Shakespeare’s Plays Were Written By A Jewish Woman

For hundreds of years, people have questioned whether William Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name. The mystery is fueled by the fact that his biography simply doesn't match the areas of knowledge and skill demonstrated in the plays. Nearly a hundred candidates have been suggested, but none of them fit much better. Now a new candidate named Amelia Bassano Lanier—the so-called 'Dark Lady' of the Sonnets and a member of an Italian/Jewish family—has been shown to be a perfect fit. Here are eight reasons that are sure to convince you:

The plays contain nearly 2000 musical references, use 300 different musical terms, and refer to a 5th century manuscript on recorder playing. None of Mr. Shakespeare's friends or associates were professional musicians, so how could he have developed this practical musical knowledge? On the other hand, Amelia's family were the Court recorder troupe and around 15 of her closest relatives were professional musicians. In fact, one of them was the leading composer for the Shakespearean plays.

Although in late sixteenth century England about 30 scholars were studying written Hebrew, none of them actually spoke Hebrew. Spoken Hebrew was used only among European Jews, as a commercial language, to keep their information secure. How, then, was Mr. Shakespeare able to make the Hebrew puns or include examples of Hebrew transliteration identified by Israeli scholar Florence Amit? Or incorporate several quotations from The Talmud along with reference to Maimonides? Or integrate the examples of spoken Hebrew, seen, for instance, in All's Well That Ends Well?

Amelia's family was Jewish, living as Marranos with members of the Lupo family, who were imprisoned for their faith.

The plays depict strong female characters who play music and read Ovid, but Mr. Shakespeare kept his daughters illiterate. Amelia, however, was educated at Court and raised in the household of the early English feminist Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and her daughter Susan Bertie, the Dowager Countess of Kent. This explains why Taming of the Shrew references a book that was the standard manual for training girls at Court in etiquette, and why other plays refer to Margaret of Navarre's Heptameron, the most popular book among court ladies. Finally Amelia's own poetry draws on the feminist Christine of Pisan, whose work is used in three of the plays and nowhere else in English literature of the period.

There would have been no way for Mr. Shakespeare to learn Italian in Stratford-upon-Avon, but the plays show that the author was fluent in Italian, made Italian puns, and read Dante, Tasso, Cinthio, Bandello, and others in the original language. The Bassano family came from Venice. As their surviving letters show, they spoke and wrote fluent Italian.

None of the other potential candidates who have been put forward is a major poet. But Amelia Bassano certainly is. She was a major experimental poet and the first woman to publish a book of original poetry in England. That poetry includes a 160 line poem that resembles a masque (a dramatic entertainment similar to opera, popular in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, in which masked performers represented mythological or allegorical characters) about the descent of the chariot of Juno. Bassano's masque-like poem resembles the masque about the descent of Juno's chariot in The Tempest. Her final poem includes unusual clusters of words that are also found in Midsummer Night's Dream.

In the Plays One of the most popular names in the plays is Emilia (in various spellings). Why should Mr. Shakespeare have liked this name so much? In Titus Andronicus there are characters oddly called Emillius and Bassianus. Why are they there? But most importantly between 1622-1623, when Mr. Shakespeare was long dead, someone made changes to the Quarto of Othello to associate the standard image of the great poet—the swan who dies to music—with Emilia, and to give her the "willow" song to repeat. Moreover, the swan appears in King John associated with John's son, and in Merchant of Venice associated with Bassanio. The author of the plays thereby associates the great poet with her baptismal, mother's, adopted, and family names:

This is over 99.999999% certain to be no coincidence, and only one person would have had a reason for leaving behind this complex literary signature!

Mr. Shakespeare was an actor, but actors had no training in rhetoric and only got cue scripts, not complete plays. They had no training in play analysis. Amelia however, not only came from a family of musicians who moonlighted as musicians for the two theaters opposite her home. For ten years she was also mistress to Lord Hunsdon—the man in charge of the English theater. He was patron to the company that performed the Shakespearean plays, and England's only work on play analysis was going on in his offices.

In the Plays Finally, many plays contain allegories about the Roman-Jewish War. In Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon represents Yahweh, who is fighting a war against Titania, who represents Titus Caesar. According to research by Professor Parker at Stanford, Peter Quince is St. Peter, who presides over the collapse of Christianity, in the parody of the deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe. When the Wall comes down it is Apocalypse, and the start of a new Jewish year marked, as in The Zohar, by the distribution of dew. In As You Like It, the forest is surrounded by a circle, everyone is starving, people are hung from trees, and deer are being slaughtered like men. All of this resembles the actual events of the Jewish War. We are told the Duke in charge is a “Roman conqueror” who is also identified with Satan—and his allegorical identity can thus be uncovered as Vespasian Caesar. As a believing Catholic, why would Mr. Shakespeare have created these complex Jewish allegories? Amelia however, wrote a collection of poetry that includes the long satirical feminist critique of Christianity known as Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), meaning "Hail God, King of the Jews." As a Jew she might well have wanted to create an allegory that took comic literary revenge upon the men who destroyed Jerusalem.

102 posted on 04/23/2020 7:37:41 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here
while these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
no more yielding but a dream.

If you didn't like the play, it's because you fell asleep and dreamed the WHOLE thing.

Try not eating so many chili dogs before the show.

(the last line is my own interjection. See I could have been Shakespeare!)

103 posted on 04/23/2020 8:09:10 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Leave it to me to be holdin' the matches when the fire truck shows up & there's nobody else to blame)

105 posted on 04/23/2020 8:16:40 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Leave it to me to be holdin' the matches when the fire truck shows up & there's nobody else to blame)

I always figured it was a conglmorate of writers with Bill being the face like Betty Crocker.

A publishing company behind it.

The line that always makes the crowd go up almost in cheers is "what fools these mortals be!" Also by Puck. That sprite really steals the show.

107 posted on 04/23/2020 8:25:22 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)

“And in some of those fields it would be hard for a woman to acquire first-hand knowledge in the 16th or 17th century.”

I would assert that no woman ever born could have written the “band of brothers” speech under any circumstances.

109 posted on 04/23/2020 9:52:24 PM PDT by dsc (As for the foundations of the Catholic faith, this pontificate is an outrage to reason.)

Threads like this are a pleasant break from reality though they can wax controversial.

Having read through the comments I don’t get the sense that anyone has read “Shakespeare by Another Name”. It makes a very compelling case that the plays were written by Edward de Vere with possible assistance from his secretaries who were also playwrights.

The weight of the evidence strongly suggests it was de Vere but I have no emotional investment in whether it was him or someone else. I don’t care who it was but am interested in who it was.

Why do Ph/ D/ candidates keep searching out ridiculous propositions for their dissertation. To make a name for themselves in their chosed field I suppose, but this can’t possibly be true.

She doesn’t cite a single reference in any of the plays or sonnets about the merits of chicken soup.

112 posted on 04/25/2020 4:09:24 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)

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