Shakespeare’s Sonnet IV, beginning “Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend”, uses a series of mercantile, legal and financial metaphors to urge the beloved to marry and have children. Imagery of wills, money-lending and audits doesn’t immediately have the ring of romance, but Shakespeare uses these ides wittily to put across his argument.
First the beloved’s attractions are described as “beauty’s legacy” which he is spending upon himself, rather than making arrangements to leave to his children (by having some.) Then the legacy, or “bequest” is figured as a loan, which will be called in by death, and must be made use of whilst the beloved is still alive, so that an “acceptable audit”. The subject of the poem is chided paradoxically as a “Profitless usurer”, who hoards his beauty but gets no benefit from it, instead managing to cheat himself; “Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive”.
It might seem rather dry and technical to employ these kind of metaphors in a romantic sonnet, but the images have a resonance in Renaissance culture which goes beyond simply documents and loans. Usury, for example, (nowadays the charging of unacceptably high interest on loans) was not simply a disreputable practice, but was regarded as unnatural and even sinful. Shakespeare contrasts in The Merchant of Venice the characters of Antonio, who will not take interest on loans, and Shylock, who is criticised for making gold and silver “breed” unnaturally. There may also be an echo of the parable of the talents from the New Testament, in which three servants are given money by their master and expected to make good use of it on his behalf.
Inheritance was also a more emotive topic in the Early Modern era, since economic power was more concentrated amongst landed families than it is now. The passing of inheritances from generation to generation was not regarded as a matter of private interest, but part of the structure of society, and a necessary way that order was maintained. It was a Renaissance commonplace that founding a noble line was the surest way to immortality on earth.
Amongst these legal and financial metaphors, there is possibly another, slyer, system of imagery. Since the poem’s subject is the beloved refusal to bring his undoubted sexual attractions into the service of reproduction, the contrast between “use” and “abuse” is open to another, cruder, interpretation. Certainly the cluster of terms like “spend/ Upon thyself”, “traffic with thyself” and “abuse” could be read as innuendo of a specifically sexual nature.
