Today is Shakespeare Sunday, so what better time to introduce another of our authors to you?
Her name is Alex Schnee, and her book is called Shakespeare’s Lady. Keep an eye out for it over the next few months!
Alex Schnee is the youngest-ever recipient of the Mount Hermon Most Promising Writer Award. Shakespeare’s Lady is her first novel and was originally published by Guideposts Books when she was 20. Cranthorpe Millner will be releasing the 2nd edition in 2019! She was also an honorable mention for the Nancy Lynn Schwartz Prize in 2012.
She has been published in the Underground Literary Review, the Whitefish Review, and many others. She has also written as a travel writer for USA Today, the Huffington Post, and many other publications.
She currently travels the world. You can find her at The Wayfaring Voyager.
Keep an eye out over the next few weeks for a guest blog post from Alex herself.
Shakespeare’s Lady:
For centuries, readers have debated the identity of the mysterious and seductive Dark Lady in William Shakespeare’s sonnets. Emilia Bassano – lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, patron of the arts and the first woman to establish herself as a professional poet in England – could be the answer.
Emilia Bassano is new to Queen Elizabeth’s court and unschooled in its dangerous intrigues. She quickly catches the eye of Lord Hunsdon, the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain, and becomes his mistress. When she falls pregnant, Hunsdon arranges a hasty marriage to her brutish cousin, the court musician, Alfonso Lanyer. However, it is through her unhappy marriage to Alfonso that Emilia manages to spend more and more time with the fascinating and elusive playwright, William Shakespeare.
Time goes by and, despite all their better judgement, they fall in love. But the course of true love never did run smooth, and the Virgin Queen does not take lightly to her ladies straying. These star-crossed lovers must fight for their love — and, eventually, their lives.
“In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
For since each hand hath put on nature’s pow’r,
Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bow’r,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland’ring creation with a false esteem.
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.”
Sonnet CXXVII