Note on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97 and Nashe
I’ve been dipping into Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells’s All the Sonnets of Shakespeare. As ever, I find this one particularly gripping:
……….How like a winter hath my absence been
……….From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
……….What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
……….What old December’s bareness everywhere!
……….And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,
……….The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
……….Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
……….Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
……….Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
……….But hope … Continue Reading