Melina

July 2023

In addition to still being 's best friend and roommate in Washington Heights, Andre remained her critique partner. For two years after the Jasper Tolle fiasco, she had not written anything but a grocery list. For another year after that, she had tried her hand (unsuccessfully) at poetry and had attempted a TV pilot. When she finally allowed herself to start a new play, it felt like a dam had burst. Nature, always, would win out.

She had written a handful of mediocre plays since then, and had shown them to Andre, who was working at a casting agency doing zero playwriting of his own. After college, he'd been too cowed by the lack of opportunities for Black playwrights in the "real world"—so he'd convinced himself the best way into the business was by making connections through his current job. When Andre gave feedback to her, he was gentle in his comments, but he said that her writing felt both beautiful and too careful. "It's like really good AI," he said. "Super polished, but without a beating heart." He wasn't wrong—but that was by intent. The only personal thing she wrote, rewrote, and finessed—for years now—she had never showed to anyone.

Until Andre discovered her secret. He had burst into her bedroom one morning a few years ago, cradling her laptop, and had plopped down on the mattress. "Um, hello?" he said. " By Any Other Name? "

The title of her play was a nod to Romeo and Juliet, to Juliet's assertion that a label mattered less than the content. Even in her sleep-haze, had snatched the laptop away from him. "What are you doing with my computer?"

"Making an appointment to get a pedicure, because my phone's dead," Andre said. "Number one, your passcode should never be your birthday. Number two, what are you doing writing a play this good and not letting me read it?"

"I'm not done yet," said, and then in a smaller voice: "You like it?"

The play was about her ancestor Emilia Bassano. In the years since her father had made her aware of the poet, she had become an armchair expert on Emilia, and the more she had learned, the more became determined to give her a voice.

She couldn't quite bring herself to complete it, though.

Because this story, Emilia's story, was the story of 's heart—the one she kept coming back to, the one she felt maybe she was destined to tell. Completing it meant a reckoning of sorts: what if, after all this time and passion, it wasn't any good?

On the other hand, if didn't finish it, she'd never have to face that possibility.

Andre had shaken his head. "This is the one, " he predicted.

had rolled her eyes. "Let me just text my agent," she joked. "Oh right. I don't have one."

Thus began Andre's campaign to get to stop hiding her light, or play, under a bushel. He pestered her about submitting samples to emerging writers' groups. He left flyers for play competitions and fringe festival submissions taped to the bathroom mirror. Sometimes, just to get him off her back, she would send off one of her plays—one whose success carried lower stakes.

Because the deeper had dug while researching her ancestor, the more certain she had become that Emilia Bassano was not only the first published female poet in England and might very well have been a playwright, too.

The playwright, actually. The most famous one in history.

—

During a Shakespeare course in college, 's professor had spent fifteen minutes glossing over the fact that some scholars felt the man from Stratford might not have written his plays. He'd then sniffed and said it was elitist to think that just because Shakespeare wasn't formally educated or rich he couldn't be brilliant.

's first instinct was a knee-jerk response: of course Shakespeare had written his own plays. He was the Bard, the greatest playwright of all time.

She got an A in the course and promptly forgot about this controversy.

After graduated, when she found herself too paralyzed to write, she took temp jobs to survive. In between gigs, she would go to the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives room, which was free and air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter. It was there she started diving into the life of her ancestor—quickly coming to realize that Emilia Bassano deserved to be more than a footnote in someone else's history.

Very few people had ever heard of Emilia, but if they had, it was because she was a potential answer to the mystery of the identity of the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets: the lover to whom some of the poems were addressed. Then one day read a chapter in an academic tome that suggested Emilia might not be just the subject of the sonnets—but potentially the author.

Suddenly, remembered her Shakespeare professor talking about people who questioned the authorship of the plays. She discovered that the first of the anti-Stratfordians (as this group was sometimes called) was a woman—Delia Bacon—and she was joined over time by esteemed authors, Supreme Court justices, and acclaimed actors, among others. Mostly, the alternative candidates they suggested were men who were Shakespeare's contemporaries.

