“The Real Shakespeare: Emilia Bassano Willoughby”, Irene Coslet

Book review by Simon Jenner

I

Irene Coslet’s The Real Shakespeare: Emilia Bassano is a fascinating book about a woman who is s finally making her way to the forefront of Elizabethan studies. Quite rightly. It’s high time for an authoritative study of Bassano, her poetry, music-making, struggles in litigation and life; and as someone who enjoyed the confidence of Queen Elizabeth. Above all a study of how an exceptionally gifted woman had to navigate through sexism, misogyny, pregnancy and status. This isn’t quite it, but it’s a significant contribution around a detailed feminist reading. Pity about the premise.

A pity too that, placed against the very light index against Bassano’s or Shakespeare’s names, there are no page numbers and detailed sub-headings but lazy use of “passim”. Happily, Coslet does detail in advance her arguments in chapter summaries, and there are many sub-headings throughout each chapter, themselves often helpfully brief. Though this means we are introduced to topics more thematic than chronological, it’s not difficult to navigate. By contrast with the sub-par index there is an extensive bibliography and liberal chapter notes.

It’s also worth laying out the real merits of this book, itself derived (as Coslet acknowledges) from propositions first made by John Hudson in his Shakespeare’s Dark Lady (Amberley 2013) and subsequent articles. Coslet also pays tribute to a small host of Bassano scholars. Coslet writes clearly and assimilates recent thinking around the early modern period, with Chapter 3 on the ‘Moors: A Lost Civilisation’ and their history, and that of Jews (Chapter 4: ‘Needed but Unwanted’). She usefully reminds readers how the Renaissance was bifurcated in recovery of knowledge and scientific enquiry to combine into humanist-centred thought. And of course early colonialism. Her scholarly absorption is well laid out. In itself none of this addresses the core theme, but – if sometimes refractively – it is an expansive context in which to appreciate Bassano.

Further, Coslet summarizes Hudson’s arguments and particularly his evidence. Indeed she leans heavily enough on the latter to make me wish I were reading his work since arguing with Coslet is at times like shadow boxing with Hudson. Both wed characters, plots and above all themes in Shakespeare’s plays to where they might project Bassano’s biography like a magic lantern. All’s Well That Ends Well provides much speculation for instance on page 89. A flickering use of Shakespeare’s sources asserts Bassano’s almost certain knowledge for instance of Boccaccio in the original (though for Troilus and Cressida, not for All’s Well where the story also originates). Those offering plausible evidence of Shakespeare’s and Bassano’s connection might project exchanges Shakespeare acted on, though other sources lay open to him. One dramatist has and I shall return to Morgan Lloyd Malcolm.

The refutation of other anti-Stratfordian contenders is amusingly dispatched though: why would anyone but a woman conceal their identity? Perhaps Marlowe needing to keep on being “dead” according to Marlovian Rosalind Barber (whose verse-novel asserts just that). It does though strike at the heart of other ‘theories’, so Hudson and Coslet perform a gleefully inadvertent service!

II

It is here too in Chapter 7 (pages 75-116) that Bassano’s life is summarized. There are many subsections including ‘Chastity’ and useful summaries of projections of promiscuity laid on Bassano, sometimes toxic family dynamics. Most of all there is the tracing of heritage and culture, and what the Bassano family did with it after being invited over from Venice by Henry VIII. Alongside earlier contextual chapters, these provide fruitful reading.

Bassano’s family was imbued with theatre, Commedia dell’arte and court entertainment. Bassano, born in 1569 to a Venetian Jewish family who likely practised their faith secretly and had court connections, early became the lover of the aged Henry Carey when aged just 15, and lived at court. This where for some years she was apparently close to Elizabeth I. “In 1594, at the aged of twenty-three [in fact 25], Emilia Bassano was exiled from Court.” Most, including Hudson, plausibly conclude this was because she fell pregnant. Having to make her own way after Carey’s death, Bassano founded a school in 1613, sued uncles for an inheritance denied her and her son, and appealed to James I, who helped, minimally. When her son (also Henry) died aged 40, Bassano battled on behalf of her grandson, now bringing up two grandchildren alone. She died in April 1645.

