Free Republic

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’...

Tarlton takes his place in theatrical history as creator of the stage yokel; his performance in this role is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's creation of the character Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Tarlton himself is said to have been the model for the court jester Yorick described in Hamlet. Tarlton's popularity and genius were undisputed. Thomas Nashe wrote that audiences began "exceedingly to laugh when he first peept out his head"; Edmund Spenser mourned him as "our pleasant Willy . . . with whom all joy and jolly merriment/Is also deaded"; and in 1643 Sir Richard Baker...

Native Americans, English sailors and pirates all came together on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina to create the only American dialect that is not identified as American. I'd never been called a "dingbatter" until I went to Ocracoke, North Carolina for the first time. I've spent a good part of my life in the state, but I'm still learning how to speak the Hoi Toider brogue. The people here just have their own way of speaking: it's like someone took Elizabethan English, sprinkled in some Irish tones and 1700s Scottish accents, then mixed it all up with pirate slang. But...

Elizabethan craftsmen developed advanced manufacturing technology that could match that of the 21st century, claim researchers from Birmingham City University who are analysing a 400-year-old hoard of jewellery. The team from Birmingham City University have analysed the craftwork behind the famous Cheapside Hoard - the world's largest collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery discovered in a London cellar in 1912. Among the historic find – which is being showcased by the Museum of London – is a Ferlite watch that dates back to the 1600s and is so technologically advanced it has been described as the "iPod of its day"....