Sonnet 5 - Meaning and Commentary

The time that it took to gently create

The beautiful face and eyes that everyone looks at,

That time act pitiless and cruel to that same face,

And unfairly take away your gifts, which you fairly received.

For never stopping time takes summer to its end

Which is ugly winter which destroys it (summer)

Like a tree whose once flowing sap is stopped, and whose vibrant leaves have fallen

All her beauty is covered in snow, and all is barren.

Then if the drops of summer (like rose-water*) were not the most pure parts extracted and kept

Like a prisoner in jail, kept in a cell made of ice (winter frozen)

Beauty's fruit (or result) and beauty itself are deprived

So that neither current beauty nor a memory of it exists.

But flowers purified and kept, though winter comes to whither them,

Lose their appearance, their essential parts still exist.

A seasonal sonnet! Here I am in New York City in September, waiting for that seasonal "click" that Carrie Bradshaw talks about, that I longed for in Los Angeles, and I reach a little couplet of seasonal sonnets. Before I was exiled from Brooklyn, and in the brief time where I knew my misery had just begun, I ran every day in Prospect Park. The winter that I could feel quickly dissipating, was my first and harsh. On one particular day, I was running in the rain, feeling like a trooper when I noticed new daffodils being pelted relentlessly by the falling drops. How little they knew that the pain was their very sustenance. The water falling upon them and ripping their new little petals would be everything to make them strong and survive their little lives.

Anyway. Seasons. I. Love. Them.

"Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play tyrants to the very same

And that unfair which fairly doth excel" (1-4)

Shakespeare opens this seasonally rich sonnet by reminding the subject about the fierceness of time. It took long hours to create his unique beauty. Those same hours will slowly tear that beauty away from him as in Sonnets 2 and 3, reducing his "beauties field" to "deep trenches" (2.2).

Shakespeare calls time a tyrant, a pitiless, cruel, hard, despotic or lawless ruler (here I am combining both definitions from my beloved lexicon). Shakespeare personifies time as if she were a woman, fickle; at one moment gentle in creation, the other unfairly destroying that which she created.

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there

Sex is hardly hinted at in this sonnet, and a wonder why not. The seasons are sexes and time a fickle lover. At first a creator, then a flirt, leading the poor beautiful youth to old age's ruin.

I love this metaphor. Summer as Time's ignorant love, led unknowing into "hideous" old age (winter) and then left there to die. Anyone who has been spurned by love understands this. Love, once blooming and full of promise, suddenly becomes rotten and dead.

Sap-checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere.

I leave you with pictures...a thousand words. My first fall in Brooklyn, NY:

Can you not see lusty leaves?

...and my first winter, not three weeks later:

Dried up and bare. Leaves "quite gone."

Then were not summer's distillation left

A liquid pris'ner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.

"Summer's distillation" means the evaporation of the pure youth of the season frozen by winter. We have the water in the ice to look upon and see what it once was. Distillate is also how perfume is made. Rosewater is made by the process of evaporation and the perfume is held in a vile made of glass, hence "walls of glass." If there is no memory of summer, kept by some process that then holds it in time, the beauty is wasted, without any remembrance of it.

But flowers though they with winter meet,

Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

This sonnet is straightforward. I am thinking about my theory that Shakespeare, as Francis Meres put it, "sugared sonnets among his private friends" as a kind of joke and a means to help his friend Wriothesley through troubled times. A sonnet like this is much more subtle than Sonnet 3 or 4. In fact. They are clearly for different audiences. There is nothing laughable or bawdy in this sonnet. Shakespeare wastes only one line praising the beauty of our youth. For most of the poem he weaves an intricate sonnet involving an affair between summer and winter, where summer is cuckolded. It makes sense for a piece like this to be handed in to the Lord Chamberlain. It does not make sense to show him sonnet 3 or 4. That the sonnets were written at the same time, I cannot say, however they are clearly not all written for the same purpose.

Sonnet 4 - Meaning

Wasteful beauty, why do you spend

All of your talents on yourself?

Nature does not give her gifts for the keeping, but lends them for a short while

And because is liberal with her gifts, she doesnt even charge for her services.

Then, beautiful stingy guy, why do you misuse

The plentiful gift, that was given in hopes you would share it?

Moneylender who does not gain anything from it, why do you

Spend so much money, and have nothing left to live on?

For spending only on yourself

You do cheat yourself.

Then how when it is your time to die,

What reasonable final account can you leave?

Your wasted beauty will die with you

Which if you had used it, would have taken care of all your posthumous affairs.

Money equals masturbation. Usury, legacy, audit, spending, lending.

Disagree with me? These are the procreation sonnets. They are about procreation. If you thought they were about banking you belong in another field. My research finds that scholars have missed this metaphor, possibly purposefully. I am no genius, but perhaps I am more willing to admit truth than others.

Money = masturbation.

