A controversial new book claims that William Shakespeare was actually a black Jewish woman whose work was stolen by a semi-literate businessman. Feminist historian Irene Coslet argues that the real author of the world's most famous plays was Emilia Bassano, a Tudor court poet who used 'Shakespeare' as a pen name.
In The Real Shakespeare, Coslet contends that Bassano's true authorship was covered up in favour of William Shakespeare, an 'uneducated interloper' from Stratford-upon-Avon. She argues that Elizabethan society preferred the narrative of a 'white' male genius to acknowledging a black female playwright.
Bassano had intimate connections to the theatre world as mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, Elizabeth I's Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare's own troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Literary scholars have long speculated she could be the 'Dark Lady' immortalised in Shakespeare's sonnets.
Coslet acknowledges that surviving portraits depict Bassano as fair-skinned but suggests her complexion was deliberately lightened to conform to period beauty ideals. Speaking to The Telegraph, she said: 'If Shakespeare was a female of colour, this would draw attention to issues of peace and justice in society.'
Mainstream scholarship maintains Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564, attended grammar school, and died in 1616, nearly three decades before Bassano's death. No one during the Bard's lifetime ever disputed his authorship.
