“Shakespeare was a black woman” - now I’ve heard it all!

😂🤣

Makes a change from Derek Jacobi IIRC claiming that the plays were written by some titled person, Shakespeare having been far too plebeian and uneducated to have produced them.

Mind you dh and I did see a black female Richard III not long ago, at our local theatre.
Though TBH the whole production was pretty dire.

Why do black people want to claim our heritage and stories. There must be many many legends and stories stretching back into the countries where black people originated in the past.

"Shakespeare was a black woman"; yeah right .

Hmm Maybe Mary Seacole wasn’t as black as she’s described.

Nobody is going to pay much attention to this. There have always been conspiracy theories about the authorship of Shakespeare’s works, just as some think Elvis is is still alive and Monroe was killed by the Mafia or the FBI.

Gosh. And it's not even April 1st. ,😅

Aveline

Why do black people want to claim our heritage and stories. There must be many many legends and stories stretching back into the countries where black people originated in the past.

Irene Coslet, the author, is not black, she's not after claiming anything for herself except where her research has led her. I dont agree with her, btw, but

A good question - why don't we know more about the histories and literature and Art of UK citizens who are not white

Answer - because they were not listened to for hundreds of years

When those peoples were part of our Empire, they were forced to learn British History

- their own histories and culture, like that from Benin, were deliberately in some places wiped out, called "native, inferior, childish

-or, called "oriental" (exotic, sexual, but not serious culture like "us".

If you have eyes to see and clearly some people dont - there are now many fiction and non fiction books available from and about different cultures and a great deal of art in and out of galleries with the same.

Blimey whatever next?!

Grannybags

Blimey whatever next?!

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

— Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 5)

Many scholars have suggested that Emilia Lanier (maiden name Bassano) was the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets. There are several books and a lot of research around this and it is a long-standing theory.

Nothing new under the sun.

Shakespeare was a married man and father who decided to wear a dress and make-up and change their pronouns so they could use the ladies' jakes .

I'm writing a TV series, starring Judi Dench as Anne Hathaway, with Oprah Winfrey as the Bard and Archie and Lillibet Sussex as their children.

I just feel the theories enrich us. Some like the Emilia Lanier have a good deal of credibility there. Others, are, well, a stretch.

But firstly, no one has to read it, and secondly, different cultural takes on what we have assumed to be "Reality" or "the Truth" are always fascinating and sometimes incredibly valuable and settle into the "Accepted" variety of views on a well known piece of art or writing or cultural theory.

Reclaiming and recovering writings and art by women that were "disappeared" by male critics, or rubbished, except for the very famous like Virginia Woolf has been a fascinating and worthwhile endeavour of the last 50 or so years.

The same goes for the cultures that make up our history and our citizenship in the UK.

I have heard of her before, as part of a musical family attached to the Tudor Court. She is sometimes thought to be the Dark Lady referred to in the sonnets. Who knew she had written them as well?
Clever lady.

I think the obsession with one specific characteristic of a person whether it is race, sexuality whatever has been one of the most divisive movements I have seen.

Plenty of diverse casting in plays today, but its pretty sure the Shakespeare was a white male and went to school at Stratford.
However because he never set foot out of England he had many colaborators recounting tales from overseas.
He isnt historically accurate, he was playing to please a Tudor audience, his first play was Henry VI when he was 26 plenty of time to learn the titled way of speaking.

But Galaxy right through History people have interpreted work through a partiuclar lens, and for most of the time it has been a white western male one. time for a bit of variety and different POV and challenges.
Our culture is strong enough to take these challenges, some of them fascinating. I think your feelings are maybe somewhat over worried and over fearful - interpretations come and go - some "stick" and become mainstream, others fade with time.

He used his imagination and a great deal of inventiveness, which is, after all, all many of these interpretations are doing.

The current view/interpretations of Hamlet are different from when I studied Shakespeare in 1973. All have added richness, they have not destroyed the work.

Aveline

Why do black people want to claim our heritage and stories. There must be many many legends and stories stretching back into the countries where black people originated in the past.

Why do some people so readily believe that a boy educated at KES Grammar School in Stratford-upon-Avon could not be well educated and intelligent enough to write these plays?

Women of that era, even if well-educated by a governess, had a more restricted education than boys.

King Edward VI set up many grammar schools for boys in England and many survive today.

It's not unusual, Aveline. A sucessful white male is an anathema to some people today including, it seems, the white female author of this piece of fiction.

He used his imagination and a great deal of inventiveness

Like Irene Coslet?

I am not frightened, I am bored. This is just more of the identity politics which is so dividing us. It is also an obsession with victimhood which is also causing great harm.

RosiesMawagain

From today’s newspaper
William Shakespeare was a “black Jewish woman”, according to a new book
It 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

I think I’ll give this one a miss!

Considering White Male Supremacists have been domination the world forever, I think it's entirely possible.

This is fascinating. Wonder if libraries will stock it?

ClareAB

RosiesMawagain

From today’s newspaper
William Shakespeare was a “black Jewish woman”, according to a new book
It 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

I think I’ll give this one a miss!

Considering White Male Supremacists have been domination the world forever, I think it's entirely possible.

As you think that White Male Supremacists have been domination the world forever then could you expand on your theory.

Could you explain who William Shakespeare was , his relationship with this woman (it is mooted that they were lovers and she was his Dark Lady) and, if she managed to have other works attributed to her, so not the plays and sonnets?