Mostly. Occasionally a woman's name was mentioned as a candidate for the "real" author. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, was cited. Queen Elizabeth herself. And Emilia Bassano.

struck up a friendship with a reference librarian who forwarded her links to scholarly articles and found her books about the Bassano family. learned that her ancestor came from a family of musicians who performed for the Queen. She was educated by a countess, receiving instruction that was extremely rare for a young girl—especially one who was not noble. At age thirteen, Emilia became mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, the man who controlled all theater in London. Later in her life, she was the first woman in England to publish a book of poetry.

So, yes. She had a more classical education than Shakespeare did—it wasn't even known if he'd attended grammar school. Emilia had been born into a creative, musical family. She had access to and awareness of any dramatic productions that were launched through Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, who was responsible for vetting all theater performed in Elizabethan England. She was an established poet at a time when no women were being published. But none of that yet proved anything.

Three years after arriving in New York City, got a job as an usher at an Off-Broadway house where Hamlet was running. As she watched the show night after night, she wondered how Shakespeare had known so much about Denmark. She asked her reference librarian friend and a few days later got her answer: unclear, because there was no record that Shakespeare had left England, much less visited the Danish court.

became an amateur sleuth. She learned that when Emilia was twelve, the countess who'd been educating her got married. There was a short gap of time unaccounted for, before Emilia became the Lord Chamberlain's mistress, when she was in limbo, living at the home of the Countess's brother, a baron named Peregrine Bertie.

That baron was the ambassador to Denmark.

During a diplomatic mission he'd taken during that gap of time when Emilia was in his care, he'd met the monarchs of Denmark; he'd stayed at the castle that was the model for the one in Hamlet, and he had dined with two men named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—characters in that play.

Shakespeare did not move in the same social circle as the Baron; it would have been highly unlikely they knew each other. On the other hand, Emilia had lived with him. She would have heard his stories of the Danish court, or—since she was a child under his protection at the time—she might have traveled to Denmark with him.

That night when watched Hamlet rage and Ophelia go mad, she saw the play in a new light.

What she knew: Shakespeare was an actor, a theater shareholder, and a businessman. There were plenty of documents to prove it. But there weren't any documents that proved he was the writer of the plays.

What she knew: Women were not allowed to write for the stage. At the very least, playwriting could lead to scandal and ostracism for a woman's entire family. At the worst, it could land her in jail.

What she also knew: When it came to history, absence of evidence was not evidence of absence. Just the fact that Emilia Bassano hadn't been published under her own name until 1611 did not mean she wasn't writing before that…as someone else.

It had been almost three years since Jasper Tolle had destroyed 's self-esteem, three years since she had written a play…but that night, after she finished her ushering job, she took the subway home, opened her laptop, and typed: Act I Scene I: A manicured garden in Westminster.

She wrote: Emilia sits on a carved bench beneath the embrace of a lush emerald willow.

—

Living in New York City as a writer meant either having a day job or selling a kidney. At the moment, was nannying to pay for her expensive playwriting habit. She had just dropped off her current charge, four-year-old Kingsley, and faced his mother's icy fury for being late. He'd had a casting call that ended at four-fifteen and an interview uptown for the Episcopal School at four-thirty, which was physically impossible to navigate. As left, she heard Kingsley's mother tell his father that good help was hard to find.

By the time got to the apartment she shared with Andre, she was fantasizing about a big glass of rosé and her pajamas. But when she opened the door, Andre was waiting, dressed far too well for a Friday night in. "Mel! Where have you been ? We were supposed to be at my mother's birthday dinner a half hour ago."

"Oh, God, Andre. I totally forgot. Okay, let's go."

"Is that what you're wearing?"

She glanced down. "What's wrong with it?"

"What's right with it?" He grabbed her arm, yanking her into the apartment.

sat on her bed while Andre detonated a small explosion in her closet. He emerged with a men's shirt she had bought at a consignment shop and a colorful scarf. "Strip."

shucked off her cargo pants and tank top, shimmied into the shirt, and let Andre wrap the scarf around her waist, creating a minidress. "Why are you so good at this?" she muttered.

