A feature article about Amelia Bassano Lanier as the author of Shakespeare’s works — “Was Shakespeare a Woman?” by Michael Posner — appeared in the Toronto newspaper Globe & Mail on January 15/16.
The article opens with the statement:
One of the most prestigious academic journals devoted to Shakespearean authorship studies has just added a new candidate to the centuries-old debate about who else plausibly might have written the works we associate with the little-educated merchant and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon.
The journal is identified as The Oxfordian edited by Michael Egan, although the reporter misidentifies The Oxfordian publisher — the Shakespeare Oxford Society — as the “Oxford Society”.
The Globe and Mail reporter quotes Egan:
Mr. Egan of The Oxfordian allows that Bassano “was a remarkable woman with strong literary and court connections. But it’s a big step from that to Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Hudson’s evidence, such as [the] detailed knowledge of northern Italy, also supports other candidates. My view is that the Shakespeare mystery remains unsolved.”
The Oxfordian article that proposed Bassano-Lanier as Shakespeare is John Hudson’s “Ameria Bassano Lanier: a New Paradigm”. In the comments section attached to the Globe & Mail article, Hudson offers to defend his thesis :
In order to understand the research it is necessary to read the article in The Oxfordian titled ‘Amelia Bassano Lanier; A New Paradigm’. It is available on the Dark Lady Players web site www.darkladyplayers.com on the page for the Theater Practice. If anyone cares to read the article and has a substantive point to make I will be happy to respond to it.
A sidebar to the article lists and describes the major contenders in the Shakespearean authorship question: Oxford, Marlowe, Bacon and Derby; and cites London-based The Shakespearean Authorship Trust as one of the resources for the information.
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/was-shakespeare-a-woman/article1433158/
