Shakespeare’s Dark Lady in Walthamstow High Street?

Emilia Bassano, later Lanier, one of the second generation of the family to live in England, brought up in Court circles, was a musician and a poet in her own right – and is believed by some people – most notably the historian A L Rowse – to have been the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s […]

Emilia Bassano, later Lanier, one of the second generation of the family to live in England, brought up in Court circles, was a musician and a poet in her own right – and is believed by some people – most notably the historian A L Rowse – to have been the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence.

Bassano mothsThis exquisite miniature by Nicholas Hilliard is almost certainly of Emilia – among the evidence is the fact that the sitter’s bodice is embroidered with silk moths, the emblem of the Bassano family.

Emilia was brought up at the Bassanos’ house near All Hallows by the Tower in the City of London. It seems likely, though, that she visited her uncles in Walthamstow – one of their houses was in Marsh Street (now the High Street), near where Mission Grove would one day be built.

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