And now, another attempt to claim William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright who ever lived and arguably the greatest poet, was not the author of his own works, with a dollop of 21st century political correctness:
The reason we didn’t learn that fact in school, Ms. Johnson, is because the claim is simply horse manure. As snopes.com wrote in debunking the ridiculous claim, Aemilia Bassano (later Emilia Lanier) was a published author; the Shakespearean Authorship Trust points out that Bassano became the “first woman to publish a book of original poetry” when her work Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum was put into print in 1611, and guess what else?
She was Jewish, from Morocco.
Snopes continues: “No contemporaneous accounts describe Bassano as ‘black’ (or ‘African’) … A 2009 paper published in the Oxfordian, the journal of Shakespearean authorship studies, stated that some of Bassano’s relatives were referred to as ‘black’ when they arrived in London, likely due to their dark complexions.”
Just in case you are buying into the ridiculous notion that Shakespeare was not the author of his own works, here’s some evidence for you, courtesy of shakespeareauthorship.com, which offers voluminous examples documenting and buttressing their position:
The name “William Shakespeare” appears on the plays and poems; William Shakespeare was an actor in the company which performed the plays of William Shakespeare; William Shakespeare, the actor, was William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon; William Shakespeare, the Globe-sharer, was also William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon; William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, the actor and Globe-sharer, was the playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
As the website concludes: “No Elizabethan ever suggested that Shakespeare’s plays and poems were written by someone else, or that Shakespeare, the player, was not Shakespeare the author, or that Shakespeare, the Globe-sharer, was not Shakespeare of Stratford. No contemporary of Shakespeare’s ever suggested that the name used by the player, the Globe-sharer, or the author, was a pseudonym; and none of the major alternative candidates – not Francis Bacon, not the Earl of Oxford, not Christopher Marlowe – had any connection with Shakespeare’s acting company or with his friends and fellow actors.”
So the world’s greatest playwright and poet is a dead white guy?
Imagine that.