Shakespeare in Love meets Shakespeare’s
Sister in this novel of England’s first professional woman
poet and her collaboration and love affair with William
Shakespeare.
London, 1593. Aemilia Bassano
Lanier is beautiful and accomplished, but her societal
conformity ends there. She frequently cross-dresses to
escape her loveless marriage and to gain freedoms only men
enjoy, but a chance encounter with a ragged, little-known
poet named Shakespeare changes
everything. Aemilia grabs at the chance to pursue
her long-held dream of writing and the two outsiders strike
up a literary bargain. They leave plague-ridden London for
Italy, where they begin secretly writing comedies together
and where Will falls in love with the beautiful country —
and with Aemilia, his Dark Lady. Their Italian idyll,
though, cannot last and their collaborative affair comes to
a devastating end. Will gains fame and fortune for their
plays back in London and years later publishes the sonnets
mocking his former muse. Not one to stand by in humiliation,
Aemilia takes up her own pen in her defense and in defense
of all women. The Dark Lady’s
Mask gives voice to a real Renaissance woman in
every sense of the word.