Was Shakespeare Really a Black Woman?

The Shakespeare authorship question — the belief that various academics, actors and writers hold that “William Shakespeare” was either a front for the real playwright, or that he was a pseudonym adopted by the true author for fear of their being publicly embarrassed — has existed in some form or another since the middle of the nineteenth century. The argument has some high-profile supporters, including the actors Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Mark Rylance and, most recently, Elizabeth Winkler, who wrote a book in 2023 entitled Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, which suggested that Shakespeare was not a glover-maker’s son from Stratford-on-Avon but that he was the poet Emilia Bassano.