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Usury

The opening sequence presses the young man to have a child. .

Assuming that 'legacy' must refer to offspring.

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

It talks not of his legacy, but of his 'beauty's' legacy... which takes us back to the point that 'beauty' might be referring to some aspect of the addressee, not the addressee in his totality.
 
Assuming that 'legacy' must refer to offspring.



It talks not of his legacy, but of his 'beauty's' legacy... which takes us back to the point that 'beauty' might be referring to some aspect of the addressee, not the addressee in his totality.

Yes, it refers to his beauty.

His "beauty's legacy" is that which his beauty will bequeath to posterity--i.e. another beauty in the form of his son.

The verb "spend" also allows the cruder reading of "beauty's legacy" as sperm--the result of his beauty, or what his beauty leaves behind.
 
The opening sequence presses the young man to have a child. Obviously this would involve making love to a woman, and thus to a degree distancing the speaker from his beloved. The specific woman he chooses doesn't appear until later--though earlier than 127 iirc--but from very early on the speaker is aware of the risk that the youth will come to prefer the love of a woman to his.

See for example number 20:

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Are you trying to employ the Socratic Method here?

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:

He's addressing the object of his desire, and asking whether the addressee possesses the gentleness of a woman without the fickleness.
 
Yes, it refers to his beauty.

His "beauty's legacy" is that which his beauty will bequeath to posterity--i.e. another beauty in the form of his son.

The verb "spend" also allows the cruder reading of "beauty's legacy" as sperm--the result of his beauty, or what his beauty leaves behind.

It's possible that if he's using 'spend' to mean other than the obvious, that he can also be doing the same with 'legacy'.
 
He's addressing the object of his desire, and asking whether the addressee possesses the gentleness of a woman without the fickleness.

Among other things. Look at the sestet (my paraphrases in brackets):

And for a woman wert thou first created;
(And you were first created to be a woman)
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
(Until Nature was made silly in the act of making you)
And by addition me of thee defeated,
(And deprived me of you)
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
(By giving you something that's no good to me)
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
(But since she gave you a prick that women enjoy)
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
(You can remain my lover and I'll loan you out to women)
 
Among other things. Look at the sestet (my paraphrases in brackets):

And for a woman wert thou first created;
(And you were first created to be a woman)
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
(Until Nature was made silly in the act of making you)
And by addition me of thee defeated,
(And deprived me of you)
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
(By giving you something that's no good to me)
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
(But since she gave you a prick that women enjoy)
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
(You can remain my lover and I'll loan you out to women)

All right. The basis of these sonnets is love, unrequited and platonic.

How does this advance your argument that Shakespeare was drawing parallels between sodomy and usury?
 
All right. The basis of these sonnets is love, unrequited and platonic.

How does this advance your argument that Shakespeare was drawing parallels between sodomy and usury?

Basically, the speaker's plan is to loan out his male lover to a woman and reap interest in the form of a son. He imagines he can do this while retaining possession of the young man himself, as a usurer continues to own the money he has loaned ("mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.")

But it goes wrong when his lover falls in love with the woman, and leaves him for her.

The speaker then reflects that he has made the mistake of confusing natural reproduction with the unnatural parodies of reproduction constituted by sodomy and usury, both of which he is guilty. Thus as quoted above, he says: "him have I lost through my unkind abuse" (i.e. my unnatural behavior).
 
Basically, the speaker's plan is to loan out his male lover to a woman and reap interest in the form of a son. He imagines he can do this while retaining possession of the young man himself, as a usurer continues to own the money he has loaned ("mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.").

Not bad: and it only took you a day to come up with it. :D
 
Not at all. But if it's going to be a long thread discussing the ins and outs of usury in literature, I thought I'd get a suggestion in for the next book to be discussed.
The Decameron's so passe. I've got one, from roughly the same time, which would probably be better but can't remember the title (on project Gutenberg). The trouble is that it's on my Kindle and temporarily mislaid. This may take a few hours...
 
The Decameron's so passe. I've got one, from roughly the same time, which would probably be better but can't remember the title (on project Gutenberg). The trouble is that it's on my Kindle and temporarily mislaid. This may take a few hours...
The Canterbury Tales is another with a tale of usurers, might be the Miller's Tale but I haven't checked.
 
The Canterbury Tales is another with a tale of usurers, might be the Miller's Tale but I haven't checked.

Once you start looking for references to usury in premodern literature, you find they're everywhere.

People obviously viewed it as a danger calling fo constant vigilance.
 
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