Could Shakespeare’s plays have been written by the ‘Dark Lady,’ a Jewish woman of Venetian-Moroccan ancestry?
John Hudson is a man with a mission. Seven years ago, the 54-year-old social theorist embarked on a literary adventure, following a long-nursed hunch about Shakespeare’s true identity. Hudson had spent most of his adult life grappling with complex questions that straddled the fields of social theory and cognitive science, creating high-level strategic redesign for the energy, telecommunications, Internet, and public sectors. “Most of my work involved helping media companies rethink their industries,” says Hudson. “Now I’ve moved on to rethinking the Shakespearean industry.” With his life and plays comprising a billion-dollar global industry, says Hudson, the Bard has managed to secure a sublime place in literary history as well as an omnipresence in pop culture and media. “But, like all industries, it rests on certain assumptions,” says Hudson. It is these very assumptions — primarily about who the author of the plays really was — that Hudson set about to reinvent. Hudson had an uneasy