III

Coslet’s contribution beyond Hudson’s assertion is twofold: a feminist reading of Hudson’s premise, and one that addresses material evidence. That is historical records and lacunae; which tends to spiral into circumstances more than Hudson. The former is useful to Bassano, and more broadly. Coslet writes much on patriarchal structure (and indeed once on the thematic structure of Romeo and Juliet to adduce aesthetics). Sometimes there is too much undigested preaching: as when Coslet draws on the history of (for instance) #MeToo. She addresses further themes of harassment though these are contextualised. Although drawing extensively on Hudson, and coincidences that he can adduce (Bassano was living near Windsor when Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor, and so on) Coslet usefully foregrounds the position of both Jewish and Black women in early modern gender and feminist studies in the opening chapters.

Combining both of these, in the brief (pages 162-6) Chapter 12: ‘Simon Forman: A #MeToo Reading’ Coslet addresses Bassano’s birth. It’s intriguing. Coslet details Bassano’s known visit to astrologer, playgoing chronicler and (as Coslet persuasively asserts) sexual predator Simon Forman. Knowing Forman’s attendance at Shakespeare’s plays, Coslet (naturally) concludes he knew nothing of the admired playwright’s ‘real’ identity. Nevertheless it’s useful since Bassano appears to have desired a horoscope and it throws a light on her thinking; and, more broadly that of the many who consulted Forman. Later, James I was known to be notably both superstitious and threatened by occult practice.

From Forman’s noting of ascendant and moon down to the last minute, Coslet is able to retrofit a precise date and time for Bassano’s birth: 9.17pm 9 January 1569 in London. (Bassano was baptised on 27). Though Coslet does not add this, it fits the older Julian calendar (in UK use till 1752), and it would be now 19. There is also a lunar discrepancy of one degree and 23 minutes when I checked; but this is probably down to Forman’s lack of a computer programme. The point is, did Bassano know down to a few minutes when she was born? Or did Forman use a process known as ‘rectification’ on at least an approximate time? Such maps are not the territory, but are illuminating of contemporary mindsets.

IV

Subsequent chapters for instance Chapter 9: “The Defence of Women: The ‘New’ Christine de Pisan” address John Knox’s misogynistic attack on Elizabeth I with further details of misogynistic thinking and how some women countered them. The trouble is that Coslet immediately recruits Bassano – whom she calls Shakespeare when dealing with texts – as a conscious feminist writing both oblique and direct counterblasts in the guise of strong women, started with those in the Henry VI trilogy. “Joan of Arc defies gender stereotypes, and prove to be heroic, but she is confronted with … the patriarchal worldview.” (pages 134-5). This is lazy. Has Coslet even read the part, or can she construe it? The misogynistic projection of Joan of Arc as ‘La Pucelle’ in Shakespeare’s reading is completely ignored in this paean. In a BBC 4 documentary Janet Suzman who portrayed ‘La Pucelle’ for The Wars of the Roses television version of 1964 (adapted by John Barton and directed by Trevor Nunn), is more trenchant on Shakespeare’s portrayal, which she distinguishes from the historical: “She’s a scamp!” Suzman concludes, grinning.

Other figures such as Margaret of Anjou are then recruited. At least towards the end of Chapter 9 (page 149) slivers of the real Bassano (on ‘Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum’) appear, though a tiny phrase: “The means of women”. It is then woven into a Coslet tapestry that cites, for instance, Christine de Pisan, author of The Book of the City of Ladies.

Subsequent chapters are also marred by this. There are even six pages given over to a slim Chapter 10 on ‘Theatre as Propaganda: The Collaboration between Queen Elizabeth and Emilia Bassano’. Even after Bassano was exiled, we are told, the collaboration continued. Chapter 17 for instance is ‘Falstaff: Alfonso Lanyer’. Chapter 18 is ‘Slander and Jealousy: Alfonso Lanyer and Henry Wriothesley’. It reads one as Iago and the latter as Othello. Lanyer was clearly a fruitful model.

