Feminist Historian Claims Shakespeare was a Black Jewish Woman
“has devoted over two decades to the study and practice of gender equality across multiple countries”
What can you even say in response to this?
The College Fix reports:
Feminist historian: Shakespeare was really a black Jewish woman
A new book by a feminist historian claims William Shakespeare actually was a black Jewish woman from North Africa.
Irene Coslet, who has an MSc in Media, Communication and Development from the London School of Economics and “has devoted over two decades to the study and practice of gender equality across multiple countries, focusing on gender and development and gender-based violence prevention,” wrote about this theory in a Jan. 16 LSE blog post.
Coslet’s upcoming book “The Real Shakespeare: Emilia Bassano Willoughby” asserts the real playwright — Bassano — was “of Moroccan descent,” “covertly Jewish,” and the daughter of a Venetian Court musician.
Coslet’s claims aren’t novel; Shakespeare scholar John Hudson first proposed the theory of Shakespeare’s alleged real identity years ago.
According to a 2010 Globe and Mail article, Hudson claimed Bassano “wrote the sonnets about herself” and used “Shakespeare” as a “front” to “hide her identity.”
Hudson noted Shakepeare’s plays contain musical references “three times more than other typical plays of the period,” and these (supposedly) point to Bassano’s musician relatives.
Coslet argues the topic of Shakespeare’s true identity is best approached via a “Critical Theory and Feminist Theory” perspective:
[A] central component of my framework is the concept of the ‘Subaltern’, developed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. History, Spivak argued, is narrated by the hegemonic West, and in particular by white men as the ‘Subject’. The ‘Subaltern’ is silenced: female and black identities are suppressed and constructed as ‘the Other’. Depicting female and black identities as the Other, Spivak argued, justifies and perpetrates the domination of the white male Subject. This erasure of identities in the racialised and patriarchal narration of history reinforces prescribed roles and power relations in society.
According to The Telegraph, doubts about whether Shakespeare actually penned his works originate from the fact he had “little formal education,” yet somehow “was able to ascend to the level of a literary genius with an enormous breadth of knowledge.”
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again
the black matriarchy is in charge
whts must bow to them and face reparations>>punishment time
oh you dont like that??
whatcha gonna do!!?!????
And all this time I thought Shakespeare was a Palestinian.
“I’m not saying he was an alien, but… Forsooth!”
“Feminist historian”. Excuse me? The word “feminist” proves that she has an agenda, thus nothing she says or writes can be trusted.
But was (s)he gay???? That’s the real question.
If (s)he was straight, why do we care?
Hey, this looks like a great place to hang an entirely unrelated comment…
Occasionally, people here have posted, “How braindead do you have to be to watch The View?”
This braindead.
Tucson Spa Owner Threatens To Poison ICE Agents In Deleted Video
Down in the cellar /
You’re getting into making poison /
You slipped some on the side /
Into my glass of wine /
And I don’t want any coffee homeground…
She didn’t threaten to do it, since she’s not in the food service industry, so how would she ever have the opportunity? She was merely brainstorming about how “we” (i.e. someone else) could sabotage law enforcement by giving agents a tummy ache. She’s fantasizing about housewives in occupied France engaging in micro-resistance or some such nonsense.
well Roots was ripped off from a white guy so anything is possible
Black and Jewish. Why stop there. I believe she was also a feminist and a lesbian and the first transman when not gender fluid, She/He/It/They was also afflicted with AHDH and Aspergers. I’m sure we’ll uncover more about this fascinating renaissance women/man/whatever with further creative writing (I mean research).
Shouldn’t it be “feminist herstorian”? I doubt her commitment to the cause.
“According to The Telegraph, doubts about whether Shakespeare actually penned his works originate from the fact he had “little formal education,” yet somehow “was able to ascend to the level of a literary genius with an enormous breadth of knowledge.”
So how did a black Jewish Moroccan woman manage to get the education? That would seem even more unlikely given the time.
This is not a fictional character. Emilia Lanier (née Bassano) was a real poet, and we definitely know that she was highly educated, which is more than we know about Shakespeare.
Whether her father was of Moroccan and/or Jewish background is speculative.
Given that Shakespeare has been studied, picked over, critiqued, imitated, admired, textually analyzed, and otherwise written about for some 400 years, it should be hardly surprising that “scholars” are inventing new ways to get their books and papers published without plagiarizing from that vast store of previously published papers and books on the subject.
According to The Telegraph, doubts about whether Shakespeare actually penned his works originate from the fact he had “little formal education,” yet somehow “was able to ascend to the level of a literary genius with an enormous breadth of knowledge.”
Yep. And we know that lack of formal education is an insurmountable obstacle to success in life, since mere native intelligence always lies in the shadow of academic experience. Dropouts always fail, like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Charlie Kirk, and a couple Nobel Prize winners I know of.
Right. Shakespeare, the man, could never have pulled off what he did. Had to be a woman. An educated one.
Actually, Shakespeare had a reasonable amount of education for an Elizabethan playwright, more than many. (Read Prof. Jonathan Bate’s excellent biography for more information regarding what we know of Shakespeare’s education.) It is significant that, in an age characterized by rampant plagiarism, all of his contemporaries believed that he was the author of the plays (and sonnets). The real reason for the—mostly amateur—writers who started the controversy about his authorship in the later 19th century was that these people could not believe that an object of their extravagant worship could not have been at least as well documented as Goethe, who lived 200 years later; given the class-driven snobbery of their time, they also wanted him to be a nobleman, or at least a university-educated member of the upper middle classes, like themselves. Actually, we know a great deal more about his life than we do about most of his contemporaries, including some of high noble birth. Theories claiming some other personage “must” have written the plays are plain rubbish and none has ever stood up to any serious scrutiny. This one is, of course, much dumber than most.
I don’t agree that it’s dumber than most of the other such theories. Once you’ve decided that someone else wrote the plays, and you’re casting about for a likely candidate, Emilia Lanier seems no less likely than any of the others proposed.
The version of the theory I’ve heard is not that she wrote all the plays but that she had a hand in some of them, giving Shakespeare suggestions and advice, occasionally writing a few lines or a few pages for him, etc. As far as I know there’s no actual evidence that they knew each other, but it’s certainly plausible. They did have friends in common.
Irene Coslet, London School of Economics
AOC, Economics Degree Boston University
Useless degrees and certifications for $300, Alex.