humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On Mar 19, 6:55 pm, Lyra wrote:
>
> ```````````````````
>
> I still think Kit Marlowe wrote it...
>
> interesting interview though.
>
> ```````````````````

Regarding this...

(quote)

> How did you first hit upon Amelia Bassano as a candidate for author of
> the plays we've come to know as William Shakespeare's?
>
> If the plays contain Jewish satires and allegories, then there was
> only one Jewish candidate.
>
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Jean Jofen has a theory that Katherine Marlowe was a Marrano (Jew),
and that Marlowe wrote the plays.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/1840/the.htm

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/1840/title.htm

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> How much knowledge of Jewish texts was Bassano likely to have as a
> Marrano and a woman?

`````````
>
> There was only one Talmud known in England, it was in westminster
> cathedral library; however, Talmudic teaching was also oral, so
> individual quotes could have been transmitted that way. There are
> several quotes from the Pirke Avot which was available as a standalone
> volume in Latin, similarly the Zohar.

`````````

> There were of course women scholars at the time, including one who was
> a distant relative of the Bassanos-Donna Ana (Reyna) de Nasi continued
> her mother's vision and support for Torah scholarship, and in her 50's
> set up a printing press at Belvedere Palace that published a dozen
> Hebrew books over 1592-99 including an allegorical drama and a
> Talmudic treatise.

