use’ of money/semen is not illegal: he lends his money/semen to a woman as he gets another self back in the form of a baby boy – or ten babies boys.
Ten times thy self were happier then thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee,
Then what could death do if thou should’st depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
If he were to breed ten boys and they in turn bred ten sons each he would have a hundred sons. This is a way to confound death because there would be a hundred images of himself still living.
Be not self-will’d for thou art much too fair,
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.
Shakespeare tells Shakespeare not to be self-will’d’ because ‘will’ was also used for the genitals male AND female. Shakespeare saying that Harry is far too beautiful to waste it on masturbation. Death would then be able to destroy him and make him the air to worms.
It also means ‘make worms thy hair’ – another reference to Harry’s flocking locks….
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