Shakespeare, or Someone Else?

Jodi Picoult dives into the Bard's past with her latest novel

By Anna Faller | Aug. 31, 2024

With nearly 30 books to her name, internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult says the secret to finding great stories is to keep asking questions: about people and culture, about current headlines, and increasingly, about what the world might look like for people generations from now.

“It’s the same stuff that everyone else feels, I think—it’s the stuff that worries me,” she says. “If something keeps bugging me, then I know it’s probably a good [book] topic.”

There are a few standouts from her archives, though, which Picoult says “rise to the surface like cream.”

Of these, she highlights My Sister’s Keeper (2004)—both for the gateway it provided for those just discovering her writing, as well as the professional growth she undertook amid its film adaptation—as well as Small Great Things (2016) (“It really changed me in writing it,” she notes), and Vanishing Acts (2005) for the story’s persistence.

As of this year, she’d add another novel to that list: By Any Other Name.

Tune in on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 7pm as Picoult returns to the National Writers Series (her last appearance was in 2016) for a deep dive into the life and legacy of a woman history wrote over.

“I truly feel like I was meant to tell Emilia’s story,” Picoult adds. “[The National Writers Series] is a great [organization] with really engaged listeners. I’m very much looking forward to introducing them all to her.”

Meet Emilia Bassano

Like dozens of Picoult’s other books, the novel begins with a central question—two, in fact: Did William Shakespeare write his own plays? And if he didn’t, could the true author have been a woman?

The concept, Picoult says, piqued her interest after reading Elizabeth Winkler’s pivotal 2019 article in The Atlantic, wherein Winkler postulates that a woman might have been the brains behind some of the Bard’s material. “She mentioned a name I had never heard before, which was Emilia Bassano. That just stopped me in my tracks,” Picoult says.

For countless Shakespeare devotees, his Elizabethan audience included, a defining element of Shakespeare’s work was the nuance with which he is said to have written women. Notable examples include Lady MacBeth (and her raging “unsex me!” soliloquy), the poignant tragedy of Juliette, and characters like Beatrice and Rosalind who took charge of their own fates.

Shakespeare did have two daughters, neither of whom could read or write. “I was like, there’s no way a guy who could write these characters wouldn’t have taught his own children [those skills],” says Picoult. “The further I dove into it, the more I realized that the one thing we don’t know about [Shakespeare] is that he wrote anything that his name is on.”

According to historical documents—which, per Picoult, are few but concrete—Emilia Lanier (neé Bassano) was born in Elizabethan England to a family of musicians and instrument-makers who performed for the courts of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. Emilia was also the first woman in England to be recognized as a published poet; a title she earned through her 1611 anthology, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (translation: Hail God, King of the Jews).

Emilia was educated, she had the means to understand and experience theater, and—here’s the appropriately Hamletic “rub”—she could provide the perspective that made the women of Shakespeare’s plays come to life.

“Everything that academics have fallen all over themselves to explain about Shakespeare makes perfect sense when you look at it through [her life],” adds Picoult. “I wanted to write a novel that really looked at that gender discrimination, and at how women have had their voices silenced for over 400 years.”

By Any Other Name

That book is By Any Other Name.

In it, we meet Emilia just as she’s entering womanhood through an arrangement to serve as mistress to a man named Henry Carey, aka the first Baron Hunsdon and the highest-ranking officer of the U.K.’s Royal Household.

At first, Emilia is terrified, both by the scope of her new position and what her new circumstances might involve. It does, however, come with benefits, a highlight of which is the access to theater and academics the court provides.

While rubbing elbows with established writers like Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Mary Sidney, sharp-witted Emilia is also encouraged to assist Hunsdon in regular script-revision, which he performs as patron of an acting troupe, known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. (Fun fact: Many of these performers would later go on to occupy the iconic Globe Theater).

It’s through this arrangement that Emilia observes the power words can hold over an audience.
But at the time, it would have been deemed inappropriate for Emilia to participate in theater, making it impossible to tell her own story.

To do that, she’d have to be a man—or at least assume the name of one. So, she strikes up a covert deal with a play-pusher and actor named William Shakespeare.

Past and Future

The rest, as we know, is leather-bound history. Interspersed with Emilia’s chapters, we also get the voice of Melina Green, a modern-day playwright on the streets of Broadway, whose trajectory, though four centuries later, is often beset by similar snags.

Melina’s timeline starts in the mid-2010s when she, then a hopeful college senior, is humiliated after notoriously brutal theater critic, Jasper Tolle, tears her thesis piece to shreds in front of a live audience. The play, which Melina has boldly adapted to call out a misogynist educator, not only earns her a below-average grade, but also scars Melina so badly that she abandons writing altogether.

Fast-forward a few years, and her best friend Andre drunkenly submits a secret play she wrote to a prestigious festival, where it’s selected, but only under the pretense of a male-sounding name. (How utterly Shakespearean, no?)

Just as Picoult intended, the real-world parallels are tough to ignore.

“The point of Melina’s story is to contextualize just how little has changed for women,” even as far back as the 16th century, she says, both within the performance and publishing industries and also in terms of more widespread acceptance for female voices across the board.

Here, Picoult points to her own recent work in the theater world as a libretto writer, which, even as an award-winning author, was still met by her contemporaries with impressive skepticism.

“Everything that Melina hears from a producer or critic is something I was personally told about a show,” she says. In the book, this ranges from sexist digs (“Your stories are too small or emotional”) to a supposed lack of interest surrounding their subjects (“No one wants to hear female coming-of-age stories!”).

Pushing for Change

These types of attitudes, Picoult says, prove that in the 21st century, we’re still riding the coattails of societal structures designed to lift some voices while quashing others. Even in the book world, she notes, wherein women make up a majority, the most dominant publishing houses (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, etc.) are still helmed by mostly male CEOs. She also highlights a persistent lack of female reviewers and women who are reviewed.

“There are definitely still biases in the field,” Picoult adds.

Though it’s true that we’ve seen an awakening in creative industries throughout recent years, Picoult also emphasizes that there is still plenty of work yet to be done. And it starts not by finding more figurative seats but rather increasing the size of the table. Emilia Bassano was an initiator of this idea, and it’s why Picoult hopes we’ll remember her name.

“It’s not about allowing another theater slot for women or [creators of color],” adds Picoult. “We have to allow people with all different kinds of voices to have their stories told. The audience is there, and they’re rabid to hear those stories.”

About the Event

An Evening with Jodi Picoult takes place on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 7pm at Lars Hockstad Auditorium (TCAPS Central Grade School, 301 W. 7th Street) in Traverse City and via livestream. Tickets range from $41-$54 plus ticket fees and come with a signed hardcover copy of By Any Other Name at a 20 percent discount. Both in-person and livestream tickets can be purchased through the links on the National Writers Series website. The guest host for the event will be award-winning columnist and Director of Arts and Culture for the City of Detroit Rochelle Riley. For more information, visit nationalwritersseries.org.