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Anonymous is the German-born blockbuster director Roland Emmerich's movie, penned by John Orloff, promoting the theory that Shakespeare's works were actually written by Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. You can't blame the Oxfordians, in a way. Little is known about Shakespeare, and those details that are known seem odd or anomalous. And who would not like to know more? But the Oxfordians begin with a distasteful and undemocratic prejudice, the notion that a commoner could not have been a great writer, or known about the thoughts of kings (but then how could an earl know about the thoughts of gravediggers and clowns?).
No one ever said that “a commoner could not have been a great writer.” Who did you ever hear say that? Genius can spring from every walk of life and every layer of society. The debate is not, however, about who could have written the works, it’s about the evidence of who did and here the evidence clearly points to Edward de Vere.
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Furthermore, this movie is an alarming hodgepodge that throws in lots more far-fetched fantasies. It wants us to believe that Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, the canny mistress of statecraft, was a lusty and imprudent young woman who produced a number of bastards, including one by the Earl of Oxford. It invents political intrigues that never occurred.
I don’t fully buy into the Prince Tudor theory, but it is definitely more than a fantasy. There were many rumors during the period that Elizabeth had as many as five children. This is not unusual. She was a healthy, sensuous woman who lived life to the fullest. The image of the Virgin Queen was carefully nurtured by William and Robert Cecil who urged her to marry and produce an heir.
There are many anomalies with the son alleged to have been born to Elizabeth and Edward, the Earl of Southampton. There are some very unusual circumstances as relate to Southampton. After he and Essex were sentenced to be executed, the Queen rescinded his execution and he remained in the Tower until after Elizabeth’s death. No explanation has ever been given as to why he received such special treatment, because the monarchy almost never reversed a decision of the court.
Also, the first 17 Sonnets by Shakespeare are written to the “Fair Youth” which most scholars agree was Southampton. The dates of these early Sonnets are agreed upon as most likely between 1590 and 1592, the time when Southampton was contemplating marriage to Elizabeth Vere, Edward’s daughter. No commoner would ever be allowed to urge a nobleman to marry.
In another strange situation, Southampton was arrested by King James the day after Oxford died and was released the next day. No explanation has ever been given but it is speculated that with Oxford’s death, James feared Southampton might make a claim for the throne.
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Worse yet, Emmerich has elicited the services of famous actors like Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as David Thewlis and Rhys Ifans, in the service of this spurious theory, and they're good, so they can add credibility and life to most anything. Should we blame him or them for their contribution to this claptrap? Joely Richardson, who plays the young Elizabeth I, bears little resemblance to the haughty and elegant Redgrave, cast as the aging Queen, even though she's her daughter. Still less does the wild, sexy-looking Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays the young Oxford, resemble Rhys Ifans, who plays the middle-aged Earl as a forlorn, droopy soul and doesn't at all look like Bower.
These are nitpicky things that in no way affect the quality and enjoyment of the film. Joely Richardson just happens to be Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter in real life.
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But worst of all, this movie builds up the works of Shakespeare by undercutting Will Shakespeare the person, all the other Elizabethan playwrights, and the English Renaissance itself. Shakespeare the man (played by Rafe Spall) is depicted as a drunken, illiterate dodo, and a greedy manipulator when Essex was forced to pay him to "pretend" to have written Shakespeare's works. Shakespeare's fellow playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe are undercut. Viewers who haven't studied the period might be forgiven for thinking these two very great writers to have been at least while Oxford was writing nothing but harmless drudges. One of them is made to declare that the age itself, even Queen Elizabeth, will only be remembered because Shakespeare, that is Oxford, put ink to paper.
This is a drama, not a documentary but I fail to see how Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were “undercut.” It is a fact that Jonson was thrown into the Tower for his play “The Isle of Dogs” and that Christopher Marlowe was murdered, most likely by court insiders who thought his plays to be too controversial. If Oxford was indeed William Shakespeare, then he was indeed the greatest writer in the English language, not a “harmless drudge.”
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Yes, the works of Shakespeare are the triumph of the age, but there would not have been a Shakespeare if this hadn't been a brilliant moment of intellectual and artistic flowering, a time when the English language was incridibly rich and fertile, and many were penning wonderful poetry. But that is forgotten. It would seem the Oxfordians are not very familiar with Elizabethan literature. Anyway in its tunnel-vision pursuit of the Oxfordian theory, Anonymous perpetrates a depressingly false and misleading picture of the Elizabethan age. The idea that, whether this movie promotes a spurious theory or not, it will draw new readers to Shakespeare and new enthusiasts to the period seems very naive. It's not good to draw people to a subject with false and misleading stuff.
