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 throug ... Read full article.