The Dark Lady

The Dark Lady

“the case for Amelia Bassano Lanier is as plausible as Shakespeare’s”
(‘Rethinking Shakespeare’ The Queen’s Quarterly, 2008)

Hundreds of years of searching for the author of the plays reached a climax when the Dark Lady Players put forward an innovative new solution. Our methodologies suggested they were written by the so-called ‘dark lady’, Amelia Bassano Lanier (1569-1645). The first woman to publish a book of original poetry, she came from a family of Venetian Jews and was the long-term mistress to the man in charge of the English theater. Watch the 30 second video trailer.

Our work soon led her to be listed as one of the leading authorship candidates. In October 2009 a major article on her, Amelia Bassano Lanier; A New Paradigm, appeared in the special issue of the Shakespearean authorship journal on the top candidates.

The next year a six page cover story appeared in Reform Judaism Magazine. In January 2012 Stratfordian Professor William Green endorsed the new research. "...the scholarship is absolutely fascinating. There is a huge amount of documentary evidence to support the theory that it was not Will Shakespeare but Amelia Bassano Lanier."

Read the lecture Who Wrote Shakespeare? or watch the short documentary The Dark Lady Discovery. See the feature story on the Jewish Channel News. You can even watch an extract from University Hour at Eastern Connecticut State University.

The biography The Bassanos can be bought here.