Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: A Cavalier Cover Version

Abstract This article analyses an understudied copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 in Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37. The poem is a copy of Henry Lawes’ song-setting which adds six new lines to the poem. The song-setting can also be found in NYPL Drexel MS 4257, although there are significant variations between the two copies. The sonnet takes on new political relevance when read in the context of the Royalist Elias Ashmole’s miscellany, Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37, amongst material from the early 1640s: Shakespeare’s text is transformed from praise of romantic constancy to political constancy. This article reads the text in the local context of Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37, and then considers the setting in the wider context of the circulation of Shakespearean songs in manuscript and domestic musical performance during the Interregnum. The text is politicized at a local level in the context of Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37 and in the wider context of domestic performance during the Interregnum when the public performance of music was banned. This copy contributes to our understanding of the circulation of Shakespeare’s poetry in manuscript, Shakespearean reception during the mid-seventeenth century, and Royalist counterculture.