Experts Question Poem's Author

While much of the literary world is flush with excitement over the possible discovery of a new poem by William Shakespeare, two Harvard experts interviewed this week questioned whether the Bard was actually the author.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Gary L. Taylor, a 32-year-old scholar from Topeka, Kan., discovered a previously unknown nine-stanza Shakespeare poem while looking through old volumes at Oxford University in England.

Taylor dates the poem to between 1593-1595, the same years during which Shakespeare, then around 30, wrote "Romeo and Juliet," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and "Love's Labour's Lost."

No Way

William Alfred, Lowell Professor of the Humanities and an expert on British literature, said the poem is definitely not Shakespeare's. "I don't think it's by Shakespeare at all, and if it is by Shakespeare, he wrote it in the sixth grade," Alfred said.

"Whoever wrote it had no external sense of metrics or a good ear--and Shakespeare certainly had a good ear," agreed Gwynne B. Evans, Cabot Professor of English Literature Emeritus. "It doesn't strike me as being particularly Shakespearean in any sense."

Taylor was quoted as saying that several pieces of evidence support the claim that the poem is Shakespeare's. The volume in which he found it, dating to the 1630's, contains no other errors in attribution of poems, he said.

The poem was written in an internal rhyme style, which means that words rhyme within each line--a style Shakespeare had not previously used. Because Shakespeare was a frequent innovator, his use of a different style indicates further that he might have written it, Taylor said.

Moreover, the poem also includes several phrases nearly identical to passages in "Romeo and Juliet," Taylor added.

Shakespearean Syllogisms

But Evans said that "to prove it's Shakespeare is impossible"--and to prove conclusively that the work isn't Shakespeare's is impossible as well.

Neither the external nor the internal evidence is strong, Evans said. "Commonplace book attributions are notoriously uncertain," he said, and as for its "Romeo and Juliet" connections, Evans said, "Anything can echo Romeo and Juliet and many did."

Taylor has spent seven years editing a new one-volume Shakespeare collection to be published next year by the Oxford University Press.

If the poem proves to be Shakespeare's, it would reportedly be the first addition to his body of works since the 17th century.