A rare hand-written copy of one of the most famous love poems ever written has been discovered after hundreds of years.
Dr Leah Veronese found the version of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 tucked away in a 17th Century poetry collection at the University of Oxford - among the papers of Elias Ashmole, founder of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.
Dr Veronese found the sonnet in the Bodleian Library. "As I was leafing through the manuscript, the poem struck me as an odd version of Sonnet 116," the university researcher explained. "When I looked in the catalogue (originally compiled in the 19th Century) the poem was described, not inaccurately, as "on constancy in love" – but it doesn't mention Shakespeare."
In Ashmole's version, parts of Sonnet 116 - also known as Let me not to the marriage of true minds - have been altered, and additional lines added.
Dr Veronese said she thought the changed first line and the lack of mention of Shakespeare were the reasons "why this poem has passed un-noticed as a copy of Sonnet 116 all these years".
The sonnet was found alongside "politically charged" works from the 1640s - the decade of the English Civil War, fought between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Ashmole was a strong supporter of the monarchy, and the lines added to the sonnet could be read as an appeal towards religious and political loyalty.