Chapter 19 (pages 237-41) at least examines Sonnets 131 and 132, though defiantly Coslet states that it is “not to make a critical review of commentary”. Nevertheless Coslet is apparently “following” critic Helen Vendler, though not quite specifying how. Here Coslet performs even further gymnastics by suggesting it is a dramatized, satirical critique: of a fictional male, an Othello-like man; the subject, a Bassano-like or Black woman; and the poet. In fact Vender’s 1997 reading is far more subtle, inverting the Petrarchan “fair” motif and suggesting how the woman’s “black” or dark appearance makes him not feel; not just lust. It does not suggest a dramatic male other.

V

As for other literary analyses, Coslet leaves much of that to Hudson, if not wholly. She asserts her business is more about ‘material facts’. Though quoting liberally from the plays, she shows little interest in close reading. Shoehorning characters and speeches to craft a dissident biography must not detain us because there is still more interesting analysis. Too often Coslet asserts, and as we have seen proves nothing but a re-ordering of material, a teleological wrench seen down a wrong-way telescope. For instance in Chapter 8 (page 128) Coslet deploys some aleatory arguments for adducing Bassano’s character, including the Myers-Briggs tests where Bassano and Beatrice are yoked together and analyzed as “ENFP”. Stephen Jeffreys used these in his master classes so they are acceptable tools but here only adducible for Beatrice, a fictional character. Psycho-biographical projections afford little insight into what we can infer from Bassano’s life and opinions.

In trying to slip Bassano into the airy cage of Shakespeare’s language Coslet (like Hudson) frequently quotes it to prove how Shakespeare was so different to contemporaries in ‘his’ approach to women. Indeed he was, but exuberant (even occasionally misogynistic) male bawdy is less discussed – though there is a notable section on ‘Nothing’, known as slang for female genitalia and triple-punned in Much Ado About Nothing (the pun is also about ‘noting’). For instance Shakespeare’s sexual disgust in Sonnet 129 (“Th’ expense of spirits”), and in Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes”), had Bassano written it, would prove a self-lacerating as well as self-reflexive (indeed potentially queer) exercise, when “black wires grow on her head”. Like Sonnets 131 and 132, these would doubtless be regarded as dramatizations. Such discussions are not entertained but deflected; and the fruitful question of Shakespeare’s own queerness neutered, since Bassano’s (assumed) straight sexuality cancels it. Coslet abandons the literary. Banish the literary and you banish the whole bard.

Doubtless Shakespeare can be recruited to prove the existence of aliens; but Coslet is more grounded elsewhere, brings a wealth of incidental historical knowledge, and sheds a glaucous light.

VI

Finally, having cleared the way to the real value of this book, it’s necessary to clear the rubbish too.  Coslet views both subjects yoked with violence together, through a wrong-way telescope, proceeds on bland assertions and refracts Bassano harmfully through the prism of Shakespeare’s language. Or rather a cut-and-paste methodology of feeding plays through a biographical shredder and gluing pieces of it onto the ghost of Bassano, so she appears a paper mummy or (as “ENFP” Beatrice would say) a stuffed man. Shakespeare withstands anything, including spaceships. Bassano deserves more critical armour, not embalming. Luckily – as we’ve seen – some of that can be extracted from this book.

Quite why the scandal of why we still believe a bricklayer’s stepson who never went to university became the most learned man of his age, and a playwright of genius, remains a mystery. Admittedly a cobbler’s son with the same education got to Cambridge on a scholarship. And a mayor’s son, more prosperous and well-to-do than either would probably have gone to Oxford had his father not gone bankrupt. Bankruptcy indeed forced dramatist John Middleton (another son of a bricklayer) to quit Oxford. But he, like Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare all enjoyed the same excellent education: at various grammar schools, all still thriving.