Thats what this poem is about. Is there anything else in the world? Apparently not. After all, if you have money and a dominant hand to pleasure yourself with, you are pretty much set. The youth apparently thought so. Shakespeare tries to sway him from this lifestyle.

Money = Masturbation.

He SPENDS on himself. Get it? He TRAFFIKS WITH HIMSELF ALONE... come ON!

In Sonnet 4, Shakepeare has made a metaphor equating usury to prostitution, with carefully chosen key words.

Remember:

The profession of usury = The profession of sex

Usurer = Prostitute (this is especially important later)

Money = Sperm

Read it again.

Unthrifty lovelinesse why dost thou spend,

Upon thy self thy beauties legacy?

Unthrifty loveliness (wasteful with beautiful money/sperm), why do you spend, meaning (according to my Lexicon): afford, bestow, lend, employ. Employ? How does one EMPLOY his loveliness upon himself? Its subtle and clear. Employ, meaning "to make use of" your "beauty's legacy." What else is beauty's legacy except sperm? These two words are the key to the masturbation metaphor. He spends his good genes upon himself and wastes them.

Natures bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

And being franck she lends to those are free:

Then beautious niggard why doost thou abuse,

The bountious largesse given thee to give?

A "bequest" is simply a legacy or a disposition in a will. NATURE'S bequest implies that which the man inherited freely from nature; his godgiven talents, which is apparently a ridiculous abundance of beauty. Unlike a great sum of money inherited from a deceased grandfather, Nature does not give these "bequests" to keep or put in the bank, but lends them, for a terminal amount of time. Shakespeare is reminding the youth of the ubiquitous idea that beauty fades. (See every other sonnet in the list.) Imagine that mother nature has given you a disgusting amount of money in her will, with the understanding that the money that is not saved, shared, used to buy a house, travel or given to charity would be taken away in say fortie winters. Instead, it is as if you burn a dollar a day, dropping the ash into the toilet. You abuse it by not sharing it. You wont use it but you wont give it to others. Bastard.

Profitles userer why doost thou use

So great a summe of summes yet canst not live?

Profitless usurer = profitless prostitute

What is a profitless prostitute? How might a prostitute waste his talents on himself?

Oh, we are mad at you now. Profitless usurer! A moneylender! And you make no money! Remember money = sperm? A SPERMLENDER, with NO PROFIT FROM YOUR EXPENDITURES. You only lend your sperm to yourself (on yourself...see line one) and you use "so great a summe of summes," read, A LOT this way. Why do you waste so much of your sperm (which is worth twice its weight in gold, apparently) on YOURSELF??? Lets be clear:

Professional masturbator. Why do you masturbate

So much sperm on your self, yet use none for procreation?

For having traffike with thy selfe alone,

Thou of thy selfe thy sweet sellfe dost deceave,

Then how when nature calles thee to be gone,

What acceptable Audit canst thou leave?

So we know he is a professional masturbator, (i.e. Profitless usurer), trafficing (doing "business" with) himself alone. He is being sexual only with himself. Because he does this, he cheats himself because when nature takes him away (takes that inheritance away, that golden sperm), what can you leave behind in turn? He is a prostitute, employed as such. Yet only works with himself. Pays himself for his own sexual abilities. All his training, schooling, life experiences have made him the perfect sexual partner, and yet he uses his talents on himself. He traffics with himself alone. Spending his sperm/money in a cycle, never using it, and when Nature comes back to collect that which she lent him, he will have nothing to show.

Thy unus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee,

Which used lives th' executor to be.

All that glorious, bountiful sperm will be tombed with you, it will be inside you when you die, unused. However, if you had used it, when you die, the sperm (which would have been your heir) would have been your executor, purveyor over your will, and been able to pass on these gifts so that they would continue on earth forever.

Misspellings? Italics? Random Capitalizations?

I refuse to print the sonnets in "normal text." The letter e added to the end of a word is there for a reason. The fact that "substantiall" is elongated and "selfe" and "fewell," the same, are extremely important notes from the author to the reader. An educated actor, upon being presented with a part for a Shakespearean play knows to look to the First Folio. That is where you will find the text print naked like this. No Penguin bullshit or Folgers coffee whatever. First Folio only, and of course the Quarto for sonnets and poems. Otherwise you miss out on endless secrets that the author has left for his actor. Each letter is important.

Self substantial fuel. Selfe substantiall fewell. These are the most important words in the poem. How do I know? Shakespeare tells me so. He has elongated them. They are meant to be relished in the mouth like chocolate or first coffee in the morning, fine wine, the lips of a lover, sweat, sex: everything. The alliteration in self and substantial are exciting enough. Rub them together with fuel and combine. Perfection.

Rose. Rose. Italicized and Capitalized. You lose it completely when you read the poem alone in some gaudy transposed version. You don't have the poem anymore. You have mush.

I refuse. You can read the words. You know what they are, and then some. You know what they are and you know they are important.

Ahem. That being said.