Ben Jonson work from 1603 may contain ‘lost’ Shakespeare sonnet, say experts

An almost unknown sonnet in the playbook or script of a 1603 play by Ben Jonson could be a “lost” work by William Shakespeare, according to two leading scholars.

Beyond “compelling” stylistic evidence, the sonnet, titled To the Deserving Author, is signed with the mysterious pseudonym Cygnus, after the mythical figure who was turned into a swan – evoking Jonson’s very own tribute to Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon as the “Sweet Swan of Avon”.

Dr Chris Laoutaris, an associate professor of Shakespeare and early modern drama at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, told the Guardian: “This is how Jonson referred to him in his long poem in honour of the playwright in the first folio mourning Shakespeare’s ‘flight’ as the swan, whose living presence shall never again grace England’s stages.”

The sonnet is within the playbook of Jonson’s Sejanus: His Fall, a tragic play set in ancient Rome, in which Shakespeare had acted.

It shares a page with a ditty by Hugh Holland, who also dedicated a commemorative verse to Shakespeare in the first folio.

Laoutaris said that while both sonnets paid tribute to Jonson, they were “very different”. For example, Holland addresses Jonson with the more formal “you” throughout, whereas Cygnus uses the informal “thou”, the form favoured by Shakespeare in his sonnets.

He said: “It’s tantalising. There are so many parallels with Shakespeare’s style that it must surely make even the most hardened sceptic pause and think.”

Initially intrigued, he had contacted Dr Martin Wiggins, a leading expert on Renaissance drama, telling him “I’ve got this hunch that it’s written by Shakespeare, but I can’t find anybody who’s ever said it was. Do you know anybody who has? He said: ‘yes, me’.”

He discovered that Wiggins, as chief compiler of the monumental 11-volume British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue, had raised the theory in a single sentence within thousands of pages: ‘“Cygnus” (perhaps a pseudonym for Hugh Holland … or perhaps the Swan of Avon).”

Wiggins told the Guardian: “I’m certainly open to the possibility that it could be by Shakespeare.”

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the first folio of 36 Shakespeare plays, published in 1623, seven years after his death.

Laoutaris said: “The issue of whether or not Shakespeare was in any way involved with his own book is the million dollar question. This sonnet gives clues to him having been linked to figures involved with its publication while he was still alive. There’s no previous firm evidence to date that Shakespeare knew Holland. If the Cygnus sonnet is by Shakespeare, this gives us the possibility of the personal connection.”

He will present the evidence in a forthcoming book, titled Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio, to be published by HarperCollins on 30 March.

He argues that the Cygnus sonnet is theatrical in nature and makes more sense if it was written by a dramatist: “Holland wasn’t. He was a poet and translator. The sonnet praises Jonson and his writing of this play. This is a tragedy for tragedians whose talents, meagre by comparison, have been undermined by Jonson’s greatness, making a double tragedy out of Jonson’s play: ‘Thus, in one Tragedy, thou makest twain [that is, two].’”

Scholars had previously believed that this sonnet was also written by Holland because his own work, Pancharis, issued in 1603, included a Jonson poem that referred to him as a swan.

But Laoutaris said the two sonnets appeared to have been written by two different people and the Cygnus sonnet appeared to contain features more redolent of Shakespeare’s style: “The more one reads this enigmatic poem, the more ‘Shakespearean’ it appears.”

Dr Paul Edmondson, a leading scholar at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon and one of the curators of the forthcoming exhibition, titled 400 Years of Shakespeare’s First Folio, described Laoutaris’s book as “intricately woven, vividly depicted and groundbreaking”.

The sonnet

To the Deserving Author

When I respect thy argument, I see
An image of those times: but when I view
The wit, the workmanship, so rich, so true,
The times themselves do seem retrieved to me.
And as Sejanus, in thy tragedy,
Falleth from Caesar’s grace; even so the crew
Of common playwrights, whom opinion blew
Big with false greatness, are disgraced by thee.
Thus, in one Tragedy, thou makest twain:
And, since fair works of Justice fit the part
Of tragic writers, Muses do ordain
That all Tragedians, Masters of their Art,
Who shall hereafter follow on this tract,
In writing well, thy tragedy shall act.

CYGNUS