A new book is challenging centuries of literary history with the provocative claim that William Shakespeare was actually a Black Jewish woman of North African descent. In The Real Shakespeare, feminist historian Irene Coslet argues that the true author behind the world’s most celebrated plays was Emilia Bassano, a poet with deep ties to the Tudor court.
Coslet contends that Bassano, whose family had origins in North Africa and connections to Venice, wrote the Shakespearean canon under a pseudonym to navigate a society that silenced female and minority voices.
The book suggests that the “Stratford man” we recognize today as the Bard was an uneducated interloper and moneylender who took credit for Bassano’s genius. According to Coslet, Western-centric and Eurocentric ideologies have spent the last 400 years erasing Bassano’s multicultural identity in favor of a “white” male narrative.
The theory of Shakespeare being a black Jewish woman stems from bassanos role as a mistress
The theory draws upon Bassano’s historical role as the mistress of Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain and patron of the acting troupe that performed Shakespeare’s works. While some scholars have previously identified Bassano as a candidate for the “Dark Lady” mentioned in the Sonnets, Coslet goes further, asserting that Bassano’s “diverse identity” as a Moor and a Jew provided the vast cultural erudition that traditional historians have struggled to explain in the life of William Shakespeare.
Addressing the existing portraits of Bassano that show a light-skinned woman, the book argues that Elizabethan portraitists likely lightened her skin to conform to contemporary beauty standards. Coslet told reporters that shifting the paradigm to recognize a woman of color as the author of these works would force a necessary reflection on how history belittles and silences marginalized contributors.
The consensus remains that Shakespeare is not a black woman
The academic consensus remains firmly rooted in the historical William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. Scholars point to the First Folio, which includes a dedication from Shakespeare’s rival Ben Jonson hailing him as a genius “for all time,” as primary evidence of his authorship.
While other candidates like Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere have been proposed by skeptics over the years, mainstream historians maintain that Shakespeare’s grammar school education was sufficient to produce his literary output.
Coslet’s work argues that hidden messages within the plays parallel Bassano’s life and lampoon her husband, Alfonso Lanier, as well as the man from Stratford. The book posits that the Stratford resident took advantage of the phonetic similarity between his own name and Bassano’s pseudonym to plagiarize her work, a claim that challenges the very foundation of the English literary tradition.