Rowse, A(lfred) L(eslie) (1903–1997)

English historian. He published a biography of Shakespeare in 1963, and in Shakespeare's Sonnets: The Problems Solved (1973) controversially identified the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare's sonnets as Emilia Lanier, half-Italian daughter of a court musician, with whom the Bard is alleged to have had an affair in 1593–95.

His other works include the scholarly Tudor Cornwall: Portrait of a Society (1941, 1969) and Shakespeare the Man (1973). He was also a minor poet of Celtic themes and traditional forms of verse: he published A Life: Collected Poems in 1981.