William Shakespeare has been transformed and thereby rehabilitated.
Paul Craig Roberts
A couple of years ago or thereabouts, we were told that the first Swedes were black people. I wondered how they survived being vitamin D deprived with dark skin and with little and weak sun.
Next, we were told that the first British women were black. And now we hear that William Shakespeare was not a white man from Stratford, but a black feminist woman of Jewish origin from a Venetian family. The mother of the English speaking world was Emilia Bassano Willoughby.
I have often wondered what point people making these unlikely claims were trying to make. Is the point to take away white history?
Perhaps there is a silver lining in these claims. Now that Shakespeare is no longer a racist antisemitic but a dark-skinned feminist Jew, perhaps he can again be read in universities and his plays can be performed without being boycotted.
If you think about it, it is amazing. How much of our literature has been banned on the basis of allegations that it is against the Jews or against the blacks or against women. It seems every organized interest group has books and art works that it wants banned in order to prevent the spread of misogynist, racist, and antisemitic views. It’s not just Shakespeare and Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and the Uncle Remus stories and Little Black Sambo that have been banned. A large range of classic literature goes untaught due to professors’ fears that they will be labeled an antisemite or racist for teaching a book accused of having politically incorrect views or expressions.
So far the professors who find racism and antisemitism where they are not have left British mystery novels from the first half of the 20th century alone. Today, few of them could be published. For example, in Agatha Christie’s Murder with Mirrors the police superintendent asks the question “who is the nigger in the woodpile?” The phrase has nothing to do with racism. It is a way of asking what is the fact of considerable importance that is not disclosed. But those determined to prove that every word ever written by a white person is racist have, by repeating their lie endlessly, turned the phrase into a racist epithet. This has happened to so much of language that it is surprising that every book written in English hasn’t been burned.
English novels, both mystery stories and works of classic English literature reflect the attitudes of the English toward the French, the Greeks, the Italians, all of whom are found wanting by British standards. Today, the books could not be published because they would be deemed offensive to those described as British see them. So much goes on in the name of diversity, which in fact snuffs out diversity, reducing all to an amorphous blob devoid of diversity.
Let us celebrate that the white plot to claim the work of a dark-skinned Jewish feminist as a white male achievement has been unmasked. We can retrieve Shakespeare, a.k.a Willoughby, from the memory hole and delight again in his works.
The Real Shakespeare: Emilia Bassano Willoughby
Hardcover – March 30, 2026
by Irene Coslet (Author)
Argues Shakespeare was a dark-skinned Jewish woman, Emilia Bassano, challenging the traditional authorship and gender perceptions.
Was Shakespeare a white man from Stratford? Debate still rages over the identity of the most beloved poet of all time and ‘father’ of the English-speaking world. Generations of researchers have tried to dismantle the myth of the Stratford man. Now, in this intriguing and well-documented book, Irene Coslet conclusively demonstrates that Shakespeare was a not a man, but a woman: a dark-skinned lady, of Jewish origin, born into a family of Court musicians from Venice, and the mother of the English-speaking world. Her name was Emilia Bassano.
Based on a re-examination of often-overlooked historical documents, shrewd, chilling, and profound, this volume offers extensive evidence that Emilia was the author of the canon. This is not just a book about the authorship debate: it is about the condition of women at the time Shakespeare was writing. It explains that feminism already existed in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. It reveals not only that Shakespeare was a woman, but also that she defended women. It reintegrates Emilia in the context of the time, for example, by exploring the relationship between Emilia and Queen Elizabeth I. The reader will leave this book with a sense of wonder, transformation, and will experience a paradigm shift. Be prepared to meet the next feminist icon.