Jodi Picoult argues for Emilio Bassano as author in By Any Other Name
Picoult, whose books have sold 40 million copies, has written a new novel featuring Emilio Bassano as the author of Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, Romeo & Juliet, and Othello at the least. She turned her attention to the Bard in her latest novel. “I think that, back then, people in theatre knew that William Shakespeare was a catch-all name for a lot of different types of authors. I think they expected it to be a joke that everyone would get. And we’ve all lost the punchline over 400 years,” she told an audience at the Hay Festival as she launched the novel, By Any Other Name.
From The Telegraph, “The novel features dual timelines. One is concerned with Bassano, as she secretly works on the plays and sonnets. Another is set in the modern day, where a descendant of Bassano also battles sexism in the theatre world, this time on Broadway.” Picoult also attributes Sonnet 18 to Bassano and frames it as a bereavement poem after the death of her daughter.
Bassano is well known to literary historians of the period as she was the first woman to publish original poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, under her own name openly.
Our Obsession with Biographies of the Bard
The Financial Times, London, in their continuing series on Shakespeare, published a story by Elizabeth Winkler on June 1 wherein she collates all the acknowledgments of the missing pieces of the man’s life. The biography industry is its own segment of history and biographies of the man from Stratford abound, but all of them “reach beyond the facts.” Or as David Ellis, author of The Truth about William Shakespeare: Fact, Fiction, and Modern Biographies, has written, there is a “general lowering of intellectual standards and the degradation of the art of biography.”
Whose Dodgy History?
Philip Wormald published a takedown of the authorship question in The Spectator Life using Picoult’s novel as his starting point. Oddly, there is more fiction in his riposte than there is her novel. Wormald attempts to dismiss the “Q” as conspiracy theories and in doing so trips over his misconceptions about the entire debate. Wormald claims, “The anti-Stratfordians point to the fact that his father was a glove-maker, as if this were relevant to his dramaturgic prowess.” Au contraire, Mr. Wormald, it is the Stratfordians who use this nugget to support their traditional narrative. He continues with the lad from Stratford “most probably” went to grammar school, resorting to the hypothetical approach to biography so prevalent in the traditional narrative. “Shakespeare’s contemporaries had no problem with his authorship because they were there with him in the theatre.” Actually, no. There is significant scholarly work on this. See a small bit of Dr. Barber’s considerable body of work addressing this here. No one disputes that he was an actor. But even his contemporaries disputed that he was an author. Wormald continues airing his ignorance when he states, “Emilia Bassano is a recent addition to the roster of candidates, despite there being as much evidence that she met Shakespeare as there is that the world is flat.” Define recent. Bassano was mistress to Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, patron of the theatre where Shakespeare acted. These three were often in the same place. And to add insult to proto-feminists everywhere, Wormald ends by reducing Bassano’s significant volume of poetry to a single poem.
Video of the April 2024 Members’ Gathering is available.
The annual spring gathering of members via Zoom is now available to paying subscribers on this site. The focus of the gathering was looking back to 2014 at the 450th celebrations of Shakespeare’s birth (1564), and how much has changed in the authorship question since then. And much has changed!
A new book supporting the Oxfordian authorship claim
SOUTH KENT, CT, USA, May 22, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ Award-winning architect and writer John Milnes Baker has published a new book challenging the traditional Stratfordian authorship narrative in The Case for Edward de Vere as the real William Shakespeare. “My primary message to readers is to approach controversies with an open mind,” says Baker. “Don't be quick to embrace one side or another just because it's a popularly held belief. Bias can cause a person to adamantly defend a position even in the face of contrary evidence. Delve into all subjects with an open mind, and decide for yourself what makes the most sense.”
Shakespeare the Accountant?
The Financial Times and their Manila outlet published a story exploring the theory that Shakespeare was an accountant. As with most theories about the man from Stratford, the use of metaphors within the canon are highlighted as supporting evidence. “We shall not spend a large expense of time/ Before we reckon with your several loves,” declares Malcolm in Macbeth, “And make us even with you.” The jailer in Cymbeline compares the hangman’s noose with an accountant reckoning the credits and debits of the condemned man’s life. And The Comedy of Errors refers to a debt as a “thousand marks,” a unit only used by book-keepers in Elizabethan England.
The excuse for all this meandering through numerical metaphors is the forthcoming publication of Much Ado About Numbers by Rob Eastaway. It includes tidbits such as the Dutch guilders in Anatolia in The Comedy of Errors, the Italian chequins in Phoenicia in Pericles, and the playwright describes Portuguese crusadoes in Venice in Othello, and has Julius Caesar's will bequeathing Greek drachmas to every Roman. We wonder how his glovemaker father felt about his son’s side gig.
