In the book By Any Other Name, Emilia has to suffer through an abusive marriage. She spends much of her time doing whatever she can to provide bread for her family. In one scene of the book, Emilia stands up to her husband, Alphonso, while taking a swig of ale and a bite of bread. In celebration of this scene, the recipe match for this book is for Easy Beer Bread, courtesy of I Am Baker. Click her to view the recipe.

Melina is a playwright who is about to graduate from Bard College.  She has been mentored and tutored by her professor, Professor Bufort, over the years.  He has treated her well and has opened many doors in the theater world for her.  Despite these opportunities, however, he has made Melina uncomfortable by the way that he rubs her shoulders.  Melina writes a brilliant play called Reputation.  Using nameless characters such as, “The Boy” and “The Girl,” it details her life story where a boy she knew lied about them being intimate, ruining her reputation.  Then, he eventually convinces her to sleep with him because her reputation was already ruined.  Prof. Buford encourages her to enter the Bard College Playwrighting Competition.  The competition is judged by Jasper Tolle, a famous theater critic known for his cutting remarks.  Prior to the play, Melina’s dad sends her a note of encouragement and tells her about a distant relative, Emilia Bassano, who may have been a playwright and the real author of Shakespeare’s plays.  Melina reads the letter hours before competing in the finals of the competition.

Melina adds an afterword to the original play that details how Prof. Bufort has made her uncomfortable.  Prof. Bufort immediately knows that it is about him.  To make matters worse, Jasper Tolle reticules her play harshly, tearing down Melina.  Without her advisor and with Tolle’s words still stinging, Melina graduates with her reputation as a playwright tarnished.  She loses her passion for writing and trudges through the next few years directionless.

While she is trying to figure out what to do with her life, Melina begins researching Emilia Bassano further.  She becomes obsessed with Emilia’s life and the possibility that she is the real author of William Shakespeare’s plays.  Eventually, she begins to write a play about Emilia Bassano.

The story cuts to Emilia Bassano’s story.  She is the daughter of musicians, and her entire family hides their Jewish origin.  Her parents served as musicians for King Henry VIII, with her father having taught Queen Elizabeth how to play the lute and speak Italian when she was younger.  After her father died, her mother left for London to serve another aristocratic family.  Emilia was taken in by  Countess Bertie.  She would visit her cousins occasionally in Mark Lane, the Italian Community, where they would secretly pray.  Despite her troubles, she was content in her life. That is, until Countess Bertie was promised in marriage. 

Countess Bertie leaves for her new life in the Netherlands, and the Baron and his wife, Mary, take Emilia in.  Mary does not like her, so the Baron brokers a deal with Emilia’s cousin, Jeronimo, to allow the Lord Hunsdon to take her on as his mistress in exchange for the family remaining as court musicians.  The Lord Hunsdon was in charge of theater for the Queen.  In a blink of an eye, Emilia goes from a promising young future to one in which she has been sold for sex.

The Baron drops Emilia off at his mistress’s house. Isabella, the mistress, teaches Emilia about sex and how to pleasure a man.  When Emilia moves to Lord Hunsdon’s house, she finds him to be old, but kind.  She develops an affection for him, but never a love or a longing.

Back in present day, Andre finds Melina’s play about Emilia, “By Any Other Name.”  He thinks it is amazing, but she refuses to submit it.  One night, they get drunk and jokingly prepare the play to submit to the Village Fringe, a fringe festival run by The Place.  The Place was an Off-Off Broadway theater space run by artistic director Felix Dubonnet, who was known to be a massive misogynist.  As soon as Melina finds out that Felix is running the festival, she says she doesn’t want to submit the play for fear of the judgement.  When she goes to the bathroom, however, Andre changes her name to Mel and submits the play.

When Melina’s play is accepted into the festival, Andre has to admit to what he has done.  They go to the meet-and-greet the next night where Felix mistakes Andre for “Mel.”  They plan to correct him when he introduces the finalists. However, before Felix introduces the finalists, he introduces the judge.  It is no other than Jasper Tolle.  Melina begs Andre to pose as “Mel” and produce the play for the competition. After “By Any Other Name” wins the competition, Mel and Andre find themselves in a situation where they are working closely with Jasper Toll. As they continue their farce, Jasper increasingly realizes that there is something electrifying about Melina. She will stop at nothing to realize her dreams, much like her ancestor Emilia, who has to forge her own way after parting ways with Lord Hunsdon. As Shakespeare (or his ghostwriter) once said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

When I first selected this book, I did so based on Jodi Picoult’s name. I did not read the description, and I had no idea what it was about. I am so glad for that. I tend to not like books about theater, so I don’t think I would have selected it had I read the synopsis. After the first few chapters, however, I was hooked. Emilia’s story was compelling, and I could not stop thinking about the premise of the book. How earth-shattering of a revelation would it be if Shakespeare was found not to be the author of his works? I went down a Google rabbit hole one night reading about the theory. I want Emilia’s story to be true, and Picoult’s beautiful recounting of her life put that desire into my heart.

If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that Melina’s story seemed overly virtuous. I felt like Picoult overstated the struggles of modern women to such a ridiculous extent that Mel’s storyline felt like a feminist trope by the end. While sexism does exist in society, I found myself rolling my eyes at Mel by the end. Still, that small annoyance does not erase the beauty of the book as a whole. I highly recommend By Any Other Name to any and all–including those of us who struggle with Shakespearean theater.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️