““A. L. Rowse—who, it must be said, never allowed an absence of certainty to get in the way of a conclusion—in 1973 identified the dark lady as Emilia Bassano, daughter of one of the queen’s musicians, and, with a certain thrust of literary jaw, asserted that his conclusions “cannot be impugned, for they are the answer,” even though they are unsupported by anything that might reasonably be termed proof.””