No one can deny that it was a time of Renaissance of the arts, yet equally true is that there was a reaction against the arts by the Puritanical and totalitarian monarchy. Theaters were routinely closed, writers arrested, even murdered. If you have read Tudor history, it is one of constant intrigue, rivalries, betrayal, incest, suppression, yes, even murder. It is not in any way a false and misleading impression. That’s the way it was.
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Anonymous weaves scenes of Elizabethan Shakespeare play productions in with back-and-forth scenes of the young and older Oxrord the young and older Elizabeth, and various plots and power plays, and so forth, and along with these scenes are various pet ideas of the Oxfordians, like the notion that Polonius, in Hamlet, was based on Lord Burghley (or Burleigh), Elizabeth's Lord Chancellor, and that therefore Hamlet must be a self-portrait of the Earl, who knew and had resented Burghley.
The idea that Hamlet’s Polonius is a not too pleasant attack on Lord Burghley is not a pet idea of the Oxfordians. It is widely accepted by both Stratfordians and Oxfordians.
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So much here won't survive scrutiny, which is true of the Oxfordian thesis in general. The young earl is depicted as writing, putting on, performing in, and acknowledging his authorship of A Midsummer Night's Dream as a teenager -- to Elizabeth, in front of the court. In that case, how could he later on under Puritan family pressure mange to hide his authorship of plays?
His later plays were political products of a court insider and many people of the court such as Raleigh, Hatton, the Cecils, and even the Queen were satirized. Given the repressive climate of the times, he Oxford was forced to protect himself from arrest and even murder. Likewise, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men participated in the ruse to protect the source of their plays.
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The court had already seen signs of his literary and specifically dramatic genius. But this is used as a lead-in to later scenes of young Oxford squabbling and having sex with the Queen. This isn't a better picture of Elizabeth than it is of her age. She's either a slut, when young, or an itchy, sickly old lady when older: Vanessa Redgrave always has a certain elderly glamor, but she sacrifices much of her usual dignity in the service of a theory that she evidently espouses herself.
Elizabeth was a brave woman of great dignity and that is how she is depicted in the film. The film shows, however, that she could be controlled by the powerful William Cecil and his son Robert. Because she had sex with a nobleman does not make her a slut.
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Indeed a number of famous people, including Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Henry James, Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles according to a Wikipedia article, have taken the "anti-Stratfordian" stand, that is, the idea that Shakespeare didn't really write Shakespeare. And this has lent undeserved luster to the Oxfordians. But the folly of the famous does not really grant credibility to an unproven and unprovable theory.
You can tear down great writers and thinkers all you want and call it folly because they were independent thinkers of great talent who could see through the empty vessel of the Shake-speare mythology, but that doesn’t buy you any tokens. Perhaps it takes other writers to be able to recognize one of their own. The list of prominent people who do not buy the lazily accepted ideas of the status quo does not stop with them. There are hundreds of others. Check out doubtaboutwill.org. But, as you say, this does not prove anything. In the same way, the campaign by the entrenched academic establishment and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust only indicates that they feel that their reputations and even their livelihood is threatened. The evidence on both sides is purely circumstantial. There is no direct evidence and therefore no proof as to who the author was. If there was, there would be no authorship debate.
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Emmerich is, furthermore, hardly a convincing source of advocacy on anything.
The Day After Tomorrow, which used a pop global warming theme, suggested the director's involvement in causes is just another promotional device. Oxfoddian theory is pretty shallow in itself, but his support of it in this clumsy and far-fetched "historical" film makes it look even more so. There is in fact no end to the follies of
Anonymous. That might be all very well if it added up to an enjoyable film, but this is really a mess, with the unfortunate involvement of some good actors.
Launching ad hominem attacks on the director because of previous films is not worthy of you and using pejorative language such as “claptrap”, “spurious”, and so forth only reflects on the fact that the reviewer has not done any research to discover the strong evidence for Oxford’s authorship. Can you name one book that you have read on the life of Edward de Vere and the case for his authorship?
You want people to believe that a man who had little or no education, whose children were illiterate, who never left any writing other than six unreadable signatures with his name spelled differently in each one, who never traveled outside of London, who spent much time and effort engaging in petty lawsuits, who could not read books in French, Italian, or Spanish yet used untranslated material as his source material, who never left any books in his will, who left no letters, no correspondence, who did not elicit a single eulogy at his death was the greatest writer in the English language.
I have not heard anything more full of “claptrap” than that?