Upon close reading it’s not Shakespeare’s work, it’s a song variation in the 1640s, long after he was dead and his material was being adapted. I might not be reading the scholarly article correctly…but my impression is this is not an alternate version of an actual work by William Shakespeare.
That's correct. It's not by Shakespeare; it doesn't tell us anything about Shakespeare himself.
But it does tell us a lot about what Shakespeare meant to people in the decades after his death. Like the plays, the perception of Shakespeare himself has changed over the centuries.
Gift links don't survive the HN submission process (which uses canonical URLs), the only way to include one is as a comment after submission (like this).
Researcher found a handwritten version of Sonnet 116 with extra lines and political overtones.