Will and Aemilia

In light of this beautiful piece of art I stumbled upon through our friend, Facebook, I thought it would be interesting to test its accuracy. We talked about Shakespeare's relationship with Aemilia Layner as the "dark lady" from Shakespeare's sonnets. Here is some research I found: According to John Hudson (famous for his theory about the connection between Lanyer and Shakespeare) Lanyer may have actually written some of Shakespeare's works. Though Doug's arguments about Shakespeare writing his own works (with some collaborations and with the Tribe of Ben) makes much more sense, this argument is a little convincing. At this point I know enough about Shakespeare and his works to know that this is just a broad speculation, but it is thought that "Shakespeare would not have had the requisite knowledge of Jewish lore, written into the plays, that a Jewish Bassano-Lanyer would; and that she agreed to be his ghostwriter, needing the cover of a man’s identity in order to have her work published and performed" (Hudson). Another scholar counters this theory, though, by saying that "if she were no more Jewish than Shakespeare, the argument that he must not have written the plays, must apply to her as well on this score" (Machenery).

Mainly, I was inspired by the picture from facebook, and decided that even knowing a little more about the "dark lady" of the sonnets could be profitable in understanding Lanyer's place as a revolutionary female writer during the renaissance. Not only was she a woman writing taboo stuff, but she wasn't white. I think Lanyer probably invented the Spice Girls' saying, "Girl power!"