Author’s Note: The Real Emilia and the Shakespeare Debate

Spoiler notice: The following examines the historical context and authorial decisions behind the novel. If you prefer to encounter the story without this framing, skip this chapter.

Summary

Jodi Picoult opens by recounting how she questioned Shakespeare’s authorship after finding scant historical records of him as a writer. She lists documented facts about the Stratford man—glover’s son, actor, shareholder—and his lack of formal education or evidence of authorship, while other playwrights left traces. She notes contemporary references that hint at an allonym, such as Thomas Edwards’s image of a writer hiding behind a literary mask, and John Davies calling Shakespeare “our English Terence,” implying other hands wrote his works. Picoult highlights details in the plays—Italian geography, musical references, legal knowledge—difficult to square with a man who never left England, played no instrument, and whose daughters were illiterate.

The heart of the note is Emilia Bassano, a converso Jew and the first Englishwoman to publish a poetry book. Picoult draws on Simon Forman’s astrological casebooks, which record Emilia’s visits, her status as Lord Hunsdon’s mistress, her marriage to a minstrel, a son named Henry, and Forman’s predatory advances. Picoult details where she took fictional license: the timing of Fletcher and Beaumont’s treason arrest, Shakespeare’s lost years and possible troupe affiliations, a romantic link between Emilia and the Earl of Southampton, and Emilia’s compositional role in Hamlet and sonnets. She weighs other authorship candidates—Marlowe, Oxford, Bacon, Mary Sidney Herbert—but accepts the theory of a collaborative “writer’s room” using the Shakespeare name, with Emilia and Mary Sidney Herbert involved.

Picoult discusses the virulence of bardolatry and the resistance to a female Shakespeare. She closes with Sonnet 81, inviting readers to imagine Emilia as its author. An addendum recounts Picoult’s visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where she saw Emilia’s miniature and a companion portrait of an “unknown man” with a red-haired youth, likely the teenage Southampton, with cartomancy cards (six of hearts and three of hearts) that perhaps encode a doomed love.

Key Events

Picoult outlines the sparse records of William Shakespeare and the paradoxes of his biography.
She presents contemporary Elizabethan allusions that suggest a writer masking their identity.
Emilia Bassano’s scant life details are extracted from Simon Forman’s diary, revealing her background and Forman’s harassment.
Picoult lists specific fictional departures: Fletcher/Beaumont timing, Shakespeare’s troupe alignments, the Emilia–Southampton romance, and the attribution of Hamlet and sonnets.
She surveys other authorship candidates and endorses a collaborative model.
She includes a personal account of discovering the Southampton miniature beside Emilia’s portrait in the V&A, complete with cartomancy cards.

Character Development

Emilia Bassano (the historical figure): Reconstructed through Forman’s entries as a courtesan turned wife, a mother, and a woman who sought medical and financial advice while fending off a predator. The author frames her as a silenced genius worthy of remembrance.
William Shakespeare (the man from Stratford): Presented as a self-interested entrepreneur—tax evader, grain hoarder—with no authorial paper trail, contrasting the intellectual depth of the works.
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton: Portrayed as a plausible lover and dedicatee of the poems; the miniature discovery implies a romantic link to Emilia that aligns with the novel’s fiction.
Simon Forman: Doctor and astrologer whose diary provides the only window into Emilia’s life; also exposed as a sexual predator who repeatedly propositioned her.
Mary Sidney Herbert: A candidate who outlived Shakespeare, edited her brother’s works, and wrote closet dramas; Picoult sees her as a likely collaborator.
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford: Proposed as the organizer of a writer’s room; his travels and court knowledge fit the plays.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Erasure of women’s creativity: The note underscores how women’s writing was lost or credited to men; mother’s legacies and kitchen science are given as examples.
Bardolatry as cultural religion: Picoult critiques the devotion to Shakespeare as a cottage industry that resists questioning, mirroring the fervor around untouchable canons.
The mask of authorship: The cuttlefish image from Joseph Hall and the playing-card motifs (six of hearts for doomed love, three of hearts for a warning) reinforce hidden identities and forbidden relationships.
Absence of evidence vs. evidence of absence: Picoult insists that a lack of documentation does not disprove female collaboration, urging readers to reconsider what history has overlooked.

Why This Chapter Matters

This author’s note is the bedrock of the novel’s argument, transforming a historical romance into an urgent scholarly provocation. It lays bare the evidence Picoult weighed, shows exactly where she invented or inferred, and invites the reader into her research journey—as well as a startling real-world discovery that seemed to confirm her fictional pairing. By presenting Sonnet 81 through Emilia’s eyes, Picoult reframes the entire Shakespeare canon, making the note not just an appendix but a manifesto for recovering erased voices.

Study Questions and Answers

How does Picoult use Simon Forman’s casebooks to build a portrait of Emilia Bassano, and what limitations does she acknowledge? Picoult extracts Emilia’s address, parentage, marital status, and financial dealings from the diary, as well as Forman’s repeated sexual propositions. She admits the records are sparse, filtered through a predator’s gaze, and that we don’t know Emilia’s inner life—only the fragments Forman chose to write down.
What is the significance of the “unknown man” miniature and the playing cards in the addendum? The miniature appears to be a teenage Earl of Southampton, painted around the same time as Emilia’s portrait and set beside her in the museum’s collection. The six of hearts on its back signifies a doomed, ephemeral love; the three of hearts on a later Southampton miniature warns of a third party threatening the relationship. For Picoult, this physical pairing echoes the novel’s imagined romance.
Why does Picoult include other authorship candidates, and why does she ultimately center Emilia? She surveys Marlowe, Oxford, Bacon, and Mary Sidney Herbert to show that doubts about the Stratford man are widespread and that multiple figures had the requisite knowledge. Emilia’s life—her hidden Judaism, courtesan status, Italian heritage, musical family, and the fact that she wrote and published when women were silenced—makes her, in Picoult’s view, the most compelling embodiment of what it meant to be a woman with a voice she had to conceal.

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