A rare, handwritten copy of Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 116 – “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” – has been discovered over four hundred years after the writer’s death.
Dr Leah Veronese found the version of William Shakespeare’s love poem tucked into a 17th-Century poetry collection at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The manuscript was found among the papers of Elias Ashmole, founder of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum; featured in a miscellany, containing a selection of texts from a range of different writers.
“As I was leafing through the manuscript, the poem struck me as an odd version of Sonnet 116,” the university researcher explained.
“When I looked in the catalogue (originally compiled in the 19th-Century) the poem was described, not inaccurately, as “on constancy in love” – but it doesn’t mention Shakespeare.”
Bodleian Libraries – Ashmole version of Sonnet 116
In the version of Sonnet 116 found in Ashmole’s paper, thus known as Ashmole’s version, parts of the verse of been altered and additional lines have been added.
Dr Veronese believe that the changed first line and the lack of mention of Shakespeare were the reasons “why this poem has passed un-noticed as a copy of Sonnet 116 all these years”.
Professor Emma Smith, an Oxford expert in Shakespeare, said this “exciting discovery” would help researchers understand the writer’s popularity in the decades following his death.
Prof Smith explained: “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.”
While other researchers have added that the newly found version with its altered and added lines “potentially transform” the sonnet from “a meditation on romantic love into a powerful political statement”.
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