A Book and a Chat with Charlene Ball
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Charlene Ball
My historical novel, DARK LADY: A NOVEL OF EMILIA BASSANO LANYER,
tells the story of Emilia Lanyer, a spirited, beautiful, and intelligent
woman who was Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady,” a poet in her own right, and
one of the first women in England to publish a book
.
Daughter of a Court musician and secret Jew, Emilia at a young age
becomes the mistress of a much older nobleman, Lord Hunsdon. Through
Hunsdon, she meets the brilliant, witty player and poet Will
Shakespeare, and they fall in love. Dressed as a boy, Emilia goes on
adventures around the city and countryside with Will. But the poet from
Stratford has his own secrets, and their liaison ends unhappily.
Emilia, being pregnant, marries her cousin, Alfi Lanyer, and has a
son, Henry. She learns from Alfi’s mother, Lucretia, what she has long
suspected: that her family are secret Jews. Although she was raised in
the English Church, she is drawn by the beauty and spiritual strength of
her family’s religion. To help her husband on a sea voyage, she visits
the unscrupulous astrologer and magician Simon Forman and through him
learns about the secret world of dark magic. She becomes addicted to a
potion he gives her. When Emilia breaks her addiction and begins to
write poetry, she is encouraged by two friends, very different from one
another: Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland and the
cross-dressing underworld character, Moll Frith. Emilia publishes her
book,
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, in 1611, becoming one of the first women in England to publish a book.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a definitive portrait of Emilia. The
people pictured above appear as characters in DARK LADY. Left to right:
Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, Emilia’s mentor; Henry Wriothesley,
Earl of Southampton, Will Shakespeare’s patron and friend; Mary Sidney
Herbert, Countess of Pembroke; and Emilia’s lover, William Shakespeare.
About Charlene Ball
Here’s some more information about me and my writing.
I’ve published articles and short stories, some of which have appeared in
Sinister Wisdom, The NWSA Journal, The Journal of the Short Story in English, The North Atlantic Review, and other journals. I wrote some plays also, one about Shakespeare and Emilia, and the other about Christopher Marlowe.
In my former life as an academic, I published journal articles and
taught writing, English and world literature, and women’s studies.
I
hold a B.A. and M.A. in English and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
concentrating on Renaissance (early modern) literature. Studying about
Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and Jacobean authors gave me an
enduring fascination with the Early Modern period.
In 2009, I retired from Georgia State University’s Women’s Studies
Institute where I taught and served as program administrator. Since
retirement, I spend my time writing, doing community work, digging in my
garden, and selling books with my wife Libby Ware, a writer and
antiquarian bookseller.
I belong to a writers’ group that I helped found, and I have attended
Carol Lee Lorenzo’s writing classes and Fiction Intensives workshops
and Rosemary Daniell’s Zona Rosa workshops. I belong to the Atlanta
Writers Club and the Georgia Writers Association. I am a Fellow of the
Hambidge Center for the Arts and held a residency at the Wurlitzer
Foundation of New Mexico. I’m a member of the First Existentialist
Congregation (UUA) of Atlanta where I help arrange for guest speakers
and edit the monthly newsletter. I live in Atlanta a mile from my wife
Libby Ware.
She
was born in London and grew up in a tiny village in Sussex. She
attended the University of Sussex and then the North London School of
Nursing. She worked for 40 years as a nurse and then a nurse
practitioner, specializing in the care of adults with physical
disabilities. She has now retired from her day job and is focusing on
her writing. She lives in the East Bay with her partner and their West
Highland terrier MacDuff.
