How William Shakespeare and Emilia Bassano-Lanier Invented Romantic Love

By Paul Kauffman

This short, illustrated book is a ground breaking study which provides the best explanation so far for William Shakespeare’s knowledge of Italian and Latin literature, of the court, and of his other creative achievements, including insights into romantic love and passion.

Shakespeare drew on the plots of some 37 Italian “novelle” (“little novels”) and Latin plays to write his own plays. Many of his best plays used novelle which had never been translated into English. Did he teach himself Italian or did someone help him?

The book also reveals the literary and personal accomplishments of Emilia Bassano-Lanier. Fluent in three languages, including Italian, and educated by two countesses, she was the former mistress of the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Carey, who was patron of Shakespeare’s company of players. She was one the first women to write a book of poetry in English and her inspiration and assistance provide a plausible explanation for some of Shakespeare’s remarkable accomplishments.

Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets are addressed to a “Fair Youth” (probably the young Earl of Southampton, to whom his two long narrative poems are dedicated and who also knew Italian), and a musical “Dark Lady”, with dark hair and dun coloured breasts, who is “the fairest and most precious jewel”.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets 135 and 136 privately expressed his anguish about their adultery and her unfaithfulness, making him “frantic mad”. When published in 1609 they provide one of the earliest examples in English of “revenge porn” (sexual images of individuals without their consent). Ten scholars now believe the Dark Lady of the Sonnets was Emilia Bassano-Lanier. Rightly or wrongly, many ladies of the court would have formed the same conclusion. By studying Emilia Lanier’s book of poetry, together with her 1610 preface, we understand the fury of her language, and her determination that men and good Christian women should “speak reverently of our sex.”

Having garnered patronage from successful women aristocrats, her book offers an intellectual construct grander than the “Me Too” movement. She champions Old Testament avenging women, praises New Testament saintly women and proclaims to all women “Then let us have our liberty again”. Rediscovered in 1974, she became a flag-bearer for feminists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Apr 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925739879

Paul Kauffman

Dr Paul Kauffman is a writer, administrator and polymath.He was leading actor in Shakespearean and classical tragedies at school and university since the age of 16. He studied five European languages at school and five Asian languages at university. He gained a doctoral scholarship to Cambridge University at age 22. He has written four non-fiction books, three novels and published some 30 articles, including seven on psychiatry. In 2017 he established Australian Players ACT to provide paid work to talented Australian actors and directors. He is writing five plays about outstanding women. His plays are accompanied by academic articles and e-books with numerous coloured illustrations and portraits. He established www.lifeofshakespeare.com website with other eminent scholars.For many years he worked with Australian Indigenous peoples helping them gain land rights, native title, and establish housing, health and educational programs. He has also been a visiting professor at Cambridge, University of British Columbia, UQAM Montreal, Konstanz University Germany and the OECD in Paris. He met his wife Jan when 18 in Venice. They married and 12 months later had twin daughters and a son 15 months thereafter, blessed with children even more quickly than William and Anne Shakespeare.Plays Emilia and Wil; Princess Phaedra; Lou Andreas Salome.Music and songs by David Pereira, scripts by Paul Kauffman

Book preview

How William Shakespeare and Emilia Bassano-Lanier Invented Romantic Love

An Illustrated Introduction

by

Paul Kauffman

Foreword by Dr Mark O’Connor

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

www.indiemosh.com.au

Copyright 2018 © Paul Kauffman

www.lifeofshakespeare.com

All rights reserved

Cover Emilia Bassano-Lanier c 1590 by Nicholas Hillyard © Victoria and Albert Museum and William Shakespeare 1610 Chandos portrait © National Portrait Gallery London.

Subject matter: romantic love, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), sonnets, Emilia Lanier (1569-1645), Dark Lady, Simon Forman (1552-1611), Dramatists, English – Early Modern 1500 -1700, sodomy, Elizabethan history, feminism, revenge porn, Me Too.

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Disclaimer

Although the author has made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Also by Paul Kauffman

This book draws on the paper Love can transpose to form and dignity at the Beyond 400 Shakespeare Conference held at the University of Melbourne on 15 November 2016, and the articles The Tempestuous Sexual and Creative Life of William Shakespeare and Emilia Bassano-Lanier and The Woman behind Shakespeare and Dr Simon Forman, the Creativity of Emilia Bassano-Lanier Explained published in the International Journal of Literary Humanities in 2017 and 2018.

Acknowledgements

I thank Dr Mark O’Connor, Dr Colin Jory, Professor Penny Gay, Dr Natalie Kaoukji, Dr Cate Clelland, David Pereira, Dr Erin Sullivan, Ernie Gray, Kirsty Budding, David A Pearson, Jordan Best, Michael and Mary Rasmussen, Ann Poole, Jonathan Brown, Brian Stafford, Duncan Kauffman, Becky Yeoh, Konrad Winkler, Debbie Watson, Jennifer Mosher of IndieMosh Publishing and anonymous reviewers of published articles.

Foreword

by Dr Mark O’Connor, the Olympic poet.

They precariously circled an abyss around a deep complex civilisation.

Many historical documents and official records throw light on the complex life of William Shakespeare. Yet few of them satisfy our curiosity about his inner life. His letters and private papers have not survived; and the characters in his plays are too vividly themselves to be taken as portraits of him. Human nature abhors this vacuum of information; and so it has become a common literary practice for authors to create their own preferred fictional Shakespeare.

Those, like Paul Kauffman, who want to get close to this elusive author often focus upon his Sonnets, in which he seems to speak so confidently and so personally to unknown yet intimate friends, as in Sonnet 104:

"To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still" …

That the sonnets may contain intimate personal details was hinted by the Elizabethan commentator Francis Meres who in 1598, after listing Shakespeare’s public books and plays, referred to his sugred Sonnets among his private friends – perhaps implying that the sonnets might never be published because they referred to private or secret affairs.

Somehow a manuscript of the sonnets was published just eleven years later, in 1609. Yet its text is hard to interpret. We do not know if some sonnets were omitted, or if names were removed from others. It is not clear in what order the poet wanted them read, or if the person (or imagined person) who speaks in one sonnet is the same person (or is speaking to the same person or persons) in the next sonnet.

Despite this, many or most readers detect a shadowy back-story behind the sonnets. It goes something like this. The person who speaks in the sonnets (and who may or may not be the real Wil Shakespeare) has two great friends. One, the Fair Youth, seems to be a young man of great brilliance and of intense (somewhat feminine) beauty, of which he himself is very proud. The poet promises to give him immortal fame (though in the