By Any Other Name

Three years have passed since her father’s surgery. Melina now lives in her hometown with her father and Beth. The two recently married and she walked her father down the aisle, happy that he’d found love again. She leads a slow, quiet life as a technical writer, composing manuals for all sorts of things. Sometimes she dreams of finding a manual to happiness but when she opens it, the pages are blank.

Andre stops by on the way back from a rehearsal of his new play, which Melina knows will win a national award. The two catch up, and he tells her that he finally came out to his parents and has a new, and very serious, boyfriend. He asks her if she is okay and she insists that she is, but he doesn’t believe her. He tells her not to sleep her life away in her childhood bedroom.

Melina gets an email from a woman, Katherine Marsh, who is the director of the Athena Playhouse. She asks to speak to Melina about her play. The two have a phone call, and Katherine explains that they want to stage By Any Other Name at their Maine theatre. When she arrives at the playhouse, she is charmed by its architecture. She is also surprised to see Jasper, who tells her he is the Athena’s artistic director. Taking her chastisement to heart, he has “made a bigger table” here for women and nonbinary playwrights. However, he confesses, “I’ve been saving a seat for you” (438). The lovers reunite and she agrees to stage the play.

An excerpt from By Any Other Name reveals the play’s last lines, which say, “There was a story, whether or not others ever chose to listen” (439).

Emilia continues to survive despite the odds, pursuing different paths to make a living for herself and her family. She opens a school for young women in her neighborhood who cannot attend grammar school due to their gender. One of her pupils leaves the school crying, and Emilia comforts her. She tells Emilia that she is to be married and asks her what the point of educating them is. To answer her, Emilia tells the story of a bird of prey she saw at court who died beating itself against a window. However, the window cracked afterward. She tells the pupil that she might be the bird who cannot escape, but she hopes that her students or their children will taste freedom.

The afternoon is interrupted when the constable arrests her. The landlord claims she has not paid her rent, and she rejoins that she has withheld it until he made the promised repairs. In Fleet Prison, she cannot reach her family or friends, especially Henry who travels with the court as a royal musician. She passes the days daydreaming of her old life. Finally, Henry frees her from prison and takes her home.

At home, Emilia is surprised to be visited by the playwright Ben Jonson. He explains that he and some others are printing an edition of Shakespeare’s works. He is aware of a workshop run by Oxford and staffed by other male playwrights who used Shakespeare as a front to sell their work. However, Shakespeare once let slip that his best source was Emilia.’ Jonson eventually remembered her from Mary Sidney’s salon long ago and tracked her down so that she can edit the manuscript of her plays before they go to press. She agrees to do so, and adds lines to Othello, giving Emilia more of a voice, and underscoring her point that women are also human.

Two years later, Jonson shows her the finished product. He gleefully points out that the strange illustration of Shakespeare, as well as the poetic epigraph, are meant to convey that Shakespeare is not the real author of the plays. Emilia asks him if he thinks that someone will crack the cipher after they are gone, and he says he believes so.

Later, Henry marries a young woman named Joyce, whom he loves. Before the wedding, he is nervous and tells his mother that he worries he will be like Alphonso. Emilia admits that Alphonso was not his real father and that his father was a good man but tells Henry that it doesn’t matter who his father is. What matters is that Joyce loves him, and he is a good man.

A year later, Emilia has embarked on a new career, selling ale. At market, she is shocked to overhear people gossiping about the death of Southampton and his son of a fever. She always assumed that she would know when he died because of their great love but realizes that it was an ordinary day to her and would have continued to be had she not heard the news. She sells her wares and leaves a note for her son, and then sets off on the long journey to Southampton’s home. She arrives at night and sneaks into the crypt where she sleeps next to his tomb.

In the spring, she is surprised to find the new Earl of Southampton, Henry’s son Thomas, at her door. He gives her back the miniature portrait and tells her he wanted to spare his mother heartache. She wonders how he found her but is glad to have the miniature back as tangible proof that she was once loved.

One day, she is talking with her son Henry, Joyce, and their two small children when Henry falls over in pain. He dies suddenly and Joyce dies soon after. Emilia finds herself at 66 years old, raising her two grandchildren. She appears in court again to request the money owed to her by her brother-in-law. There is no man like Southampton to save her, but she prevails and is paid the money.

Emilia comforts her granddaughter, Mary, before her wedding. She tells her grandmother that she loves her groom too much and worries that marriage will only end in pain if something happens to him. Emilia counsels her to take joy where she can, and the wedding proceeds happily.

In old age, Emilia dies of a cough, Bess by her side. Before she dies, she gives her the miniatures and tells her that she may need to sell them for money, but to please sell them together. She thanks the other woman for being her constant friend.

In the afterlife, she expects to find her lover but instead is greeted by her old friend Marlowe, who says that he has been waiting for her. As they walk together, their steps drift off into a smoke made from words she has written. Marlowe tells her her work will be remembered, but she cries that it isn’t enough, and she wants to be remembered too. She tries to glimpse the future but only sees confusing things—cars, skyscrapers, and a girl who resembles her standing on a stage. She then finds herself sitting on a bench under a willow, at the beginning of her life.

Melina watches as the actors performing her play take their bows. She is overwhelmed with joy at the performance and all her loved ones are present, including Andre, Jasper, her father, and Beth. Jasper comes on stage and tells the crowd that the playwright is in the house, gesturing for Melina to join him on stage. She goes to do so, hardly believing that she agreed, and sees a woman dressed in Elizabethan attire backstage. They meet eyes for a moment, and it is implied that she is seeing the spirit of Emilia Bassano. Melina takes the stage and enters the spotlight, thinking that she is finally seen.