With a young man under a tree)
And have them put to death
Under Moses Law.
A possible member of Emilia's family is known to have worked on the musical performances in Shakespeare's plays. The flutist Robert Johnson, who wrote the music for songs in several plays including 'Full Fathom Five' and 'Where the Bee Sucks' from The Tempest, and songs for Cymbeline and A Winter's Tale, (66) may have been her maternal cousin. Robert also worked with Ben Jonson to produce the music for his plays, as did Emilia's second cousin Thomas Lupo, the son of her uncle Alvise's daughter Laura Bassano.
THE PLAYS AND EMILIA'S IDENTITY
It is known that some of the sources used by the author of the Shakespearean corpus existed at the time only in Italian, such as Il Pecorone, so the playwright was able to read in that language. While some scholars dispute this, the playwright does seem to have been knowledgeable in the area of Italian-English translation. The character 'Holofernes' in Love's Labor's Lost, for example, was created as a caricature of Florio, the compiler of the Italian-English dictionary used in England in this era.
Having come from Italy, the generation of Bassanos prior to Emilia's could, of course, speak Italian, as attested by a letter of their correspondence with the Queen in that language. Understanding different languages was a valuable skill, and knowledge of Italian would probably have been passed along to Emilia from her father and family. More than a third of Shakespeare's plays reveal a detailed knowledge of the Bassano's home near Venice. Shakespeare knew the length of the 'Lombardy mile', was familiar with the canal system linking Verona, Milan and Padua, understood the unique Venetian calendar, the More Veneto, (67) and used proverbs unique to Italy such as 'sound as a fish'. (68) It can therefore be inferred that the playwright had a degree of knowledge of both Italy and its language that was unusual for an Englishman. Moreover, as shown below, the playwright needed to have at least some understanding of Hebrew in order to create the various puns in the play that used that language. (69) This combination of areas of knowledge was unusual in England during this era, restricting the pool of possible authors for the plays.
Many names of Bassano family members appear in the plays, especially in the ones set in Italy. (70) In Merchant of Venice, for instance, a character is actually called Bassanio -- the spelling of the familial name that is recorded in the London church where many of the family are buried. (71) An 'Emilia' appears in Venice in Othello as the wife of Iago, as does a 'Lodovicio', the name of one of her first cousins. In Taming of the Shrew there is a girl who needed to find a good husband and who had, like Emilia, a father named 'Baptista'. Another Emilia appears in Comedy of Errors, another in Two Noble Kinsmen, yet another in A Winter's Tale.
In Hamlet there is a clue that the author of the verse is a woman who must speak her mind or the play will not get written -- "the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't" (II, 2 324). There is also a hint that a group of theatrical players might be Jews, as they don't have the "accent" or the "walk of Christians" (III, 2, 30-35).
Another clue suggesting that Emilia Bassano wrote the Shakespearean literature was the famous mulberry tree purportedly planted by Shakespeare in his garden at Stratford. It would have been appropriate for Emilia to plant such a tree, since the coat of arms granted to her family featured a mulberry tree. The mulberry tree is called morus in Latin, which is translated as 'moor' in English. As Emilia Bassano was nicknamed the 'Moor', and her family used the mulberry tree as its symbol, the tradition concerning the 'Stratford mulberry tree' suggests a link between the Bassanos and Shakespeare. The planting of the 'moor' tree in Stratford was likely both a clue left to indicate Shakespeare's identity, as well as a clever reversal of the humor regarding 'trees' in the Gospels. Emilia Bassano planted 'tree' -- Shakespeare -- in the middle of Christendom just as the Romans had 'grafted' their 'branch' -- Caesar -- onto the messianic 'root' of Judaism.
The Bassano coat of arms bore three silkworms over a mulberry tree that was no doubt related to the fact that the Bassanos came from the region of Italy that produced silk. Jewish traders originally brought silkworms to Italy, and it is likely that at some point the Bassano family had a connection to the silk producing business. However, symbolism within a coat of arms was typical in this era, and the mulberry tree was almost certainly chosen as a deliberate representation of the family, who had originally come from Morocco, as 'Moors'. Elizabethans took heraldry seriously, and a family's coat of arms was more than a decoration but a symbolic identification of the family that bore it. For example, Queen Elizabeth addressed her friend Lady Norris as 'Myne owne Crowe'; since the crow was the Norris family's crest. Heraldry often used puns on the family it depicted. The Luce family had luces or piles blazoned on their shields.
Many of Shakespeare's works contain references from a strange poem by Thomas Moffet entitled The Silkworms, and their Flies. It was used a source for several of the sonnets, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Romeo and Juliet and a number of other plays. Indeed, Shakespeare's works are embedded with references to silkworms and Moors to such an extent that one scholar, after identifying Emilia as the 'dark lady' of the sonnets, wrote that Shakespeare must have been "obsessed about Emilia Bassano and everything about her". Of course another explanation would be that the many unusual intersections between Shakespeare's works and Emilia's life came about because the literature was, as literature always is, to some extent, autobiographical.
THE SHAKESPEAREAN PROJECT
The missing pages from Shakespeare's son in law's diary and Ben Johnson's complicity in the plot (as shown below in the analysis of his descriptions of Shakespeare) suggest that a number of people helped Emilia Bassano with the 'Shakespearean project'. This group was likely made up of other hidden Jews and, at least at its beginning, one sympathetic Gentile secularist -- Christopher Marlowe. Certainly the most audacious act perpetrated by this group was to implant the name of their 'Gentile Jesus' -- Shakespeare -- directly into the King James Bible. They did this to mirror Titus's 'miraculous' linkage of his Gospels to Hebraic literature.
During the creation of the King James Bible, a number of Hebrew scholars were consulted to help with the translation. One of them apparently was also working with Emilia on her 'Shakespeare project' and changed the translation of the 46th Psalm to 'miraculously' record the name 'Shakespeare' within the Christian canon. This strange phenomena is well known to scholars who heretofore have had no explanation for it. In the King James Bible the word 'shake' appears 46 words from the beginning of the 46th Psalm and the word 'speare' 46 words from the end. This was a different translation than had previously been given for the Psalm, which is not surprising as the words 'shake' and 'speare' do not exist in the original Hebrew. Adding to the 'arithmetical humor' was the fact that the King James Bible was published in 1610, the year Shakespeare turned 46. The 46th Psalm was chosen for the 'miracle' as it is a declaration that "the God of Jacob" will be a refuge for Jews no matter where "earthly kingdoms were moved" or how hard the "heathen raged". This prayer would have resonated with Jews like Emilia Bassano living inside English Christendom.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
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