Claim: Shakespeare's work was by a woman

William Shakespeare authorship conspiracies are ten a penny, but this one's worth the price of entry: Was Shakespeare a Woman?

Who was this woman writing immortal work in the same year that Shakespeares name first appeared in print, on the poem Venus and Adonis, a scandalous parody of masculine seduction tales (in which the woman forces herself on the man)? Harveys tribute is extraordinary, yet orthodox Shakespeareans and anti-Stratfordians alike have almost entirely ignored it.

Until recently, that is, when a few bold outliers began to advance the case that Shakespeare might well have been a woman. One candidate is Mary Sidney, the countess of Pembroke (and beloved sister of the celebrated poet Philip Sidney)one of the most educated women of her time, a translator and poet, and the doyenne of the Wilton Circle, a literary salon dedicated to galvanizing an English cultural renaissance. Clues beckon, not least that Sidney and her husband were the patrons of one of the first theater companies to perform Shakespeares plays. Was Shakespeares name useful camouflage, allowing her to publish what she otherwise couldnt?

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