"Since his death, and particularly in the last century, he has been subjected to the greatest battery of organized research that has ever been directed upon a single person. And yet the greatest of all Englishmen, after this tremendous inquisition, still remains so close a mystery that even his identity can still be doubted." -- Hugh Trevor-Roper, 'What's in a Name?'; cited by John Hudson in Shakespeare's Dark Lady (2014).
"For 400 years the world has been enthralled by a romantic and fantastic story -- the story of a real life superman who came not from Planet Krypton but from Stratford-upon-Avon. It is the improbable fantasy of how a poor glove-maker's son, without even a documented grammar school education, suddenly and inexplicably transformed into a literary genius who wrote the world's most important plays, and then inexplicably returned to his mansion where he died leaving a will that showed he had no intellectual interests of any kind.
"Now, however, we have a new story which is even more fascinating. It tells how a dark-skinned girl, from a family of Venetian musicians living as secret Jews in the London of Queen Elizabeth I, acquired an education normally only given to countesses. It enabled her to live for ten years at court as mistress to the queen's half-brother, the man in charge of the English theatre. It enabled her to have an affair with Christopher Marlowe, and to acquire the knowledge necessary to write these plays. More importantly, as we have seen in the example of A Midsummer Night's Dream, she used literary techniques to hide underneath the surface of these plays a heretical Jewish story ["]-- waiting for a time in the future when 'eyes not yet created shall o'er-read it' (Sonnet 81). As a protection mechanism, in case the true meanings of the plays were discovered during her life time, she used the man from Stratford as a play broker to conceal her identity. Mr. Shakespeare brokered the plays, ignorant of the dangerous heresies they really contained, and even claiming that his fair copies were his original drafts. Despite Ben Jonson's scathing satire, he was never exposed and retired to his mansion in Stratford with his fraudulent reputation intact. But no more." -- John Hudson, Shakespeare's Dark Lady (2014), p. 242
The following is Chapter 4 of Joseph Atwill's 2014 book, Shakespeare's Secret Messiah, posted here without Atwill's permission (& available for free, to read in full at- Click Here)
EMILIA BASSANO
Though Emilia Bassano has escaped the scrutiny of scholars looking for the author of the Shakespearean literature, simply describing her life shows that she is a logical candidate. She was a poet active during the period in which the plays were written, and was the mistress of Lord Hunsdon, who was the sponsor of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the theatrical company that Shakespeare purportedly owned a share of and that put on many of the plays. Her family was multilingual and came from the area of Italy that was the setting for many of Shakespeare's plays. She had attended the royal court and was thus familiar with the aristocratic mind and language. She had also been exposed to the arcane jargons used in the sport of hawking and the British military that found their way into the plays. And as a woman from a family of Jewish heritage, she would have shared an interest in Judaism with the author of the Shakespearean plays, not a common thing in England during this era. Emilia was the first woman to have ever registered an original poem in England, and is believed by many scholars to have been the 'dark lady' described in Shakespeare's sonnets. In addition to her many surface qualifications, however, she also possessed the true key to creating the Shakespearean literature: an understanding of the satirical system within the Gospels. [. . .]
THE BASSANO FAMILY
Emilia Bassano came from a family of Sephardic Jews of Moroccan ancestry that had moved to London from Venice in the middle of the sixteenth century after being hired by Henry the eighth as court musicians. The family purchased three contiguous houses in Shoreditch, the area of London where William Shakespeare purportedly lived. They were part of a small Jewish immigration to England brought about by Henry VIII. Henry imported a group of Jewish Bible scholars to help him with his theological struggle with the Papacy concerning divorce. He also imported Italian musicians to improve the quality of his court music and some of these, like the Bassanos, were Jews. (57)
When Henry permitted the immigration of certain Jews, he reversed a long-standing policy. In 1290 over two thousand Jews had been expelled from England, and those who remained were forced to convert to Christianity, though some of them are known to have secretly continued to practice Judaism. (58) In Spain, under similar oppression, the secret Jews became known as Marranos. However, the use of this terminology is no longer acceptable because of its anti-Semitic connotations: the word means "filthy pig" in Spanish.
Henry continued to require that Jews who wished to immigrate be baptized and desist from practicing any Jewish rituals. The consequences for violating this dictum were severe. The Lupos, another family of Jewish musicians who had emigrated from Italy on an invitation from Henry VIII, experienced the full weight of the Christian State's attitude towards Jews who retained their religion. Members within her family's circle were charged with secretly practicing Judaism, and a number of them were imprisoned. Two of these -- Anthony Moses and Ambrose de Almaliach -- died after being racked. This episode would have been well known to Emilia Bassano, as Anthony's son Joseph Lupo married her cousin Laura.
The Bassanos are believed to have taken their name from Bassano, a city in the province of Venice; or, conversely, the city may have taken its name from the family. As the online Jewish Encyclopedia explains:
City in the province of Venice, Italy. Here, as in all the surrounding places, Jews were living at a very early period, engaged in commerce and industry, and especially in money-lending, as is shown by contemporary documents dating back to 1264. In the first half of the fifteenth century, they formed a large and prosperous community. Subsequently they were persecuted; and, in 1468, a decree of perpetual banishment was issued against them. Nevertheless they returned, only to be again banished by the city council in 1481.
No documents are extant to show the existence of a Jewish congregation, recognized and regulated by law. The Jews were obliged to live huddled together in one little street, still called "Callesella dei Zudii"; but, as their numbers increased, more spacious quarter were assigned to them, which popular tradition still calls "Il Ghetto."
While some of the Jewish families, Bassan, Bassano, Bassani, may have been called from this city, the name is more probably of Hebrew origin. Some slight notices of the Jews of Bassano may be found in the rare pamphlet of Brenteri, "Fonazione del Monte di Pieta," 1882. There are no longer any Jews at Bassano, nor are there any traces of a synagogue or a cemetery. (59)
Bassani or Bassano was the last name of many well-known Rabbis from the region around Venice. It is notable that a number of them were authors and poets and hailed from the exact towns that would later be referenced in Shakespeare's Italian plays. One of these was the famous rabbi and poet Samuel Bassani who lived in Verona at the end of the sixteenth century.
In 1548 Baptista Bassano and his four brothers established a contract with Henry VIII to become recorder consorts (musicians) for his court and immigrated to England. Appearing to comply with Henry's wishes, they publicly converted to Christianity and faithfully observed the rituals of the English Protestant church. They may very well have secretly retained their Jewish religious practices and beliefs, but if so, they were successful in concealing any convincing evidence of that fact from the authorities, and from history.
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