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A History of Jewish Stereotypes Within Shakespeare's World

Dark Lady

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Emilia Bassano - The Dark Lady Of Shakespeare's Sonnets

            My favorite theory has some debauchery to it. Shakespeare might have read some books about Italy and he might have met John Florio, but his intimate knowledge of Italy most likely came from the bedchamber of his mistress, Emilia Bassano. This connection is exciting for many reason and none of them are because Shakespeare had a mistress. Before the exciting parts of the Bard’s mistress are revealed, a little background is in order. Emilia Bassano was the daughter of Baptista Bassano, who was one of the five Bassano brothers who settled in England between 1538 and 1539.[16] The Bassanos were musicians and musical instrument makers who were hired by Henry VIII. They moved from Venice and were paid handsomely as court musicians. Emilia’s parents died when she was young and the Countess of Kent brought her up. Members of the court favored her and the famous astrologer Simon Forman wrote volumes about her and how he lusted after her. Emilia was the first female to publish her own poetry during the English Renaissance. She was married to another court minstrel named Alphonso Lanier. Forman wrote:
            She was paramour to my old Lord Hunsdon that was Lord Chamberlain, and was maintained in great pride…being with child…was married to a minstrel…The old Lord          Chamberlain kept her long…She has £40 a year and was wealthy to him that married her in money and jewels…She has a son, his name is Henry.[17]
Henry was the first name of Lord Hunsdon. The general consensus was Henry was not Alphonso’s son. Forman made Emilia out to be a smart, strong, and independent woman who was ahead of her time.
            While Forman wrote about Emilia, while she was paramour to Lord Hunsdon, Shakespeare wrote his ‘Dark Lady’ Sonnets. Emilia is considered to be the woman in those Sonnets. The connections to Emilia and Shakespeare are tangible and could be a whole paper in on its own. The focus will be on the ‘darkness’ of Emilia and her Venetian background, which is the other possibility of how Shakespeare learned about Venice, which I had mentioned earlier. Being from a musical family that left Italy, where they were well paid, to play for Henry VIII isn’t that exciting, nor is the idea that Emilia was a mistress to Shakespeare and some nobles. What is exciting is the notion that the Bassanos were converted Jews, and their adventure to England was to escape persecution. Henry VIII had sought out Venetian Rabbis, whom he hoped would have some knowledge in scripture that would allow him to divorce Catherine of Aragon. He sent Edmond Harvel to Venice to find such Rabbis and he brought back an apostate, Mark Raphael, who in turn might have had a Bassano or two traveling with him. That is how five brothers, all Italian Jews and all musicians, were eventually employed as court musicians in England.
            The Bassano name is derived from a town just north of Venice, Bassano del Grappa. It had a large Jewish community until the town kicked out all of its Jews. Many Jews took the Bassano name, which is why it is likely that the Bassanos were Jewish. Another indication of their identity comes from their coat of arms. It had three silk worms on the top, which implied the family engaged in silk farming at some time, a trade that was introduced to Italy by Jews. Peter Goodwin is given credit as having identified Emilia and the Bassanos as Jews and Moors, due to the mulberry tree on the bottom of the coat of arms. The mulberry tree is ‘Moro’ in Italian and means Moor or negro as well. As an adjective, in Italian, it can mean black, as in: wearing black shoes, or like Emilia, having black hair, eyes, and skin. Mora, in Italian, is the word for a single mulberry and the word for a black woman. “In heraldic terms, Emilia was inescapably a dark lady.”[18]
            There are a few Shakespeare Sonnets that have the word ‘more’ in it, which many scholars now see as having the meaning of ‘Moor’. Sonnet 150 describes ‘Emilia’ as having some sort of sexual power to attract ‘Shakespeare’. The Sonnet follows the same idea in Othello, where Othello seems to have some sort of supernatural power to attract the opposite sex. The sin of seeking direct meaning from Shakespeare’s poems and a tangible person is exciting. As is the idea that his plays, which take place in Italy, all have women caught in some sort of enforced or loveless marriage, mirroring the lover in his Sonnets.
            When the pregnant Moor in The Merchant of Venice is thought to be with child from Lancelot, he makes a pun on the word more. “It is much that the Moor should be more than reason, but if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I took her for” (3.5.34-39). Maybe this is Shakespeare’s private joke, or a bitterness he wrote into the play because Emilia was pregnant before she married Alphonso Lanier. The idea that Shakespeare introduces a strong-minded, intelligent, and independent woman throughout many of his plays matches well with the idea that Emilia Bassano was his inspiration and fountain of knowledge for all things Italian.