that the mysterious “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets was black. “‘If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head,’” recites author Caroline Randall Williams, quoting Sonnet 130.

“The Dark Lady was Florio’s wife ... than her lips red,” he wrote in sonnet 130, concluding: “And yet by heaven I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare.” ...