Rare Handwritten Copy of Famous Shakespeare Sonnet Found in Oxford Library

While conducting research at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, English professor Leah Veronese found a striking poem in a 17th-century collection of texts. The poem’s first stanzas seemed unremarkable, but the ones that followed would be familiar to most English majors. That’s because Veronese had stumbled upon a rare, undocumented copy of one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets.

The sonnet in question is a handwritten copy of a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, and it’s now only the second handwritten copy of Sonnet 116 known to scholars. Veronese recognized it within a manuscript of miscellaneous texts compiled by Elias Ashmole (1617–1692), the founder of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology and a loyal Royalist during England’s Civil Wars. As detailed in a study published February 3rd in The Review of English Studies, the sonnet’s adaptation and unique context shed light on a fundamental slice of 17th-century English history.

“As I was leafing through the manuscript, the poem struck me as an odd version of Sonnet 116,” Veronese, a member of Oxford University’s English faculty, explained in a university statement. When she checked the manuscript’s catalog (a description of the manuscript, including its contents), “the poem was described, not inaccurately, as ‘on constancy in love’ – but it doesn’t mention Shakespeare.”

When an individual named William Henry Black cataloged Ashmole’s manuscript in the 19th century, “he may not have read past the opening lines” of the poem, Veronese wrote in the study. In his defense, the two versions of the sonnet are quite different.

For example, the recently discovered version starts as follows:

Self blinding error seize all those minds
Who with false appellations call that love
Which alters when it alterations finds

By contrast, Shakespeare’s original version reads:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds

“I think the combination of the additional first line ‘Self-blinding error seize those minds’ and absence of Shakespeare from the original catalogue description may be the reason why this poem has passed un-noticed as a copy of Sonnet 116 all these years,” Veronese explained in the statement.

“This exciting discovery shows that centuries of searching for evidence about Shakespeare and his early reception hasn’t exhausted the archives,” said Emma Smith, a professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of Oxford. “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ is now one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, but it doesn’t seem to have been very popular in his own time.” Smith was not involved in the study.

The recently discovered version is a handwritten copy of an adaptation that 17th-century English songwriter Henry Lawes set to music. In addition to a different beginning, the adaptation also has a different ending and extra lines. According to the study, the additional lines likely served the purpose of making the song longer. However, Veronese argues that the different version may have also been politically motivated.

From 1642 to 1651, England was wracked by three civil wars between King Charles I and Parliament. Parliament ultimately won, sentenced Charles I to death in 1649, and a Republican regime ruled for 11 years before Charles I’s son was reinstated as King. Those turbulent decades saw a devastating loss of life, as well as some bizarre legislation outlawing things such as Christmas and performing songs in public.

The chaos of this period is reflected in Ashmole’s collection, which, along with the song version of Sonnet 116, includes Royalist poetry and banned Christmas carols. By itself, the adapted Sonnet 116 might seem vague, but in its historical context, Veronese interprets it as a call for religious and political loyalty.

“In the context of Ashmole’s collection, Lawes’ setting of Sonnet 116 reads as a political love-song in praise of Royalist political constancy during political turmoil,” Veronese writes in the study.

So while Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks—sonnets might!