Sonnet 4 - Themes, Imagery, and Specific Character(s)

Themes, Imagery, and Specific Character(s)

Sonnet 4 is one of the procreation sonnets, which are sonnets are sonnets 1–17. This sonnet, as well, is focused on the theme of beauty and procreation. The characters of Sonnet 4 are the speaker and his good friend (known as the young man). In the book A Companion to Shakespeare’s Sonnet, edited by Michael Schoenfeldt, Shakespeare critic Schoenfeldt describes the differences in the way the speaker and the young man are portrayed in procreation sonnets, saying “The desiring male subject (the speaker) has a clear, forceful voice… But the desired male object (the young man) in the sonnets has no voice”. This certainly holds true in Sonnet 4 as the speaker addresses the young man the entire time with the young man’s voice never being heard. Later in the same book, an essay from Shakespeare critic Garret A. Sullivan Jr. describes the relationship between the speaker and the young man which is seen in sonnet four, saying “The young man of the procreation sonnets, then, is the object of admonition; the poet (speaker) urgently seeks to make him change his ways, and, as we shall see does so in the intertwined names of beauty and memory and in the face of oblivion”. Sonnet Four follows these very themes with the speaker praising his friend, the young man, for his beauty, he moves on to say that his friend not having children would be inexcusable, when he says “Then how when nature calls thee to be gone: What acceptable audit canst though leave?” (lines 11–12) Here the speaker is using the unpredictability of nature to try to convince his friend to hurry up and have children. He also tries to appeal to his friend's emotions by saying, “For having traffic with thyself alone, Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive” (lines 9-10). The speaker is saying that is wrong and deceives the friend’s own self if he decides to remain single and childless. Line 11 also contains a sexually suggestive play on words when the speaker says ‘having traffic with thyself alone.’ The idea of being alone is used by the speaker as being the pathetic alternative to marrying and having a family. The speaker seems to personify nature in the first quatrain in saying: “Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, And being frank, she lends to those are free” (lines 3–4). The speaker is saying that nature gives gifts at birth, and calls on people, giving something inhuman human-like characteristics. The couplet sums up with a potential answer to all of the questions that the author was posing throughout the entire sonnet. He says, “thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee” in the first line of the couplet. This is suggesting that the young man has valuable attraction that is not being used properly or appreciated. It seems as if the Speaker is insinuating that the beauty will die with the young man. The last line of the couplet says, “which usèd, lives th’executor to be.” Here it seems as if Speaker is saying that if the young man uses his beauty, then it will prolong his life.