Shakespeare was a black woman, book claims
Book claims that the truth of Shakespearean authorship has been hidden by centuries of “Western-centric and Eurocentric ideology”.
The author contends that the real Bard was a cosmopolitan woman with a “multicultural identity”.
This woman is identified in the new work, titled The Real Shakespeare, as the historical figure Emilia Bassano – a poet with connections to the Tudor court.
Bassano, it is claimed, used the pen-name “Shakespeare” and wrote the Shakespearean canon of plays, only for her work to be stolen by an uneducated interloper from Stratford-upon-Avon.
This interloper, whom we now know as William Shakespeare, was then revered by posterity because the idea of a “white” genius was preferred to a black female playwright, the book argues.
The latest candidate, Bassano, was the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain and patron of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the theatre troupe Shakespeare made famous.
Some writers have suggested Bassano may be the inspiration for the “Dark Lady” addressed in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
While the book concedes that portraits of Bassano show a light-skinned woman, it is argued that her skin may have been deliberately lightened as a compliment by the portraitist. This is because, in Elizabethan England, light skin was considered beautiful.
The “Stratford man” exploited Bassano’s position as a woman to plagiarise her work but, the book states: “We do not have any detail on how this exactly happened, but it is reasonable to assume that the man from Stratford took advantage of the similarity between his own name, Shekespere, and Emilia Bassano’s pseudonym [Shakespeare].”
The work concludes: “In the case of Emilia Bassano, the problem is not only historiographical misogyny, but also historiographical racism. Emilia Bassano was a Moor. She was a Jew. Modern historians failed to give credit to these identities for their role and contribution in Western history.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01...ne-coslet/
Book claims that the truth of Shakespearean authorship has been hidden by centuries of “Western-centric and Eurocentric ideology”.
The author contends that the real Bard was a cosmopolitan woman with a “multicultural identity”.
This woman is identified in the new work, titled The Real Shakespeare, as the historical figure Emilia Bassano – a poet with connections to the Tudor court.
Bassano, it is claimed, used the pen-name “Shakespeare” and wrote the Shakespearean canon of plays, only for her work to be stolen by an uneducated interloper from Stratford-upon-Avon.
This interloper, whom we now know as William Shakespeare, was then revered by posterity because the idea of a “white” genius was preferred to a black female playwright, the book argues.
The latest candidate, Bassano, was the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain and patron of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the theatre troupe Shakespeare made famous.
Some writers have suggested Bassano may be the inspiration for the “Dark Lady” addressed in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
While the book concedes that portraits of Bassano show a light-skinned woman, it is argued that her skin may have been deliberately lightened as a compliment by the portraitist. This is because, in Elizabethan England, light skin was considered beautiful.
The “Stratford man” exploited Bassano’s position as a woman to plagiarise her work but, the book states: “We do not have any detail on how this exactly happened, but it is reasonable to assume that the man from Stratford took advantage of the similarity between his own name, Shekespere, and Emilia Bassano’s pseudonym [Shakespeare].”
The work concludes: “In the case of Emilia Bassano, the problem is not only historiographical misogyny, but also historiographical racism. Emilia Bassano was a Moor. She was a Jew. Modern historians failed to give credit to these identities for their role and contribution in Western history.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01...ne-coslet/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
