If You're Ready, Go and Get It

 

Sonnet 4, one of Shakespeare's Procreation Sonnets (1-17), falls into the familiar rhythmic critique of chastity, a rhythm previously orchestrated in Romeo and Juliet. I have previously done a queer reading of Romeo in Juliet (which can be read here), which places the "star-crossed lovers" in a queer (non-monogamously heterosexualized) context; following my own footsteps and the motif of the Bard himself, I will do another queer reading of another one of Shakespeare's "carpe diem," beauty-disseminating, etc., etc., poetic works.

Let us proceed down this sonnet line by line, quatrain by quatrain: 

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?

Fiscal responsibility and a great theme of economic exchange is evoked within the first line, "spend," and the metaphor continues to be used throughout the other 14 lines. 

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?

Again with money (where is the sex? I'm getting there): "Nature," asserts Shakespeare, is this fiscal lender, lending the youth their beauty which, as lending goes, "she" will someday take back. The poet chastises the poem's addressee for apparently hoarding this loan from Nature, which, according the poem's first couplet, is beauty. 
Here again we see a theme previously explored in Romeo and Juliet: the idea of "seizing the day," that beauty and youth are both fleeting and should be shared with others before it is too late. This is seen in Romeo's initial despondence in the wake of his rejection from Rosaline, who has decided to stay chaste, "and with her dies her store [her beauty]," as Romeo tells us. The speaker of the poem is beginning to form an argument against what he sees as an "abuse" of nature's loan of beauty. 

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.

And finally the idea of carpe diem and using beauty (what can only be interpreted as some sort of sexual relation) is verbally evoked: this "usurer" now stands accused not only of usury (a major crime in Shakespeare's time) but an usury that is self-harming as well. It appears that the poet wishes to warn the usurer of 1) not spending his beauty when he has the time, and also 2) spending too much beauty on himself, "having traffic with thyself alone."
The last of these lines heavily implies a danger in autoerotic sex (masturbation), but not in an expected way. Having "solo-traffic" is not made dangerous with implications of a diseased mental or sexual health, but rather "thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive," which once could interpret as a warning against falsely portraying the self to the self, suggesting that masturbation beguiles the lone-star and robs him of pleasures that can be found in sharing beauty (alloerotic sex).
Perhaps that last bit is somewhat of a stretch; let's move on to the last four lines:

Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which usèd lives th' executor to be.

As in many of Shakespeare's notions of legacy, the lovely spectre of death is resurrected in the eleventh line, "nature [calling] thee to be gone ... thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee." It seems as though the poet is instructing his addressee to share his beauty (his sex) not only for pleasure but also for economic duty. The poet rhetorically asks what the addressee expects to leave behind, "what acceptable audit canst thou leave," implying that sharing his beauty, by means of what is commonly believed by sonnet-scholars to be by procreating (hence being one of the "procreation sonnets"), will do good with nature's gift bestowed upon him, e.g. passing it onto a child to be used and shared again.

It is true that these sonnets (1-17) deal commonly with procreation and the notion of passing on not just beauty but also legacy for the next generation to use. The language of the poem does suggest a passing on of one's beauty and/or legacy, such as one might pass down wealth to next of kin (to continue the economic metaphor); however, allow me to extend this alleged "call to procreate" by further delving into the metaphor of market transactions. If nature did loan this man a sum of money, he would not immediately pass it on the his kin, but rather spend it, exchange it, and share it with those who have also been given nature's loan. In this reading, it seems that the addressee is not meant to pass on his beauty by means of procreation, but meant to share this beauty with others by means of sexual relations. Rather than "having traffic" (which Pelican Shakespeare footnotes as meaning "commerce [or] dealings," suggesting a direct market transaction) with oneself only (suggesting masturbation, as I have pointed out), the poet claims that to be a "good businessman" one mustn't horde nature's loan of beauty but rather exchange it as much as possible before death.

Of course, this notion is inevitably tied up in procreation, being that sex apart from procreation was not a concept at all in Shakespeare's time (contraception was not repressed, per se, but still obviously nowhere near being scientifically feasible); therefore, the poet's assertion to go spread one's beauty to other lovers does innately carry an implication of passing on genes, of procreating. However, this idea of procreating was not a concept foreign to Shakespeare's time (and, fun fact, acknowledging the drive to procreate would not have made one "heterosexual") and I can only assume that men were not wasting away masturbating (this is pre-internet porn, after all) and so his "wild" claim to go have reproductive sex does seem almost redundant.

Perhaps the poet is suggesting that the addressee go spread the love with others in alternative, less reproductive ways? How very queer; how very queer indeed.