An article about a sonnet that it is possibly by Shakespeare, in the form of a sonnet that is certainly not by Shakespeare
Too bard to be true
Mr Gary Taylor of Oxford thinks he has found a new love-poem by Shakespeare. Some critics agree, but many say the poem is too bad to be Shakespeare. In another work (unearthed by The Economist), the Bard replies.
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it doth squeak of love and show no care?
When rhymes do spar within a groaning frame,
Who dare say then: “’tis Will! his hand is there”?
If I have writ by chance some lines of fame,
So too have horrors issued from my pen;
Not all my thoughts are worthy of my name,
Nor all deserve to live (say one in ten?).
Yet now the scholars who disdain to write,
Do find my song asleep within a book:
Some say it is not mine, too frail a mite—
O would that Taylor had indeed mistook!
I wish these fresh-faced scholars would abjure:
Let sleeping doggerel lie, and not endure.
(published in The Economist, 30 November 1985, p34)