"If I'm in the closet," he said, "I might as well do something there."

In the years they had been living together, had watched Andre love—and lose—numerous men: the semiprofessional tennis player, the bassist for a grunge band, the hedge fund wiz. If he had a type, it was that no two of his crushes were similar with the exception of the fact that they, too, kept their sexual orientation hidden from their colleagues or their fans or—in Andre's case—his parents.

She grabbed his hand. "Andre," said. "Why don't you just tell them?"

He looked her dead in the eye. "Why don't you submit your Emilia play for the O'Neill summer conference?"

She huffed out a sigh, annoyed, unwilling to engage. "I'm wearing sneakers," she muttered.

"You do you," Andre answered.

—

had met Andre's parents twice. They thought she was his girlfriend, a lie that Andre had cultivated on purpose. "They're so upset I'm dating a white Jewish girl," he'd said, "that when I finally say I'm gay, it's going to be a relief."

Letitia, Andre's mother, was employed by a national insurance agency and had worked her way up through the ranks to become an executive in charge of fifty employees. "And then," she said, as they lingered over dessert, "HR told me that the feedback from my colleagues was that I hogged the conversation during meetings. Hogged. Can you believe that?"

Letitia looked at her husband, Darnell, who held up his hands. "I wisely learned to stay quiet years ago," he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Anyway. I started to count the minutes I actually spoke at these meetings, and it was far less than any man did. In fact, it was a quarter of the time."

"I once read an article about that," said. "When women talk twenty-five percent of the time in a room, people think it feels balanced. If they talk twenty-five to fifty percent of the time, it's seen as monopolizing the discussion."

"Maybe if men were smarter, we wouldn't have to keep explaining for that other twenty-five percent," Letitia huffed.

"Like I said…learn to stay quiet." Darnell nodded at Andre. "Let that be a lesson, son, for when you two get married."

"Which, honestly, should have happened by now," Letitia added. "You've been together for a decade. If I'm going to have grandbabies before I die—"

"Mom, you're hogging the conversation," Andre announced, and then he blurted out the first thing he could think of to change the subject. "Pop, Mel's writing a play about Shakespeare!"

glared at Andre, who shrugged apologetically. "Shakespeare!" Darnell exclaimed, delighted. He was an English teacher at a high school in Brooklyn. He taught an entire class on Shakespeare and race, citing examples from Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, As You Like It. It was from Darnell that had first heard the quote from Maya Angelou: Shakespeare must be a Black girl. The bleak desperation of Sonnet 29 seemed odd coming from a poet at the peak of his fame…but it made a lot of sense if you imagined the writer as someone who'd experienced racism or poverty or sexual abuse.

"My play isn't actually about Shakespeare," explained. "And I've only just started it, really."

"She started it seven years ago," Andre said, and kicked him beneath the table. "You've been working on it for years, babe, " he said pointedly. "Maybe if you start telling people the idea, it will stop being an idea and become a finished play. "

looked at the expectant, polite faces of Darnell and Letitia and gave up the fight. "You know that there are people who think Shakespeare might not have been the author of the plays," she began.

"Oh, you mean the hogwash about him not going to Oxbridge?" Darnell said, waving dismissively. "He wasn't the only poet to come from the working class. Christopher Marlowe's father made shoes."

"But Christopher Marlowe got a scholarship to Cambridge," said. "Shakespeare would have needed to know things to write all those plays. Philosophy, history, classics, astronomy, military strategy, a whole bunch of languages—French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew…" She shook her head. "Even if he somehow managed to educate himself, there are subjects in the plays that he couldn't have written about without experiencing them firsthand."

Darnell looked dubious. "Like?"

"Legal knowledge, for one. Since there weren't legal libraries, you had to be invited to study the law. Or the geography of Italy—there weren't any guidebooks that explained the canal system in the interior of the country, but it's in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The town of Bassano in Italy has a fresco in it that Iago describes in Othello, but there's no proof that Shakespeare ever went there."