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>
> (quote)
>
> Interview: John Hudson, Shakespeare-as-Jewess Proponent
>
> by Rebecca Honig Friedman
>
> John Hudson is the author of "The Dark Lady", a historical biography
> of Amelia Bassano, a Marrano Jewess living in Elizabethan England who
> he contends is the true author of William Shakespeare's plays and
> poetry.
>
> The Bassano theory is based on the discovery of Jewish allegories in
> the plays, and Hudson formed The Dark Lady Players theater company to
> bring out the true meanings of the plays, as Bassano intended them,
> through performance.
>
> For further reading on Hudson's arguments regarding Bassano as the
> true Shakespearean author, see this article by one of the Dark Lady
> Players in the NJ Jewish News and Hudson's recent article in Jewcy,
> "Shakespeare's Plays Were Written by a Jewish Woman."
>
> Hudson holds numerous degrees from numerous prestigious academic
> institutions,
> with specialties in Tudor history, Christopher Marlowe,
> Shakespeare and Performance, sociology and anthropology, dramaturgical
> theory,
> structuralist analysis, and the social scientific study of literature
> and the media.
>
> Over the last 30 years he has been employed as a cognitive
> scientist,
> working on the restructuring of the communications industry and
> inventing new industry models -- which is exactly what he is now doing
> with Shakespeare.
>
> He is a reviewer for Shakespeare, the journal of the British
> Shakespeare Association, occasionally performs Renaissance music, and
> has studied at both Christian and Jewish theological colleges. He is
> now continuing his research at the Shakespeare Institute, where he is
> writing a thesis on "Midsummer Night's Dream."
>
> After attending a lecture Hudson gave on Bassano last week, we put his
> theory to the Jewess test via an email Q&A.
>
> JEWESS: So, you're not yourself Jewish, are you?
>
> HUDSON: Although I not now a practicing Jew, my mother was a hidden
> child in Germany during the war but did not bring me up as Jewish. On
> coming to New York I was for some years a member of Congregation B'nai
> Jeshurun under Rabbi Marshall Meyer until his untimely death. I have
> also studied with Rabbi David Silber and the traditional approach to
> reading Torah is invaluable in reading the Shakespearean plays which
> use many of the same compositional features.
>
> How did you first hit upon Amelia Bassano as a candidate for author of
> the plays we've come to know as William Shakespeare's?
>
> If the plays contain Jewish satires and allegories, then there was
> only one Jewish candidate.
>
> How much knowledge of Jewish texts was Bassano likely to have as a
> Marrano and a woman?
>
> There was only one Talmud known in England, it was in westminster
> cathedral library; however, Talmudic teaching was also oral, so
> individual quotes could have been transmitted that way. There are
> several quotes from the Pirke Avot which was available as a standalone
> volume in Latin, similarly the Zohar.
> There were of course women scholars at the time, including one who was
> a distant relative of the Bassanos-Donna Ana (Reyna) de Nasi continued
> her mother's vision and support for Torah scholarship, and in her 50's
> set up a printing press at Belvedere Palace that published a dozen
> Hebrew books over 1592-99 including an allegorical drama and a
> Talmudic treatise.
>
> Why would Bassano have written sonnets about herself as "the dark
> lady"?
>
> The Sonnets have several voices, and the so-called dark lady sonnets
> are written to herself in the third person describing a woman whose
> cheek is gray and whose breasts are dun.
>
> Would you then read Sonnet 130, for example, as a woman celebrating
> the earthly beauty of women, so to speak, taking women down from the
> pedestal that male poets generally put them on?
>
> Sonnet 130 is one of the 'dark lady' sonnets, and is written to
> herself, as a literary conceit, as if by a third person who loved her,
> and refers to her beauty as black. It is not a general comment about
> women; it is highly specific.
>
> Do you imagine there will ever be a time when the world will refer to
> Bassano's "Romeo and Juliet" and Bassano's "Hamlet," or is the persona
> of Shakespeare too deeply ingrained in the popular imagination? Could
> the world ever accept that these plays were written by a Jewess?
>
> I don't know. It depends how successful we are in getting the
> information out.
>
> What kind of response has the Bassano theory gotten from the academic
> world?
>
> Most academics have refused to look at it. However some of the
> Oxfordians are proving to be very interested in it, and Dr C.M.S.
> Alexander, the editor of the Cambridge Shakespeare Library has given
> it the following endorsement: "Controversial and provocative, this
> well researched and wide ranging book establishes a legitimate new
> area for scholarship."
> Pioneering an entirely new area of scholarship is about the most
> anyone can aim to achieve!
>
> In your mind, is this the hugest literary hoax ever pulled off by a
> woman or is it the worst example of a man stealing a woman's glory?
>
> I don't think this is a hoax. It is a stratagem she used to get her
> work published, as many other women have done, by having their work
> published under a man's name. In Elizabethan London women could not
> write original literature at all, let alone plays, so this was her
> only option.
>
> So then would you consider it a triumph on Bassano's part?
>
> The example I use is that of the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria. In
> order that his name might be known, the architect Sostratus had his
> name carved on the stone base, then covered over with a piece of
> plaster with a dedication to the king. In time the plaster fell away
> revealing the architect's name. Amelia's strategy was to leave behind
> a preposterous case for William Shakespeare, which has now fallen away
> revealing the true creator who is now at last visible.
>
> We are always told that Shakespeare's works are timeless -- universal --
> and that is why they have aged so well. But in your staging of "A
> Midsummer Night's Dream," and now "As You Like It," with the Dark Lady
> Players, you seek to put a very specific, time-bound spin on the
> plays. Are you not damaging their appeal -- even their genius -- in some
> way?
>
> Some directors anachronistically set the plays at the North Pole or in
> outer space or in a Mafia village. They therefore destroy and suppress
> the allusions that the plays contain and make them impossible to
> discern. I understand why directors who do not understand the plays
> might resort to such misleading devices. But they should do so no
> longer, and should use their staging to reveal what the author really
> meant.
>
> Your theory adds a whole new layer to all the play with gender roles
> in the plays, doesn't it?
>
> Yes, the Shakespearean plays have more examples of women characters
> dressing up as men than in the whole of the English theater up to that
> point. Now we know why.
>
> At the lecture you gave on Bassano last week, someone said that, as an
> actor, he always took comfort in the idea that Shakespeare was also an
> actor and understood what actors go through. He was dismayed at the
> prospect of giving up that notion. You responded by suggesting that
> Bassano was an actor, too, in a much more profound way. Can you
> elaborate on that?
>
> Yes, all the world is a stage, and this was especially true at the
> Elizabethan court, where courtiers were constantly creating and
> performing meta-theatrical dramas to persuade the Queen about various
> issues. This is where the author learnt their highly developed sense
> of theater, and as a Marrano passing in a Christian society, she had
> to act every moment of her life, including being a cheerful mistress
> to a man 45 years her senior.
>
> Are there any other examples of "secular" literature written by Jews
> during the time Shakespeare/Bassano was writing? If so, do they bear
> any
> connection to "Shakespeare's" work?
>
> No. There were only 200 Marrano Jews living in England at the period.
> Though many were musicians, Amelia is the only one who was a poet.
>
> You have a documentary about Bassano in the works. A feature film
> can't be too far behind (and with all those possible lovers you
> mentioned it's sure to be a good one). Which actress would you choose
> to play Bassano?
>
> In our workshop of "As You Like It," the part of Touchstone (who is an
> allegory for Amelia Bassano since, for example, Touchstone in Greek is
> basanos) is played by Daniela Amini, an Italian speaking Jew with
> degrees in literature from Oxford and Harvard, who is an excellent
> comic. In a movie I would also look for an actress who had the
> intellectual and cultural understanding of the role.
>
> *
> About Jewess
> Jewess is a blog about Jewish women's issues, and is part of the
> Canonist network of religion blogs.
>
> http://jewess.canonist.com/?p=794