Obsession with Shakespeare’s identity has been summarized by Martin Seymour-Smith (editor of the first original-spelling edition of the Sonnets) in 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written (page 196) as “a harmless form of minor mental illness, or perhaps just snobbery”. It’s an obsession equivalent to Elvis on the moon or bar-working. In other words, we can’t believe media-vaunted cultural idols are lower-middle-class or dead in middle-class ways: like colds or car-crashes.  Seymour-Smith was writing in 1998. That is, before the current anti-Stratfordian vogue became semi-respectable amongst what one might cruelly call the three-quarter-educated. Those quite educated people who don’t work in a strictly literary field. Not those who painstakingly match characteristic language-patterns to text. Nor those who look in detail simply at the one evidence that matters: the words.

VII

It’s through analysis of words that this year has seen a new Collected Works of Thomas Kyd (edited by Brian Vickers et al, Boydell and Brewer, April 2026). It should be huge news. A dramatist of genius, Kyd plausibly emerges as a playwright of not three but eight plays, including the (sometimes) Shakespeare-attributed Arden of Faversham. And Kyd it seems, not Marlowe, had a hand in Henry VI Part 1. This makes sense: as the Cambridge University Press edition previously confirmed, Shakespeare contributed to Kyd’s Edward III. Quite how “the man from Stratford” as Coslet calls this usurping cuckoo, was able to pretend to collaborate with other writers is a mystery. Shakespeare did, mostly at the beginning and end of his career; and, as with Timon of Athens, with Middleton in the middle, around 1605. Shakespeare seemingly started with Kyd, from whom most likely he learned his craft. It’s Kyd’s dramatic gifts that showed him how to develop as a playwright. Not Marlowe’s mighty line, which certainly helped with Shakespeare’s language. Shakespeare’s language though always fits the dramatic moment and character: Marlowe often plays the general quality of rhetoric; if soaring magnificently. Until Edward II he could never quite craft a play. And Marlowe’s characters always sound like Marlowe.

Kyd, Middleton and Fletcher might have had a thing or three to say when “the man from Stratford” appeared far less quick and adept than his scripts proclaimed. Collaboration was intricate, as analysis of The Two Noble Kinsmen shows. In 1614 Shakespeare worked in passages with Fletcher at points where his specific gifts were needed. The same is true with the partially-recovered Cardenio, or Double Falsehood. Then there is the actual manuscript in Shakespeare’s own hand: the famous 147 lines in Sir Thomas More, originally written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, then Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and others in two phases ten years apart. It was kept (possibly impounded) by the authorities. All this makes Shakespeare one of the most fully-documented writers of his time; far more than Marlowe. Unless you go down some Masonic rabbit-hole that somehow everyone conspired to hide Shakespeare’s real identity. It’s not something Ben Jonson, talking freely to Drummond of Hawthornden in January 1619, would have entertained. His friend and rival Shakespeare was officially dead by then; and the conversations were not discovered and published till 1711 in part, and fully in 1842. Inconceivable to some of us is that to his contemporaries Shakespeare was just another, very successful, writer and rival.

VIII

Instead of examining Bassano’s own poetry in relation to Shakespeare, Coslet proceeds to deploy it as cultural signifier around Bassano’s hidden Jewish heritage (where she scores), then loop-feeds it through Shakespeare. There is no attempt to note that Bassano’s writing is as different to Shakespeare as say Marlowe (we have seen Coslet doesn’t favour this contender of course: one would relish a debate with her and Rosalind Barber). Or Bacon, de Vere, or indeed Kyd. It’s a pity too Coslet didn’t examine a Jewish woman with some parallels to Bassano, which validate the very plausible theories from Coslet that Bassano practised her Jewish faith in secret. That is indeed presumed of composer Leonora Duarte (1610-78), living with her Jewish musical family in Antwerp. Duarte was a composer at a slightly later time when it was just becoming possible for women composers to publish. As Coslet notes, Bassano’s extended family included Robert Johnson (1583-1633) who collaborated with Shakespeare, and Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666). Bassano’s immediate family seem executants or improvisors rather than composers, but it’s reasonable to suppose Bassano, born say 40 or 50 years later (as Barbara Strozzi 1619-77 was) might have, like Campion or Lanier written and even published words and music.

