Having taught and read Shakespeare, and having learned about him in on study abroad, in England, from Shakesperean scholars and being Catholic, having read Joseph Pearce’s study on the subject, and knowing, being Catholic, that the Bard was well educated, well connected and informed about his contemporary society, politics, war policies and tactics and, without a doubt, about Roman history, behavior, as well as masculinity, he certainly was not a Jewish woman, who, in those times, would not have known all the aspects of life, politics, behaviors, religion and so forth, as women were simply NOT educated in that time.
Not to say a Jewish woman could not be as intelligent, or superior, by any means, but that, no...
This smacks of the rewriting of history, which, as an English and humanities teacher, I can assure does and really does exist.
Are you stating this as absolute fact? Because the article says that this specific woman was educated at the Court.
I'm curious to know why many characters were named after this woman or her associates.
Why would Shakespeare (or Dowland) do that. Coincidence?
Let me add that I'm not a scholar on this topic, and am going only by what I read in this article. The article points out specific people, specific locations, specific events. Not generalizations.
-PJ
Some noble men AND women were extremely well educated, if that was their desire (you didn't have to if you didn't want to -- the uneducated Upper Class Twit goes all the way back to the Norman Conquest). Many middle class/townsfolk/ smallholders were also very well educated, as they saw it as a passport to success, and they did tend to educate their daughters as well.
Nobody else was, too busy trying to scratch a living.