Hi John,

I too am an alumnus of the shakespeare institute and i will find your thesis next time i'm there. Both David Basch and Florence Amit have been thoroughly taken to task by the scholars on Shaksper as i'm sure you know. Their theories are not accepted as facts, outside of themselves. So their legitimacy is imperfect and highly questionable.

Wasn't it A L Rowse who first touted Aemilia Bassanio as the dark Lady? If she was then that is where Shakespeare could have been influenced. Why everybody has to cipher away the one man who was in the right place and time to do what he did, I don't know. If aemilia was such a poetic and musical prodigy she had no need to be shakespeare too. How do Cymbeline or Henry VIII fit into the theory?

Your list of eight reasons is also ingenuous. Shakespeare Johnson and Heywood wereall actors and playwrights. all with a thorough grounding in rhetoric. Who has studied the backgrounds of the actors and found them lacking in a grammar school education with rhetoric being the only thing on the curriculum.

If shakes was shaggin aemilia then it's also a good reason for putting her name in the plays. And being Hunsdon's mistress doesn't prove anything. What on earth do you mean by play analysis anyway?

And who says Shakespeare the stratty guy was a believing catholic? Shakespeare was also fluent in Latin which lets face it is very close to italian especially when written. Besides there were translations of the authors you mention.

Bringing feminism into the argument is an anachronism. Aemilia does not outshine Mary SIdney and her circle and poetic coterie. Women were a powerful force in the time and indeed the patriarchal hierarchy did not allow their legitimacy. Now since feminism we are finding out about these women. Besides, since when has Judaism been a feminist religion? 

And how on earth can you claim none of shakespeare's friends were musicians? He entered a theatre in which he remained his entire career, where musical interludes were a staple. The masque doesn't start anyway until 1604 onwards.

He didn't live in a vacuum with only the documented friends we know about. Where are Amelia's credentials for theatrical friends like Richard Burbage, Heminges and Condell to shakespeare or a printing friend like Richard Field?

So no, I'm not convinced on any level except for a minority opinion voicing an unsubstantiated appeal.