The Dark Lady

Last winter I was reading through Shakespeare’s sonnets, out of curiosity, as I prepared for a role. I had already read quite a few of them before…but I had never read all of them. As I read through the later sonnets, I was caught off guard by their level of jealous obsession and borderline cruelty. We never really talk about those dark Dark Lady sonnets, maybe because we don’t like to think that our beloved Will could stoop that low. But after I read them, and experienced them, I couldn’t push them away. This was part of him too. And there was such a difference between the man who wrote such strong-willed, witty, three-dimensional women as Rosalind, Beatrice, Cleopatra or Helen and the misogynistic voice coming from those few sonnets that read like a jealous, petty smear job.

So I went on a journey to connect the two.

Enter Emilia Bassano. Scholars have been touting her as one of the likelier candidates for the Dark Lady of the Sonnets. Though there’s nothing that can be called proof, there are many tantalizing leads that fit the claim. I had read a bit about her: she was an Italian poet and musician, she was at court at the same time as Shakespeare, she possibly could have inspired Rosaline in Love’s Labours Lost. It was interesting. But then, in my quest to really get to know this forgotten woman better, I decided to hear her voice, instead of other people writing about her. I read her poems, and the floor dropped open. The feminist outcry in this woman voice, the breathless run on sentences feeling like she had so much to say and so little time to say it in. The mirroring instances of similarity with Shakespeare, popping like jewels as I read. I was smitten. The more research I did, the more jaw dropping moments I had. The more I played with the idea of a romance between them, the more things fell into place.

There are 12 of Shakespeare's Dark Lady sonnets in this piece, text from 20 of his plays, and 5 excerpts from Emilia Bassano's sole book of poems "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum". I love to think that these two brilliant minds found each other, learnt from each other and influenced each other. This narrative I’ve weaved through their poetry paints their story through their works and finds her voice in his words.

Let’s see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

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Jessica B. Hill

Jessica was mid-rehearsal in her sixth season at the Stratford Festival when the world stopped, rehearsing Lady Anne opposite Colm Feore in Richard III and Helena in All’s Well that Ends Well. Stratford credits include Bess in Kate Hennig’s Mother’s Daughter, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors, Emily in Jordi Mand’s Brontë: The World Without, Gabriel in Erin Shield’s Paradise Lost, Isabella in The Changeling and Lola in Hannah Moscovitch’s Bunny. Mother’s Daughter was recently remounted at Soulpepper this January. Originally from Montreal, Jessica is bilingual and has worked in film, tv, video games and theatre in both English and French.