A sonnet in the script of a 1603 play by Ben Jonson could be a lost work by William Shakespeare, two leading scholars have suggested. The poem, To the Deserving Author, appears in Jonson's Sejanus: His Fall, a tragedy set in ancient Rome. It is signed with the pseudonym Cygnus, named after the mythological character who is transformed into a swan. Jonson referred to Shakespeare as the ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’ in his tribute to the Bard in the publication of the First Folio in 1623.
Within Jonson's text, the poem shares a page with a ditty by Hugh Holland, who also dedicated a commemorative verse to Shakespeare in the First Folio. Laoutaris has argued that both sonnets pay tribute to Jonson, but are ‘very different’.
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