Analysis of Sonnet 97How similar to a winter my absence has beenFrom you, pleasure of the fleeting year!What cold I have felt, what dark days I have seen!-What old nakedness of December everywhere Yet this time removed was the summer, the teeming autumn, full of rich fruits, bearing the unbridled weight of the former, like widows' wombs after the death of their lords: and yet this abundant offspring seemed to me only the hope of orphans. , and unbegotten fruits; for summer and its pleasures await you, and you away the birds themselves are silent: or if they sing, it is with such dull cheerfulness that the leaves seem pale, fearing the approaching winter. What a start to a great sonnet. This sonnet, well understood in the first quatrain, presents some difficulties in the second and third quatrains. This is obviously addressed to a loved one, more specifically to a woman whom Shakespeare loved. 5: 'This period of separation from you was due to summer', where "summer time" means his youth, furthermore, his sexual prime. 6: 'The overflowing autumn [his middle age] is rich with children born of the lush [or cheerful] experiences of my youth.' Line 8 closes this quatrain with a meaning that is more happy than painful, as the widow reveres her son even more after the father's death. In line 9, I read "abundant problem" as "topic of debate or general concern", referring to the "death of the lords" in line 8, but it could also mean a person capable of fathering many children, either the recipient or the female recipient of the his prime, or even Shakespeare himself. If it is the first, then it is addressed to more than one person and is the result of his absence: he is not capable of producing children, but only of obtaining orphans. But in the second case, this changes his hope for orphans. If Shakespeare is the “abundant matter,” then this is a great read; however, if the "abundant problem" is the widow's son, this constitutes a problem because it is against logic to say that the mother is a widow "yet" her son is an orphan.