Competition: Mixing it

In Competition No. 2734 you were invited to provide anagrams of lines from Shakespearean sonnets.

These assignments are not the most popular but every so often the urge to send you to anagram hell gets the better of me. ‘I found this competition exasperatingly difficult,’ wrote Josephine Boyle. Equally exasperated, it seems, was Basil Ransome-Davies, whose email subject line read: ‘Everlasting fire for this one’. Shirley Curran expressed her frustration anagrammatically: It is rather gawky to reinvent bards! (It is the star to every wand’ring bark). While W.J. Webster injected a refreshing note of cheeriness: ‘Lovely competition! Two Scrabble sets and a laptray — the insomniac’s dream!’

But I am not alone in inflicting such torture. This fiendish challenge was set by my predecessor and elicited some fine winners: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Hurrah! See my mice tootle a sad psalm. (Frances Rhodes);  My glass shall not persuade me I am old/ Shampoo me, lass, I’m slate-grey and dull.