Not Time's Fool: A Rare Version of a Shakespeare Sonnet Is Discovered

New York Times

04-03-2025

If you have already had the good fortune of encountering 'Sonnet 116' by William Shakespeare, you were probably at a wedding.
It is not, by most accounts, a sexy poem. It is not exactly a happy one, either. Instead, it celebrates commitment to devotion: 'Love's not time's fool,' perhaps its most famous phrase, is held up as a toast to living together and aging together. It is one of the poems that, however often it is read aloud, still pricks tear ducts and quiets fidgets.
But during the English Civil Wars in the mid-1600s, the poem may have had a different resonance.
That's, at least, according to research published last month in The Review of English Studies by an Oxford researcher, Leah Veronese, who found a rare, handwritten version in an archive.
Such discoveries are rare. 'It's incredibly exciting when somebody finds any manuscript trace of Shakespeare's poems,' said a Columbia University professor, James Shapiro, an expert on Shakespeare who was not involved in the find.
And experts are celebrating the discovery as an early example of the ways that Shakespeare's work has been adapted to meet a charged moment.
'Shakespeare has always been political,' Professor Shapiro said, adding, 'People repurposed it in their own day — as in ours — for different political ends.'
This variation — which has a different opening, ending and seven additional lines — reads more as a celebration of political loyalty than romantic love. It may come from one of the greatest upheavals in British history: A fight between royalists (who supported the monarchy) and parliamentarians (who did not). For a brief period, Britain was not ruled by a monarch.
Much suggests that the newly discovered version was a royalist adaptation.
Dr. Veronese discovered the variant in the papers of Elias Ashmole, a supporter of the monarchy who was born in 1617 — the year after Shakespeare died. It was among other politically charged works, which included banned Christmas carols and satirical poems from the 1640s. And it had been set to music by the composer Henry Lawes, which can be found in the New York Public Library.
That alone would have been rebellious: The Republican regime banned the public performance of songs, Oxford said in a news release published on Monday.
'What was once a kind of erotic, playful love poem,' Professor Shapiro said, had 'been repurposed to speak to people in the midst of a civil war — in which their loved ones are fighting and dying.'
Consider the opening lines of 'Sonnet 116':
The nod to 'marriage' might be why it's a favorite at weddings, said Prof. Michael Dobson, the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, who was not involved in the discovery. But the commitment to loving someone forever, just as they are, also resonates.
'It makes an implausible vow of eternal constancy, which is what marriages are all about,' said Professor Dobson, who has 'love's not time's fool' etched into his wedding band.
The opening of the variation reads as much more righteous — almost scolding — instead of musing.
Practically, the additional lines were added to create more singable verses, according to Oxford. But in the context of the civil wars, the Oxford release said, 'the additional lines could also be read as an appeal toward religious and political loyalty.'
Could the self-blinding error have been the push to leave the monarchy behind? Are the parliamentarians the minds who were making such false appeals?
Professor Dobson noted that the language of devotion is often similar, whether applied to love or politics. 'You know: 'my king — right or wrong — I will die a royalist,'' he said, describing both versions as odes to 'eternal, quixotic constancy.'
He said it was not clear whether the poem was a copy of a draft written by Shakespeare or an adaptation written by someone else.
Either way, the discovery shows how Shakespeare's work found life in the years after his death. For Shakespeare scholars, it suggests that the sonnets had more sticking power than many had once thought.
Shakespeare's sonnets were published in 1609. The collection barely sold, Professor Dobson said, noting, 'The printed copy of Shakespeare's sonnets was probably Shakespeare's biggest flop.'
A 1640 version — altered to expunge hints of a male lover — barely caused a ripple. In fact, he said, the sonnets did not become popular until the late 1700s, when interest surged in the bard's life and Romanticism reigned.
Some scholars had thought that, for the first two centuries, the sonnets were all but forgotten. The new discovery suggests otherwise, Professor Dobson said. 'At least one person thought this was a worthwhile piece of work.'
Perhaps, the variation is a sign of what may be Shakespeare's greatest constant: change. So even if love, at least in 'Sonnet 116,' is 'an ever-fixèd mark,' the author himself is not.
That, it seems, has always been his power, from the Royalist gatherings of 1600s Britain to the political fights and wedding speeches of today.