Sonnet 4 claims that the young man’s beauty is a loan from Nature, and that by spending it only on himself, instead of passing it on to a child, he is squandering a debt he will one day have to account for.
Sonnet 4: Full Poem
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s 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 thyself alone,
Thou of thyself 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.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 4 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 4 Means
Sonnet 4 makes the case for having children in the language of money: loans, debts, interest and a final settling of accounts.
The first quatrain asks the young man why he spends his inheritance of beauty entirely on himself. Nature, the speaker explains, never gives anything outright. She only lends, and because she is generous, she lends to those who are generous in turn.
The second quatrain sharpens the charge. The young man is a “beauteous niggard,” a beautiful miser, misusing a generous gift that was given to him so that he would pass it on. He is a “profitless usurer”: a moneylender who has a fortune to lend and somehow makes nothing from it.
The third quatrain looks ahead to his death. By trading only with himself, he cheats himself. When Nature calls him to leave the world, what account will he be able to give of what he was lent?
The couplet gives the verdict. Beauty that is never used will be buried with him. Beauty that is used, passed on to a child, lives on to act as his executor, the person who carries out his will after he is gone.
Sonnet 4 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 4 turns the argument of the Procreation Sonnets into a matter of accounts, and each of its themes comes from that frame.
Beauty as a Loan
The poem’s central claim comes in line 3: “Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend.” If beauty is only lent, the young man is not its owner but its borrower, answerable for what he does with it. Nature’s generosity also comes with a condition. She lends “to those are free,” to the generous, which makes his refusal to pass his beauty on a breach of the terms.
Hoarding as Waste
The young man is called “unthrifty,” a “niggard” and a “profitless usurer,” three insults that point the same way. He has a great fortune and does nothing productive with it. His self-absorption is presented not as vanity but as bad economics: “having traffic with thyself alone,” trading only with himself, generates nothing.
Death as an Audit
In the third quatrain, death arrives as a reckoning. When Nature calls the young man “to be gone,” he must leave an “acceptable audit,” an account showing what he did with what he was lent. The couplet answers the question: without a child, the whole fortune is simply buried. With one, it survives him.
Form and Language
Sonnet 4 is built almost entirely from the vocabulary of wills, loans and bookkeeping, and its questions give it the rhythm of a cross-examination.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Each of the three quatrains is built around a question, “why dost thou spend,” “why dost thou abuse,” “what acceptable audit canst thou leave,” and the couplet is the only part of the poem that makes a flat statement.
The Language of Money and Law
Almost every key word belongs to finance or inheritance: “spend,” “legacy,” “bequest,” “lend,” “largess,” “usurer,” “sum,” “traffic,” “audit,” “executor.” The vocabulary is sustained across all fourteen lines, so the poem reads less like a plea than like a formal demand for repayment.
Paradox
“Beauteous niggard” and “profitless usurer” each put two opposed ideas into one phrase. A beautiful person should be a pleasure to others, not a miser; a usurer exists to make a profit, not to sit on his money. The paradoxes capture the poem’s complaint in miniature: the young man is wasting exactly what makes him valuable.
Repetition of “Self”
“Upon thyself,” “with thyself alone,” “Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.” The word “self” recurs until line 10 is almost nothing else. The repetition closes the young man in on himself, which is the poem’s charge against him: all of his dealings loop back to the same person.
“Executor”
An executor is the person named in a will to carry out its terms after the testator dies. The last line makes the child the young man’s executor: the one who will administer his estate, which is his beauty, once he is gone. The poem ends by turning a legal document into an image of family resemblance.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 4 scolds the young man for being a usurer, then tells him, in effect, to become a better one.
The key is the word “use.” In Shakespeare’s English it could mean the interest earned on a loan, which is why the moneylender is a “usurer.” Line 7 puts the two words side by side: “Profitless usurer, why dost thou use.” The young man is a usurer who earns no use, a lender with no interest to show for his fortune.
The couplet then returns to the same word at the decisive moment. “Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee, / Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.” Beauty that is “unused” earns nothing and is buried. Beauty that is “used,” put out at interest, produces a return, and the return is a child. The poem’s final image is of beauty invested and earning interest.
That is a bold move. Lending at interest was widely condemned as usury in Shakespeare’s time, even as moneylending ran through the whole economy. Sonnet 4 takes the most suspect figure in that economy and makes him the model: the young man’s fault is not that he behaves like a usurer, but that he is a bad one. Sonnet 6 makes the point explicit two poems later: “That use is not forbidden usury.”
Read this way, the poem’s coldness is its argument. It refuses to plead with the young man on grounds of love or feeling. It speaks to him as a man of property, in the only terms a careful heir should understand: an unpaid loan, an idle fortune, and an audit he cannot pass.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 4, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 4 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets, whom the first seventeen sonnets urge to marry and have children. The poem opens by addressing his beauty directly as “unthrifty loveliness.”
What Does “Profitless Usurer” Mean?
A moneylender who makes no profit. A usurer lends money at interest; the young man has a fortune in beauty but earns nothing from it, because he will not pass it on.
What Does “Nature’s Bequest Gives Nothing but Doth Lend” Mean?
What Nature hands down to us is not a gift but a loan. The young man’s beauty is borrowed, so he owes it back, and the way to repay it is to have a child.
What Does “Executor” Mean in the Last Line?
The person who carries out a will after someone dies. The poem imagines the young man’s child as his executor, keeping his beauty alive after his death.
How Is Sonnet 4 Related to Sonnet 6?
Both use the language of lending at interest. Sonnet 4 calls the young man a usurer who makes no profit; Sonnet 6 describes the profitable kind, declaring that having children is “not forbidden usury.”
Related Sonnets
Three Procreation Sonnets that make the same case in different terms.