Was Shakespeare A Woman?

The Globe and Mail:

One of the most prestigious academic journals devoted to Shakespearean authorship studies has just added a new candidate to the centuries-old debate about who else plausibly might have written the works we associate with the little-educated merchant and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon.

The nominee is a complete shocker: Amelia Bassano Lanier, a converso (clandestine Jew) and the illegitimate daughter of an Italian-born, Elizabethan court musician.

Read the whole story: The Globe and Mail

Comments

[thrdr]

05:47 AM on 01/22/2010

Charles Dickens was a woman too. And Cervantes was a transexual. Jane Austen was a man. The Bronte sisters were in fact brothers. And Kurt Vonnegut was a dachshund.

[biglimes]

03:53 AM on 01/23/2010

That's the word on the street.

[dahpunkster]

11:18 PM on 01/21/2010

nah!

[Erzsebet Gilbert]

09:58 AM on 01/21/2010

I'm always interested in these sorts of spooky historical theories, whether I'm credulous or not; in this case, the particular scholars do have an interesting body of evidence to cite. But fundamentally, I don't think it makes a hoot of a difference to the works themselves. By now Shakespeare is persistently a symbol, not only a person, and that's become culturally immense. Moreover, we're changed by the plays themselves, the stunning tales and this entire ingenious body of words which has come to mean so much. Shakespeare could have been a lemur, but it doesn't negate the significance of Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet's heartbreak.

p.s. However, whether Lanier was the "real" Shakespeare or not, this idea ought to be a reminder of how many historical women have been omitted from the Canon Of Great Literature... there are so many brilliant authors who have been marginalized, from every era!

[TheBaffler]

02:15 AM on 01/21/2010

"...the little-educated merchant and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon."

Why do people insist on perpetuating this myth? Shakespeare actually attended a very good school.

[brettrobbins]

01:50 PM on 01/20/2010

Yes, and his mother was a man.

[yellowdoggie]

03:55 AM on 01/20/2010

No. He wasn't Shakespeare, either.

[TheBaffler]

02:14 AM on 01/21/2010

Yes, he was.

[yellowdoggie]

04:51 AM on 01/21/2010

Oh, come on over to the dark side.

http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/

[AntiSheep13]

02:40 AM on 01/20/2010

He dressed like one

[chrisfrmchi3]

09:44 PM on 01/19/2010

who knows i'm really inbetween he wrote them and there is a story behind that or he never really wrote them by collated them from lesser known people over history under his name and approved by queen.

[mortalkonlaw]

09:42 PM on 01/19/2010

Yawn. This kind of crap comes out every few years, always foisted by people agog at the idea of genius. I always assumed such things to be tacit admissions of personal failure--the old line was that "surely" Marlowe wrote this stuff, *because he had been educated.*

Some people just win the genetic lottery or get divine inspiration or something, and there seems to be a subset of academia that just cannot handle not having such gifts.

[charon]

08:08 PM on 01/19/2010

Short answer: no.

[lastep]

07:40 PM on 01/19/2010

just another story to divide people according to race sex and financial status

[TremoluxMan]

04:18 PM on 01/19/2010

Was Shakespeare a woman? Occasionally...

[Oleg1]

02:44 PM on 01/19/2010

Instead of wading through various secondary sources, here's the article
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15488374/New-Shakespeare-Theory

P.S. cool so we have a woman candidate AND a non-white minority.
Sigh, if only she were poor and gay....

...such stuff as dreams are made on

[Rand]

04:36 PM on 01/19/2010

Are you saying that Jews (Europeand Jews, that is: Obviously Falashas aren't) aren't white or that Italians aren't white?

[Oleg1]

06:54 PM on 01/19/2010

The "dark lady' as she was described, Amelia Bassano Lanyer,was of Moroccan ancestry Definitely not a "white person."

[cplKlyde]

12:59 PM on 01/19/2010

What do you do with a BA in English? Go on to get ones MA and then PhD so you can make a living putting out stuff like this.

What is this the 13th or 14th Shakespeare?

[Erzsebet Gilbert]

09:50 AM on 01/21/2010

"What do you do with a BA in English?" You read stuff! Like you always did, but with deep worlds opened up and new lenses of understanding! Get thee to the library!

[MTGradwell]

12:24 PM on 01/19/2010

A woman? With that moustache?

[JohnHud]

12:50 PM on 01/19/2010

The academic article that the Globe and Mail refer to "Amelia Bassano Lanier; A New Paradigm'
is available on the Theater Practice page of the Dark Lady Players
www.darkladyplayers.com together with various video footage.

For an extract from our recent lecture at Eastern Connecticut State University go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwX5sM3xLsM