Bard on the Beach star Arghavan Jenati reflects on Dark Lady at the heart of Shakespeare’s work

New production of Jessica B. Hill’s witty play reclaims the lost history of poet Emilia Bassano 

By Olivia Hart

Arghavan Jenati in The Dark Lady. Photo by Emily Cooper

Bard on the Beach presents The Dark Lady at the Douglas Campbell Theatre to September 19

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S works have been staged, reimagined, and reinterpreted countless times over four centuries, inspiring generations of artists who followed in his footsteps. Now a new production, The Dark Lady, poses the question: Who inspired Shakespeare?

Featured in this season of Bard on the Beach, The Dark Lady sheds light on the life of Shakespeare’s mysterious muse, Emilia Bassano, who’s widely believed to be the “dark lady” referenced in sonnets 127 to 152; in those works, the poet expresses a complex, tormented love for the black-haired woman, who defies conventional standards of beauty. Written by Canadian playwright Jessica B. Hill, the witty and intimate play reclaims the story of Bassano, who was far more than a muse. Born in London in 1569 to a family of Venetian immigrants, she was a gifted musician and the first woman in England to publish a volume of poetry.

“I kept asking myself ‘How did I not know about her before?’” says actor Arghavan Jenati, who is taking on the role of Emilia. “And I think there is that curiosity: How did we not study her before? She’s the first English female professional poet and she had to have a sense of grit and self-belief to be able to publish at that time.”

Jenati is no stranger to Bard on the Beach, having performed with the summer Shakespeare festival on and off over the years. However, this was the first she’d heard of Bassano. “I learned Sonnet 130 in school and never thought any more of it or who was behind the poem,” Jenati says. 

When the opportunity to play Emilia arose, the choice was easy. “I read the script in one sitting and it was really satisfying,” she recalls. “The relationship between the two people was magnetic and I was completely invested in the story, so I knew it would be a really special show.” 

In preparing for the role, Jenati dived into Shakespeare’s sonnets and Bassano’s own writing, including her 1611 poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, but what truly unlocked the character for her wasn’t on the page.

“Our director, Moya O’Connell, really guided me during rehearsals, and one day I was just trying to find my way and she just said, ‘You know, she’s a woman and she has an entire universe in her,’” Jenati says, “There was something about that which really allowed me to find her, and it was really liberating.” 

Despite being well-educated and a contemporary of Shakespeare, Bassano saw Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum—a mystical rewriting of Genesis that scholars believe to be a defence of Eve and womankind—dismissed in its time because of Bassano’s gender and radical subject matter. “She was fearless and there were a lot of odds stacked against her. She really fought to be acknowledged for her work,” Jenati says.

Arghavan Jenati.

“A lot of Shakespeare’s female characters are very dimensional, so there must have been a female influence.”

If not for recent interest in Bassano’s work, which is finally being given the critical attention it deserves, the poet may have joined the many female artists who have been lost to history. For Jenati, embodying Emilia has not only brought a forgotten woman into focus, but has also reframed her view of Shakespeare himself.

“I’ve only ever approached Shakespeare through the lens of an actor,” she says. “Now, doing this play, I’m seeing Shakespeare differently. I’m seeing it as someone who was in collaboration with someone else.” 

That idea of collaboration and unseen influence is at the heart of The Dark Lady, which follows the two artists, Shakespeare and Bassano, as they fall in love, make art, and discover the cost of that. While the historical record leaves many gaps, what’s known is that Bassano and Shakespeare lived overlapping lives. As the mistress of Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, Bassano would have had access to theatrical circles in Elizabethan London.

Some scholars point to intriguing textual clues: characters named Emilia appear in Othello, The Winter’s Tale, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. And in The Merchant of Venice, the romantic lead is Bassanio—a name nearly identical to her own. Given the evidence and Bassano’s bold, progressive ideas, it’s not hard to imagine she left her mark on more than just his sonnets. 

“Her poetry was proto-feminist,” Jenati says. “It essentially retells the story of Adam and Eve from a real feminist lens. And a lot of Shakespeare’s female characters are very dimensional, so there must have been a female influence.”

Across Shakespeare’s works, his female characters are often strikingly modern and complex. Many defy authority, challenge gender roles, and push back against the constraints of their time, traits that echo the themes in Bassano’s writing.

“The other night, I was watching a show on the [Bard on the Beach] main stage and the entire time I kept thinking, ‘There she is, that's Emilia,’” Jenati says. “I sensed her energy, her voice and her influence through his female characters.”

Whether or not Emilia Bassano inspired Shakespeare’s sonnets or helped shape his female characters, one thing is clear: she deserves her moment, not as a footnote in literary history, but as a voice finally heard.

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