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Posted on 06/27/2026 1:11:25 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The author of a new book about William Shakespeare is claiming that the works of the famed playwright were actually written by a black, Jewish woman. The book, The Real Shakespeare: Emilia Bassano Willoughby by Irene Coslet, argues that Shakespeare was actually Emilia Bassano, a dark-skinned Jewish woman who was an English poet during the Elizabethan period. The Amazon description for the book, which says it is set to be released on March 30, questions if Shakespeare was indeed “a white man from Stratford.”
“Debate still rages over the identity of the most beloved poet of all time and ‘father’ of the English-speaking world,” the description reads. “Generations of researchers have tried to dismantle the myth of the Stratford man. Now, in this intriguing and well-documented book, Irene Coslet conclusively demonstrates that Shakespeare was not a man, but a woman: a dark-skinned lady, of Jewish origin, born into a family of Court musicians from Venice, and the mother of the English-speaking world. Her name was Emilia Bassano.”
According to the description, Coslet’s conclusions are based on “re-examination of often-overlooked historical documents, shrewd, chilling, and profound, this volume offers extensive evidence that Emilia was the author of the canon.” The description also says the book is not just about the debate over to whom the writings of Shakespeare should be attributed, but “about the condition of women at the time Shakespeare was writing. It explains that feminism already existed in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. It reveals not only that Shakespeare was a woman, but also that she defended women. It reintegrates Emilia in the context of the time, for example, by exploring the relationship between Emilia and Queen Elizabeth I.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Emilia Bassano was not black. There are also doubts if she was Jewish.
Church records show Lanier was baptised Aemilia Bassano at the parish church of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, on 27 January 1569.
Lanier was born Aemilia Bassano in London in 1569. Her father, Baptiste Bassano, was an Italian musician from Venice, who was part of a family originally from Bassano del Grappa, a small town in the Veneto region of northern Italy, whose members later moved to Venice before coming to England as court musicians for Henry VIII. Her mother, Margaret Johnson, was an Englishwoman, possibly the aunt of court composer Robert Johnson. She died when Aemilia was 18.
Some think her mother was of Sephardic ie Spanish Jewish heritage, but there is no proof of that.
The entire guessing that she was the real Shakespeare has been there for I would think at least half a century. But it has never been more than speculation.
It would be interesting to read if The Real Shakespeare: Emilia Bassano Willoughby by Irene Coslet has any new information.
Ok, I read a review that Coslet bases her speculation on how the word “Shakespeare” (or “Sheakespeare”) can be rearranged as an anagram for “A-She-Speaker.”
Then she bases her speculation on “only a sephardic ie Spanish jewess could know the italian geography in the merchant of venice” which us stupid as:
1. 16th century folks from cosmopolitan London backgrounds could well have good geographical knowledge. Italy was the cultural centre of western Europe
2. Shakespeare’s italian geography gets hazy with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, where characters travel from Verona to Milan by ship. Both are entirely inland cities.
Ok, this is enough for me to dismiss this book without reading it, I’m not going to waste money on someone making up stories as facts.
I’d rather watch “Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter”
I’m not specifically a military history buff, but I think I have a pen and sword published book by Stephen chambers on Gallipoli
Must have also been a lesbian, with all those sonnets to the dark lady.
Well, he was actually a time traveler from the planet Tralfalmador. Kurt Vonnegut wrote all about it.
https://annas-archive.gl/md5/5963f4759a63cfe999bf1c949c8ece05
Neither of those spellings were his preferred spelling. We know there was a real man named Shagsper. Also, A-She-Speaker doesn't sound like a Elizabethan coinage.
Much has been made of Shakespeare's supposed knowledge of European culture and geography. It's clear to me he didn't have any knowledge you couldn't find in books, and in fact he didn't care about the realism of that, or have extensive knowledge.
For example, he has Bohemia have an ocean coast in Winter's Tale.
He was concerned about the story and the poetry, but not cultural realism.
Lizzo time traveled!
Lizzo.
It’s all those weird expressions: Doth, Dost, Art thou, Out upon thee, and all that. She wrote in Elizabethan Ghettoese!/s
Something like this happens ever few years for the author to get “attention”.
I still remember 55 years ago when some woman author wrote that all the cowboys in the west were queers and abused their horses.
Then there was the claim about 25 years ago that the story of Marco Polo was fake and he never lived.
The Monty Python crew did a bit on this:
Steak Your Claim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D48-CMiXMI
Why not.
After all the Roman Empire did not exist. We are actually living in the year 1726 and there used to be an empire in Europe called tartain or something that was wiped out so the Rothchilds could take over their banking system, birds are all robots.....
Could someone ping me when my ride back to reality is here? I really want to go home.
E. told me Bacon’s a G.D. Fraud.
— somewhere in Shakespeare there’s a line if you rearrange the letters you get the above. I don’t remember exactly. It comes from “Timid Virgins Make Dull Company,” page 45.
https://archive.org/details/timidvirginsmake00drcr/page/18/mode/2up?q=g.d.+fraud
It’s limited preview so I’m shaky on the details.
Ghey too, or a transformer. Probably both.
And her soliloquys sound better with a bongo drum accompaniment, just like Kamala Harris’.
LOL. That’s a good one. I can see you in Senior English with either a young good looking teacher or an old one that knew “everything “ and buying the entire fairy tale of an illiterate glove maker’s son writing poetry and plays about subjects a glove maker’s son would know nothing about. There is no evidence he could read or ever owned or read a book. Prove he could or did and don’t use the sorry excuses for signatures in his will.
We wuz Bards and sheit.
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