Talk:Emilia Lanier

Jewish origin?
[http://www.forward.com/articles/jews-in-the-court/ Jews in the Court, Raphael Mostel | Fri. Oct 06, 2006]:
 * Rowse announced his discovery in the London Times. Journalist Chaim Raphael wrote to the editor that Bassano was a common Italian Jewish name. Could Shakespeare’s lover have been Jewish?
 * Research suggests the Bassano musician family were not Jewish (although there are Jews who had the surname Bassano). Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 00:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Worth checking?
http://www.forward.com/articles/13424/ Snori (talk) 06:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Novel around Shakespeare and Emilia Bassano by Anne Cueno
Nevertheless - one gets a very interesting insight into art scene around the Globe theatre, actors and the historical time during and right after Shakespeare reading Anne Cuenos novel "Dark Lady". Material is linked top research by Alfred Leslie Rowse, specialised în historical research. She enhances the probability of the link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.203.152.31 (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Dark Lady
A.L. Rowse argued that Lanyer was Shakespeare's "Dark Lady," but recent scholarship has shown this to be unlikely. There is no direct evidence that she was "dark," and no evidence at all of any association with Shakespeare. See David Bevington in Marshall Grossman, ed., Aemilia Lanyer, and Susanne Woods, Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet. Nonetheless, this issue continues to arise (presumably because anything that can be linked to Shakespeare, however inadequately, has wide interest). It would be more useful, and ultimately more interesting, to treat Lanyer and her poetry in their own terms.


 * "The consensus among Lanier experts is that even if her father was of Jewish heritage, she herself was not educated in Jewish texts and would not have been able to embed coded Jewish references of any sort into the plays, had she written them. Lanier scholars welcome the growing attention to her own poetry, but categorically dismiss the theory that she wrote Shakespeare's plays." (removed due to lack of sourcing) Artaxerxes (talk) 22:26, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Entire section removed

 * ==Shakespeare authorship===
 * A theatrical production by The Dark Lady Players in New York in 2007, based on a thesis by John Hudson of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, suggested Lanier was the author of an underlying religious allegory in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and perhaps of the play itself. In April 2007, the Shakespearean Authorship Trust, founded in 1922 "to seek, and if possible establish, the truth concerning the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays and poems," added Lanier to the list of Shakespeare authorship candidates. In summer 2008, Michael Posner concluded, in a review of the theory in the Canadian arts journal The Queen's Quarterly, that "the case for Amelia Bassano Lanier is as plausible as Shakespeare’s and more plausible than many others". Posner's 2010 article in Reform Judaism argued that Lanier was very likely the author of all or most of Shakespeare's plays, and asserts that she was Jewish. In summer 2010, writing in BiblioBuffet, Lev Raphael concluded there is no firm evidence that she was Jewish and challenged the basic assumptions of Posner's article.


 * ""The example I use is that of the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria. In order that his name might be known, the architect Sostratus had his name carved on the stone base, then covered over with a piece of plaster with a dedication to the king. In time the plaster fell away, revealing the architect’s name. Amelia’s strategy was to leave behind a preposterous case for William Shakespeare, which has now fallen away, revealing the true creator who is now at last visible.""

- John Hudson


 * Entire section of text removed (by another editor). --Artaxerxes (talk) 23:57, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

[reflist-talk added to keep refs with text. Xover (talk) 10:46, 19 February 2017 (UTC)]

Was this text moved here for discussion or just to rescue it from the memory hole? Tom Reedy (talk) 03:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Comments on deleted sections
I don't have any problem with a few sentences on the Dark lady concept and even the SAQ claims (all of which are convolutedly linked to the suggestion that she was Jewish). But picking out an obscure article by someone called Michael Posner in the not-very-renowned "Queen's Quarterly" is just cherry picking (is that one of the well-known Michael Posners or an otherwise unknown one?). Here's the opening paragraph of said article:

"Let's start with a not-so-trivial trivia question: apart from the fact that they were all venerable, intelligent men, what did Sigmund Freud, Charles Dickens, Henry and William James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Galsworthy, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Mark Twain, Orson Welles, and Walt Whitman have in common? The answer may surprise: not one of them believed that William Shakespeare, a mere country boy from Stratford-upon-Avon, could possibly have written the works attributed to him."

That's so full of errors it raises more red flags than the cast of Les Miserables. Half of these people believed no such thing. It continues "We know, for example, that he [Strat Shakespeare] sold a load of stone to one Mr Chamberlin on 1 December 1598 for ten pence. We know that he acted in two of Ben Jonson's plays (and was booed off the stage in one of them)" Er what? Is he making this up? I love "Mr. Chamberlin" (a mixed up reference to the Stratford chamberlain's accounts) This isn't a source. It's a joke. Paul B (talk) 20:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I removed it because there's no notability about the "theory". I have no problem with her being included on the List of Shakespeare authorship candidates (I have no problem with mentioning the theories in the bio pages of the major candidates), but inserting it here seems to be coat-racking. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:32, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

'''Shakespeare authorship theory is now an "urban legend"? Really?'''