"But it's not like there were travel records back then—"

"Actually, there were. There's all kind of records of the trips of people who were as famous as Shakespeare."

"So you think because he didn't leave behind documentation of his travel, he's a fake?" Darnell scoffed.

"No," admitted. "I think William Shakespeare was a guy who lived in Stratford and London, acted sometimes, and invested in theater companies. But I think Shakespeare's reputation as a playwright is unfounded."

wasn't ready to say Emilia Bassano's name out loud. Instead, she said, "Did you know that in 1687 a playwright named Edward Ravenscroft said that Shakespeare brought the manuscript of Titus Andronicus to a theater troupe, but that it had been written by someone else?"

"If the greatest playwright of all time was a hoax, wouldn't that have been exposed in the last, oh, four hundred years?" Darnell said.

"I think a hoax can look like history," replied, "if you mistake mythology for truth."

Darnell turned to Andre. "You better put a ring on that one, boy. She's a smart cookie."

"At the risk of hogging the conversation, " Letitia chimed in, "that is what I was saying."

smiled sweetly at Andre. "Yeah," she said. " Babe. "

—

woke with a start and looked out her bedroom window. Her eyes were drawn to a star that burned even in the ambient lights of the city, one she could not remember seeing before, and the most extraordinary thought tumbled into her head:

The Heavens can shift and alter.

The world itself can change.

pushed the tangle of sheets from her legs and grabbed her laptop. She opened it, the glow of her unfinished play illuminating her features. Her thoughts came faster than her fingers could fly, and she was still typing when dawn set the skyline on fire.

Andre entered her room without knocking. "I didn't sleep at all," he moaned. "I either had too much wine or too much of my parents, not sure which." He tossed himself dramatically onto the bed next to , who remained frozen, reading, her eyes on the screen.

When she still didn't respond, Andre glanced at her. "Hello?"

"I finished. I finished my play." A little laugh bubbled up her throat; she caught her hand over her mouth, as if to stifle it.

"And?"

looked at him. "Andre," she whispered. "I love it."

—

While Andre read her play, paced. She tried to make (and burned) toast. She hummed until he told her to shut up. Finally, he said, "Did I ever tell you I failed high school American history?"

"Really?"

"I hated it. The Trail of Tears, the Civil War, JFK's assassination, Dr. King's assassination—each thing we learned was more fucked-up than the last. I didn't understand why we had to study this terrible stuff that couldn't be fixed." He looked up at . "Now I get it."

"What do you mean?"

"Your play isn't about history. What happened to Emilia is still happening, every day."

"Yeah," said, feeling that little twist of her heart that let her know her words had communicated exactly what she wanted. "Do you know I've been rejected by twenty-two emerging writers' groups since I moved to New York? I'd say I'm not good enough, but they're all run by male artistic directors, who always pick more men than women. They say it's because the stories they tell are ones they can relate to. But when they keep prioritizing those kinds of stories, the result is there are so many others that don't ever get told."

"Girl," Andre said, nodding.

She smiled. If anyone understood what it was like to feel sidelined, it was Andre, who existed at the nexus of not one but two marginalized groups. "I know you get it. When I get rejected for the zillionth time by a man who has more power than I ever will, I'm supposed to say, It's fine. Because a man who argues is ambitious, but a woman who argues is just a bitch."

Her computer dinged with a message. They both leaned forward to read the note from the nanny agency: Kingsley's parents requested different nanny—said you were reliably unreliable. Will be in touch if other opptys arise.

"Great," moaned. "I'm going back to bed. Wake me in 2040." She pulled a blanket over her head.

"This is a sign." Andre yanked the throw from her. "You're not supposed to be a nanny."

"That was evident already to everyone, including me."

"You're supposed to be a playwright, Mel. If they're going to call you a bitch no matter what," he said, "you might as well earn the title."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's a fringe festival I heard about at the office. I think you should submit your play."

"Andre—"

"What's the worst that could happen?"

She raised her brows. "Were you not just listening?"

"What's the best that could happen?" Andre countered.

picked at the weave of the blanket. "It speaks to someone. My play."

Andre tilted his head. "You can't complain about the lack of stories like yours in the world if you don't even bother to submit them."

She could have said the same to Andre…but he wasn't complaining. By working with casting agents and networking daily, he was trying to find another way into a system that didn't inherently value the stories he wanted to tell. On the other hand, was complaining…and she hadn't done any work to try to change things.

considered a future working terrible jobs to pay the rent. All the anger she felt toward her chosen profession was just fear, distilled to its purest form. "Okay," she conceded.

Andre leaped to his feet, ready to argue, and then stilled. "Wait, what?"

"Yes." smirked. "We can work on the application today."

Andre's face split with a smile. "But first," he said, "champagne."

—

Submitting a play to a fringe festival was never as simple as sending an email with a copy of your script attached. The festival organizers required everything from your résumé to recommendations to a précis of what the play was about. Andre and sat shoulder to shoulder at her laptop, attempting to write summaries for her play that got sillier and sillier as they finished one, then two, then three bottles of prosecco. By then, the letters were dancing on the screen and Andre had crafted a fake letter of recommendation from Horace J. Sneed, the fictional artistic director of a mythical theater.

After several hours, the application was finished, and so were and Andre, who couldn't sit up without leaning on each other. Andre looked at , his hand hovering over the mousepad. "Ready?"

"Waitwaitwait," she slurred. "Lemme check it again for typos."

"You've read it thirty-teen times," Andre said. "Stop procrash…percast…procass…just send it already."

wrenched the laptop into her arms and fell backward on the bed. She tucked the keyboard under her chin, squinting as she scrolled down the application page. Village Fringe was being presented by The Place, an Off-Off-Broadway theater space with a reputation for edgy and innovative work, and its artistic director, Felix Dubonnet.

Felix Fucking Dubonnet.

"No," gasped, jackknifing so fast that the laptop tumbled onto Andre's belly. " No no no no no. "

"Ow," Andre said, wincing. "Did your computer crash again? Did we run out of prosecco?"

"Do you know Felix Dubonnet?" asked.

"Isn't that a drink?"

"He's an artistic director who's notorious for only producing plays written by men. Remember when Theresa Rebeck wrote about gender discrimination in theater in the Times ? He wrote a counter opinion, saying that there were plenty of women in theater— onstage. " shook her head. "If he's in charge of submissions for this contest, I'm out, Andre. I'm not doing this."

"Calm your tits, Mel," Andre said, sitting up with the laptop on his knees.

She looked at him, sobering. "Do you have any clue what it's like to be a woman?"

"Is that a trick question?"

"It's being judged constantly. For your clothes. For your curves. It's being told every time you turn on the TV that you have to be thinner or more beautiful. It means doing the same job as a man and getting paid less for it. It means if you age naturally you're letting yourself go, and if you get work done, you're trying too hard." She drew in a shaky breath. "Being a woman means being told to speak up for yourself in one breath, and to shut up in the next. It means fighting all the fucking time. "

Andre stared at her with empathy. "Different origin story," he murmured, "but I might know a little something about that."

sighed, setting aside her laptop. She was beginning to understand why Andre didn't write anymore—if you didn't put yourself out there to be rejected, you couldn't get hurt. "Forget the fringe festival. I'm not a glutton for punishment, even if I am female."

Andre blinked. "What if you weren't?"

"Brilliant. I'll get right on that," said, stumbling off the couch. "But first I've gotta pee. Sitting down. "

With the room still whirling, she staggered into the bathroom.

Andre looked at the screen and 's application to the Village Fringe. With one finger, he deleted three letters of her name, until only his nickname for her remained. Mel. He did the same on the script, then pressed send. She'll thank me, he thought drunkenly; then lay back against the pillows and passed out.

returned to find her best friend snoring. Her laptop was shut on the coffee table, the last prosecco bottle empty. Yawning, she sank onto the couch and fell into a deep sleep, blissfully unaware that Andre had submitted her play under the alias of a man.