Heresy! A play by any other gender

Writer Jodi Picoult aims to ‘convince you all’ that Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and more of the Bard’s other best-known works were in fact written by a female poet.

Jodi Picoult says she has unearthed evidence that Shakespeare's best-known plays were written by a woman. Picture: Sarah Wilson

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Did a woman write some of Shakespeare’s best-known plays?

Before you shout blasphemy! Heresy! Sacrilege! let’s hear the argument from the mega-selling writer Jodi Picoult.

Picoult, who was touring Australia for the first time in a decade this week, is the author of 29 novels that have sold a combined 40 million copies around the world.

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

Her latest, By Any Other Name, is described as “historical fiction” but Picoult aims to “convince you all” that Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and quite a few of the Bard’s other best-known works were in fact written by a female poet who could not register the works under her own name because she was a woman.

Picoult is expecting pushback from scholars, particularly those who revere Shakespeare, but says her “primary source” research suggests that “Shakespeare couldn’t have done it”.

“We know that he was not educated at university, and when he died, he did not own a single book, not one,” says Picoult. “He wrote in detail about Denmark, and there is no evidence he ever went there.”

By contrast, the female poet Emilia Bassano, who was born in London in 1569 and at age 40 became the first female poet published in England, “had a first-class education. She was seven when her father died … after that, she went to live with a countess, who took care of her schooling.

“When she was 12, she went to live with the countess’s brother (a baron named Peregrine Bertie) who happened to be the ambassador to Denmark, and we know that he travelled to Denmark, where he attended a dinner hosted by the King and Queen.” Fellow guests included the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and his cousins, Frederik Rosenkrantz and Knud Gyldenstierne.

In Hamlet, the main character’s father, the king of Denmark, is killed by his uncle, Claudius, who plots to kill Hamlet by sending him to England with two courtiers named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (they stand in for treachery and selfishness.)

“I think that, back then, people in theatre knew that William Shakespeare was a catch-all name for a lot of different types of authors,” says Picoult. “I don’t think it’s true that he personally wrote all of them.”

She says she has found clues that point towards female authorship of Romeo and Juliet, Othello, the Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew.

If you’re outraged, that’s fine. Picoult says she is expecting pushback, saying By Any Other Name is the “timeliest” and “spiciest” book she’s ever written.

“Women are still fighting to have a voice, creatively, and politically. We like to pigeonhole women,” she says. “It happens to me. I am told that I write women’s fiction, and I don’t even know what that is.”