Volta project, day four

Survived this morning’s test  J  Here’s the fourth sonnet:

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IV

  Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

  Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?

  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?

  Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

  So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

  For having traffic with thy self alone,

  Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:

  Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,

  What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

    Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

    Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

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Okay, I think it’s misleading to read this one in terms of quatrains.  The whole idea of quatrains in a Shakespearean sonnet is based on rhyme scheme, but I think Shakespeare is undercutting end-rhyme in this one  J  but more on that below.

If I read it two lines at a time instead, here’s what I see:

Lines 1–2 are a question;

lines 3–4 are a statement;

lines 5–6 are a question based upon the statement in lines 3–4, i.e. if A (statement), then why B (question)?;

and then:

lines 7–8 are a question;

lines 9–10 are a statement;

lines 11–12 are a question based upon the statement in lines 9–10, i.e. if C (statement), then how/what D (question)?.

See a pattern here, anyone?  J

And now about the rhymes:  If I look at each of those six couplets individually, then there’s no end-rhyme at all within any one of the six couplets!  Zero! 

That’s what I meant when I said Shakespeare is kind of undercutting end-rhyme in this one  J  This might even be related with the fact that three of the lines—lines 1, 5, and 7—are not even end-stopped (that each of these three is the first line of a couplet and enjambs into the respective second line of that couplet).

Of course, he is putting end-rhyme to a different use:  The couplets are linked to each other because each line rhymes with a line in a different couplet.

And the closing couplet is an exception to all of the above, but I think that serves to make the volta stand out:  I think the volta here is as late as the used in the last line.