As for Bassano’s own published poetry, it’s notable by its virtual omission by Coslet, in comparison with the ubiquity of Shakespeare, quoted passim but sadly indexed “passim” too. It’s wholly different in temper; laced with a slightly Spenserian quality in its octaves in say ‘Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum’. Coslet rightly addresses Jewish themes touched on in this poem, far more directly than in other contemporary poetry. Admittedly there is not much of Bassano’s verse. But for the poetry’s very different linguistic register and strategies, Coslet is tellingly mute. Both about the poetry itself and its relation to Shakespeare’s.

There’s also no mention of Shakespeare’s humour and wit – not something Bassano is able to address in her own poetry’s themes, more than a wry undercurrent. The subject matter is solemn. More generally, the specifics of Shakespeare’s language and versification, its metaphors and strategies, is something conspiracy theorists tend to glaze over, or simply don’t register. Author of the riotous Falstaff and The Late Mr Shakespeare, the late Robert Nye, has drawn attention to the Dirge in Cymbeline. “Golden lads and girls all must/As chimney sweepers come to dust.” An innocuous pun till you realise, as Nye pointed out to this writer, that chimney sweepers are dandelions in Warwickshire dialect. The pun springs – or perhaps blows – into life. Since Shakespeare rarely used Warwickshire idiom, the notion of fake Shakespeares sniffing about local dialect to make just a few local puns like that is laughable. Someone faking Shakespeare would have deployed them more liberally, if you follow that logic. Anti-Stratfordians of all stripes however are so deeply embroiled that, as Nye also points out, they are in denial. Rationales become magical thinking. Bassano’s language too is more overtly devotional, a mode uncharacteristic of the cautious Shakespeare. Nye himself indulges in outrageous Shakespeare-origin stories in short chapters, in The Late Mr Shakespeare. And that is where they belong: in fiction.

IX

None of this detracts from some fine work here in Bassano studies. Scholars have done much service in bringing Bassano to the fore. But the latest moves by Hudson, and Coslet following him, lack literary judgement and sensitivity.

The need to culturally invade is a bit American but in this it diverts from how Bassano truly battled against the constraints of contemporary female experience; and from evaluating her own gifts. That someone could successfully channel plays through a willing medium yet be willingly gulled time after time and still end up poor (as Bassano did) is too fantastical. It makes Bassano a vehicle for our own cultural obsessions. Appropriation has made a teleological idiocy of Coslet’s talents. Bassano might not thank us.

Professor Andrew Gurr, Shakespearean scholar and Globe consultant, once said to me: “I’m not bothered whether Arden of Faversham is by Shakespeare – I don’t think it is – but is it Shakespearean? Does it stem from the cast of his imagination, his language?” We now know it stems from Kyd’s great imagination. It’s not a case of the less Bassano she for not being Shakespeare. It’s the wrong annealing of two very different imaginaries. Shakespeare can take it. Bassano needs more attention. It was after all a man who started this latest attribution. I’m far happier in believing Shakespeare, like James Joyce, heard a joke and ran to the tavern to jot it down. When in I, Emilia Morgan Lloyd Malcom’s Emilia chides Shakespeare for stealing her ideas, Malcolm might be closer to the truth. Shakespeare, like nearly all great artists, stole from or absorbed everything.

Marlowe on the run, turning into Shakespeare is the only attractive anti-Stratfordian conspiracy going because you can enjoy the magical dovetailing of two very different writers and make a thriller of it. Confronted with Bacon as an absurd candidate at 19, I thought it might be a fun fit. I had not realised Marlowe was a genuine candidate. Barber is I feel wrong-headed but gifted. I would rather her fiction that harms neither writer, than someone shoehorning a highly talented but harshly recruited icon. Coslet has done Bassano’s state some service, and we know it. No more of that. We need a new study that draws on Coslet’s discoveries. (Goodnight, Irene).

Irene Coslet The Real Shakespeare: Emilia Bassano Willoughby Pen & Sword History £25 309pp
ISBN-10: ‎1399035371
ISBN-13: ‎978-1399035378