Hundreds of years of searching for the author of the plays reached a climax when the Dark Lady Players put forward an innovative new solution. Our methodologies suggested they were written by the so-called ‘dark lady’ of the sonnets, Amelia Bassano Lanier (1569-1645). The first woman to publish a book of original poetry, she came from a family of Venetian Jews and was the long-term mistress to the man in charge of the English theater.
The next year, a six-page cover story appeared in Reform Judaism Magazine. In January 2012, Stratfordian Professor William Green endorsed the new research. "...the scholarship is absolutely fascinating. There is a huge amount of documentary evidence to support the theory that it was not Will Shakespeare but Amelia Bassano Lanier."