SOURCE: "Shakespeare's New Poem: A Scholar's Clues and Conclusions," in The New York Times Book Review, December 15, 1985, pp. 11-14.

In the following essay, Taylor urges that the poem "Shall I Die? " must be accepted as Shakespeare's until evidence can be brought forth against this claim. The author cites verbal parallels between the poem and Shakespearean canon as supportive of the claim for Shakespeare's authorship.

On the evening of Nov. 14, while I was routinely checking references in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, I came across an item I did not recognize, a poem attributed to William Shakespeare, with the first line "Shall I die? Shall I fly?" I asked for the manuscript to be fetched and late the next morning I went back to check it. I found the literary equivalent of Sleeping Beauty, a nameless poem awakening from the ancient sheets in which it had lain undisturbed for...