I believe the theory should meet the criteria for notability. Michael Posner, whose reliability is attacked above, is a reporter for The Globe and Mail, which Wikipedia says is "regarded by some as Canada's 'newspaper of record'. He also published an article about Hudson's theory in the Globe and Mail. The opening paragraph from the Queen's Quarterly article was deleted from the online version, which was picked up by "Reform Judaism", which is said to be the largest circulation Jewish periodical in the world. Lev Raphael thought Posner's article sufficiently notable to write an extensive rebuttal, but out of the list of luminaries who allegedly doubted that the Stratford man wrote the plays, the only one who (according to Raphael) is debatable, is Dickens. As to the rest, Raphael was forced to argue "so what"?? He went on to explicitly admit that Freud, Emerson, James and Twain all denied that the Stratford man wrote the plays.

However, the view that Lanier wrote Shakespeare has re-surfaced in the article, in the "urban legends" section. Since when is Snopes a more reputable source than the Globe and Mail, or Amberley Publishing (publisher of John Hudson's book)? But, the Snopes article (after dismissing the error that Lanier was a Negro) goes on to correctly acknowledge Hudson as the source of the "Urban Legend".

In his book, however, Hudson himself states (in the acknowledgements) that Joseph Atwill was the original source of the idea.

A further problem with the current status of this Wiki article is that it contains this enigmatic statement: "John Hudson together with Joseph Atwill have reconciled both Lanier's identity as the dark lady, and also the significance of her poetry in their 2014 works on Lanier", with footnotes and links to the two books in question. This is rather euphemistic for the fact that they believe "the significance" is that Lanier wrote the plays as well as the Sonnets, and that the references to the "Dark Lady" were essentially autobiographical.

I'm not sure if I'm qualified under Wiki conflict of interest rules to make the edits here: I served as editor, and wrote an introduction, for Atwill 2014. On the other hand, FWIW, he hasn't convinced me that Lanier entirely wrote Shakespeare; and furthermore, I received no financial compensation for my work, and my relationship with Joe is basically collegial.

So please let me know: would it be OK if I make an edit to fix this? --JerryRussell (talk) 19:59, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Image?
On whose authority does the current image depict Lanyer? I've never seen this listed as a "photo" (anachronism) of the poet and I'm not even sure it looks like the right period. It should probably be deleted. Wtrettien (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and deleted the image. I didn't replace it with the previous miniature that was being used. There is no known contemporary image of Lanyer. Not having an image makes the page text-heavy, but it does readers a disservice to simply post random images that look vaguely like her verbal descriptions. Wtrettien (talk) 20:23, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Othello named after a Jesuit called Otello from Basano?
I have toned down, but not removed, the statement, that Othello is named after a Jesuit named Girolamo Otello from Basano. Why? I can't easily check the source of this claim, but think it most unlikely that the name Othello was meant to remind playgoers of this obscure Jesuit. Far more likely, Shakespeare was looking for names that suggested a part of Italy heavily influenced by Spain (e.g. Rodrigo, Iago), and realised that the rare name Otello could be given a Spanish/Moorish feel by adding a H. (Spanish, unlike Italian, has a TH sound). Italian adapters of the play, like Verdi, remove the H and call the Moor "Otello". Marcasella (talk) 04:44, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Edits and Grading?
Hi all!

I'm working on improving the Emilia Lanier wiki page. Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm going to maybe add another image, add to the biography (with sources, of course), break up some of the Poetry section with more specific headings, and probably delete a lot of the Dark Lady Theory section. That section is problematic because it distracts from Lanier and is generally unfounded. I'll explain the Dark Lady theory, but I don't think it's necessary to go into detail about Shakespeare's unrelated plays on Emilia Lanier's wiki.

I was also wondering if anyone could tell me how to, after I'm done editing, submit it to see if I can get the page rating improved. I'd like to resubmit it once I'm done to the Women Writers Project. I'm working on this as a final project for a literature course.

Thanks! CarefulCatBird (talk) 17:19, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Looks like the rating part was resolved, but if you'd like more feedback, you can try the process at Peer review or Good articles. czar  02:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi czar , Thanks so much for your help! I've added a peer review request, and I'm really hoping I can make this even better. CarefulCatBird (talk) 15:49, 12 April 2018 (UTC)