that the meaning of the couplet is that "if you don't reproduce you can leave no acceptable audit". He evens compares Sonnet 4 to The Merchant of Venice in which Shakespeare is trying to emphasize themes concerning "increase, contract, abundance, waste, 'niggarding,' or miserliness". This can be seen in the aforementioned complexities described by Pequigney. It seems as if the Speaker is insinuating that the beauty will die with the young man. This idea is reinforced by Joyce Stuphen who says that "In sonnet 4, it is nature that 'calls thee to be gone' and demands the 'acceptable audit'". Notes References Baldwin, T. W. On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950. Greene, Thomas M. "Pitiful Thrivers: Failed Husbandry in the Sonnets." The Vulnerable Text: Essays on the Renaissance Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 175–93. Hubler, Edwin. The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Krieger, Murray. A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Modern Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. Stuphe Stuphen, Joyce. Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1999. 205–06. Print. External links An explanation of terminology in the sonnet British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare