> Virginia Woolf wrote a famous essay, 'Shakespeare's sister', about how a figure like her could never hope to be a writer or have her writing preserved, so she has become something of a symbol for all the lost voices of early modern women.
This is a central point also that Woolf makes in _A Room of One's Own_.
The quote you give, is a nice example to see how history, historical research, etc has everything to do with setting the scene for the present, and not much to do with the past.
History is a present day activity. It is akin to the background scenery in a play - it provides the context for the present, it sets up our current stories. It's all to do with interpretation, and that is only ever present.
Yes, and of course all of the rights and social privileges which applied to the monarchy applied likewise to everyone else, and thus all women during the Elizabethan era were precisely as free as Elizabeth herself.
My apologies. I keep keep forgetting people here are incapable of detecting sarcasm.
Your perspective is skewed. Virginia Woolf lived in the 20th century, and the Elizabethan period ended a few centuries before she was born. You can't use Virginia Woolf to prove anything about gender norms in the Elizabethan period, much less compare the norms between royal, noble and common women during Shakespeare's time.
So they found this document, two people saw it, they made a digital copy, and then the original was lost? That seems to be what the linked article is saying, and I can't access the paper.
I was 10 when stay came out but I can still remember the music video clear as day. Only other one from that time I remember that clearly was earth song.
IIRC from an interview with her, the otherworldly performance is something to do with the bottle of vodka she drank while waiting for everyone else to get ready
Like all alternative authorship theories, this one is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, that being that "great art" is necessarily biographical or reflects the "soul" of the artist. Once you've made that error, you can trivially point out that Shakespeare wrote about people, places, and situations that the Stratford man wouldn't have been personally familiar with, and then you can pick anyone else you like from the era that you think might match your profile better. This exact process has been used for Bacon, Derby, Oxford, and dozens of other claimants; nobody has offered a truly new argument against Shakespeare for decades.
I recommend the book _Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?_ by James S. Shapiro as the definitive work examining, explaining, and debunking alternative authorship theories. It's thoughtful and well-written, not the dry diatribe one might expect.
This is a central point also that Woolf makes in _A Room of One's Own_.