William Shakespeare was the greatest English playwright, and one of the greatest English poets. Yet since the 19th century, many people have doubted that William Shakespeare, an actor from Stratford-upon-Avon, could actually have written the plays and poetry attributed to him. How could a man of limited education suddenly drop his Warwickshire accent and start writing highly sophisticated poems and plays, peppered with puns in Hebrew and Italian and references to hundreds of literary works? On the other hand, an educated woman of Italian and Jewish ancestry could have written like that. As it turns out, the man who was in charge of the entertainments in Queen Elizabeth’s court had a mistress who met that description. Her name was Emilia Bassano (later, Emilia Lanier).
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