Yale Discovery Adds to Controversy Over Work’s Authenticity : 2nd Copy Found of Poem Called Shakespeare’s

A Yale University curator has found a second copy of a mysterious love poem said to have been written by William Shakespeare, casting new doubts on whether the Bard of Avon actually wrote the verse, it was reported Wednesday.

Stephen Parks, a curator for Yale’s rare book library, told the New York Times that he spotted the unsigned poem in a collection of 16th-Century verse he bought for the university in 1972.

He said now that it is up to Gary Taylor, an American scholar who discovered the nine-stanza love poem, to prove that it is Shakespeare’s work.

‘Challenge to Mr. Taylor’

“What I think we end up with is a challenge to Mr. Taylor to prove that what he has is a poem by Shakespeare,” Parks said.

Taylor found the poem, which is untitled but is referred to by its first line, “Shall I die,” in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England and claimed it was written by Shakespeare. It has been the subject of controversy ever since.

After hearing Parks’ assertions, Taylor, 32, reached in England, conceded that he was wrong in asserting that the poem did not “survive in any other copy” at any major library in the United States.

He said the error occurred because he did not check personally at the American libraries.

Source Missed Poem

“I simply telephoned Renaissance scholars or librarians that I know and asked them to check for me,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that my source at Yale, who shall be nameless to spare him any embarrassment, missed it there.”

But Taylor, who is general editor for the coming Oxford edition of the “Complete Works” of Shakespeare, argued that the discovery of the Yale manuscript does not disprove his theory on the poem’s authorship.

“It leaves us pretty much where we were,” he said.

Scholars are divided over Taylor’s claims, the New York Times reported.

A. L. Rouse, emeritus fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, said the poem is too “ordinary” to be Shakespeare’s work.

But Samuel Schoenbaum, distinguished professor of renaissance literature at the University of Maryland said, “It’s authentic until proved otherwise.”

‘Not a Wild Surmise’

Schoenbaum, an American consultant for the Oxford University Shakespeare Project, said he believes that “it was not a wild surmise to think that Shakespeare might have been the author.”

Parks said the Yale copy contained some minor variations from the Bodleian copy. Both were handwritten by unknown scribes.

Taylor said last month that he determined that the poem was Shakespeare’s by using a computer to compare the verses with the undisputed body of the Elizabethan dramatist’s work. He said the computer analysis supported his conclusion.