Re-release of Baconian Theory Made Sane
From PR Newswire: “There’s new wind in the sails for the ‘small but mighty’ Francis Bacon Society as it relaunches British barrister N. B. Cockburn's monumental 1998 study, The Bacon Shakespeare Question: The Baconian Theory Made Sane (1998) with its 2024 Francis Bacon Edition. Based on decades of original research at the British Library, the former Inner Temple barrister's book presents a fair-but-formidable fact-based case for Francis Bacon's authorship of Shakespeare.”
Sir Derek Jacobi and Margo Anderson: Oxford as author of Merry Wives
The Guardian is on a roll. In May, they published an article by Michael Billingsworth arguing that Merry Wives of Windsor proves that the man from Stratford is the author. This month, they published a different perspective written by Sir Derek Jacobi and Margo Anderson, arguing that the same play supports the candidacy of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the author. Why the focus on Merry Wives? The Royal Shakespeare Company is launching a new production of the play. Jacobi and Anderson include several historical facts in their piece which is a departure from Billingsworth’s approach. Some of the most intriguing are the amounts of annuities and inheritances. They also call out biblical references in the play and some notated verses in De Vere’s bible currently housed at The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Letters taking issue with Jacobi and Anderson’s article were also duly published. None of them provide any contradicting facts.
Henry Oliver goes all in on the fictional narrative
Henry Oliver’s declaration that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare: Stop Talking About This on his The Common Reader Substack prompted the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship to post a near line-by-line corrective. [NOTE: The SAT supports the question but does not endorse one candidate over another.] Oliver’s most glaring erroneous statement is, “We know Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare because there is enough documentary evidence to prove the claim.” There is no evidence the man from Stratford wrote the works in question. There is plenty of evidence he was an actor, a grain hoarder, concerned with upper mobility, and from the Stratford area. Just no evidence that he was a writer. May we humbly suggest that he who is without primary evidence should perhaps refrain from throwing aspersions. Should Mr. Oliver be interested, we should be happy to send him a copy of Diana Price’s Shakespeeare’s Unorthodox Biography as a primer for his edification.
Hi Kristin, thanks for the roundup. At the risk of being “one of those people,” I am impelled to ask for evidence for your assertions (“no one disputes”, “ there is plenty of evidence that”, “Bassano was mistress to Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, patron of the theatre where Shakespeare acted. These three were often in the same place.”) that Shakespeare’s career as an actor is well documented, as I can find no contemporaneous evidence at all that a William Shakespeare or Shakspere ever appeared on the public stage. Other than Jonson including Shakespeare in the cast lists of Every Man In his Humour, and Sejanus in his own 1616 Folio, and the list of players in the 1623 Folio, the earliest identification of Shakespeare “the player” appears to be 1642, in the herald records documented by Heather Wolfe. It is a matter of faith among Anti-Stratfordians that Jonson’s folio paratexts cannot be taken at face value (a faith I share, which forms the central matter for my substack www.marywasshakespeare.com), which leaves essentially no evidence I am aware of for Shakespeare as an actor. Not meaning to single you out, while it is wrong to say “no one disputes” that Shakespeare was an actor (my casual survey suggests nearly half of AntiStrats suspect the Stratford man had no connection to the theater other than the name), it is a commonplace to make this concession. After carefully documenting the comparative lack of personal evidence for Shakspere as a writer, Diana Price makes him an actor and play broker, with apparently no thought to the possibility of fulfilling these much more public roles without leaving a shred of evidence. If there is any evidence that Stratford Shakespeare had a career in the theater other than being a writer I would love to know about it.
No mention of my own book in the splendid noise of alternative authors!
It is called "Debugging Shakespeare" and is good value at £19.99, to include around 330,000 words and images. I have produced abut 60 Youtube videos to help to promote it and it includes active hyperlinks to the source material in libraries and museums all over the world.
Everything is NEW research, NOT just a re-hash of old material - i.e. familiar faces with new twists.
The book even shows that JOHN MILTON (poet) was a son of the bard, using his composer alias name, "John Milton" - with a "fake" grandfather "Richard Melton", from the salt town of Melton Woodbridge (a subsidiary town to Nantwich where the salt was mainly produced - Woodbridge is mid-way between Great Yarmouth and Ipswich and the town also made ROPE!)
There has been evidence available since 1883* that John Milton (the poet) was living in "Weld's Green farm", ROPE Lane, Weld's Green**, Wistaston, near Nantwich (with OLD Mr. Milton)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KQQSiem0PSlgIMpXpFU5vRCC9bqFQzYr/view?usp=drive_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FdXxIYOnW68nkBGK1mBthFHUi9EB32Dz/view?usp=drive_link
My latest video talks about some of this, but the 59+ earlier videos show more revelations
https://youtu.be/ylqjwtxXBIs?si=P5f4J3yP3vpeGXz7
*from a Visitation of Lancashire in 1664
**now known as "Wells Green"