Sonnet 97 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It is the first of three sonnets describing a separation between the speaker and the beloved.

Paraphrase

My separation from you has seemed like winter, since you give pleasure to the year. Winter has seemed to be everywhere, even though in reality our separation occurred during summer and fall, when the earth produces plant life like a widow giving birth after the death of her husband. Yet I saw these fruits of nature as hopeless orphans, since it could not be summer unless you were here; since you were away, even the birds did not sing, or rather sang so plaintively that they made the very leaves look pale, thinking of winter.

Structure

Sonnet 97 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB r ...

of the form, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is composed in

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter () is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in that line; rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called " feet". "Iam ...

, a type of poetic

metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 6th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×  /  ×   /  ×     /   ×    /   ×   / 
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

 /  ×     ×  /  ×   /  ×  /    ×   / 
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, (97.6-7)

:/ = ''ictus'', a metrically strong syllabic position. × = ''nonictus''. It is followed (in line 7) by an initial reversal, a fairly common metrical variation which also potentially occurs in lines 1, 9, and 13. A mid-line inversion occurs in line 8 and, more plainly, line 14:

  ×   /      ×    /      /  ×     ×  /  ×     / 
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. (97.14)

Sources and analysis

Following

Edmond Malone Edmond Malone (4 October 174125 May 1812) was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare. Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first p ...

, T. W. Baldwin notes a resemblance between this poem's trope for the seasons and the "childing autumn" of '' A Midsummer Night's Dream'' 2.1.112; he traces the figure to

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

. Dowden says that 97 seems to begin a new group of sonnets, comprising 97, 98, and 99. Edward Hubler remarks on the "passages of unobtrusive melody and easy grace." Thematically, the poem belongs among those poems treating absence or separation. Hilton Landry groups the sonnet with others, such as 54 and 55, in which the speaker is forced to call to mind an inferior mental substitute for his absent beloved.

Notes

References

* Baldwin, T. W. ''On the Literary Genetics of Shakespeare's Sonnets''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950. * Dowden, Edward. ''Shakespeare's Sonnets''. London, 1881. * Hubler, Edwin. ''The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sonnet 097 British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare