History Forum / General / British History / January 2008

> Hovite wrote:
>> On Jan 26, 5:54 am, "Leo van de Pas" <leovd...@netspeed.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>> "For centuries there has been doubt ..  I believe ... never been
>>> convincingly identified. I believe her ... may have been authorised by
>>> Shakespeare."
>>>
>> Looks like pure nonsense from beginning to end.
>>
>> Most of the Sonnets are love poems addressed to a man.
>>
>> Sonnet 126 begins:
>> "O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power"
>>
>> The poems are dedicated to Mr W H.
>>
>> The sonnets addressed to an anonymous woman are 127-152. But "for the
>> most part, it is assumed that she is a figment of Shakespeare's
>> imagination. Also, the 'darkness' may refer to her nature rather than
>> her appearance, or the 'dark' force of lust as opposed to the platonic
>> love felt for the Fair Lord."
>>
>> http://www.newagebd.com/2006/apr/21/apr21/xtra_also3.htm
>
> A. L. Rowse was a vigorous proponent of the hypothesis that the Dark Lady
> was Emilia Bassano (1569-1645), who married Alphonso Lanier (d. 1613).
> Members of her family were musicians at the court of Queen Elizabeth.  See
> details, for example, at http://www.peterbassano.com/shakespeare.  Emilia
> has two genealogical connections with America:  her first cousin Lucretia
> Bassano married Nicholas Lanier and became grandmother of the Virginia
> immigrant John Lanier, and her first cousin three times removed, Anne
> Bassano, "went to Virginia, N. America, and married _________," according
> to the Bassano pedigree in the _History and Gazetteer of the County of
> Derby_ (1829), p. 576.
>
> -- Don Stone