Anonymous

[Rev. Rye]

Yesterday, I saw the movie Anonymous. It's a movie about how the plays of Shakespeare were written by Edward DeVere, the Earl of Oxford, and it just raises a lot of questions, like...

* If Edward DeVere can apparently write something of the magnitude of Midsummer Night's Dream as a mere child, as the film suggests, then why wouldn't he have burned the three-part Henry VI?
* What is the point of setting up that Shakespeare was apparently illiterate when we reveal in the film proper that he actually can read? Why undermine this point to make it perfectly plausible that Shakespeare could have made his own plays based on Commedia dell arte and Holinshead's histories? If he still can't write, is it so impossible for him to have hired someone he could dictate to?
* What's the point of getting the death of Marlowe so wrong? Couldn't it have been easy to make a dummy of Marlowe with a dagger through his eye in a tavern and not just have him lying in a gutter?
* Why does DeVere need even Ben Jonson as a proxy?
* If Jonson really is such a literary cipher, as DeVere claims, then why has his own play The Alchemist remained so popular when other non-Shakespearean authors have vanished into the Æther?
* Did DeVere have access to the future? If not, then how did he come to know about the 1609 shipwreck that inspired the Tempest if he died in 1604? And how would he have foreseen the need to flatter King James by writing a play about his ancestors, especially if he was banking on the possibility that he was going to rule after her, which leads to another point...
* Why does Edward DeVere think he actually has a claim to the throne? Even if he is the bastard son of Queen Elizabeth, illegitimate kids couldn't inherit property, much less royal titles, in Elizabethan England.
* If you're going to go so far to keep the atmosphere of Elizabethan England, then why fill the script with pseudohistorical bullshit?
* Why completely fuck up the dates of Shakespeare's history? Everything seems to start in 1598, and the Globe theatre burns in 1604.
* If you're going to advance a theory about a famous person that runs contrary to conventional wisdom, why not do your damn research so that someone who does some independent research can reach similar conclusions to you?
* How does an actor like Derek Jacobi get fooled by this? Has his partner's semen backed up into his brain like a joke from Reservoir Dogs brought to life?
* What's the point of bothering to claim that Shakespeare wasn't the writer of his own plays?

Well, it is by the director of 2012, so can we expect anything deep? At any rate, I've heard that his next project is going to be about Obama, and about how he was born in Kenya and how his parents managed to gain control of the media for a few days in 1962 to ensure that everyone thought he was born in America in preparation for a presidential election that wouldn't happen for 46 more years.

[JollyForr]

I've just read the Shakeapeare Biography by Bill Bryson, and in the last chapter he devotes himself to this topic of the real writer of Shakespeare's plays. In the end, he says that there is no reason to doubt that William Shakespeare wrote these plays. A lot of other playwrights at the time are hardly known now. We know more about Shakespeare than some others, and nobody doubts the authorship of their works. All of the claims as to the other authors being the real ones are just speculations and conjecture, backed up by no evidence at all. Shakespeare was alive, as his signatures and other documents suggest, and there is no reason to doubt whether he was the true author or not. In his time as well, there was no dispute whether he was the true author, and it would have to be a monumental cover up if he was not; he did write the plays.

[Cyberman]

As far as I'm concerned, William Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare. Even if some other figure were shown to be the true author, that person still wrote under the name of William Shakespeare. It's rather like the question of stunt doubles; whether Sean Connery flew around with a Bell Rocket Belt jetpack or pilot Gordon Yeager did, it was still James Bond you saw on the screen.

[Rev. Rye]

As far as I'm concerned, William Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare. Even if some other figure were shown to be the true author, that person still wrote under the name of William Shakespeare. It's rather like the question of stunt doubles; whether Sean Connery flew around with a Bell Rocket Belt jetpack or pilot Gordon Yeager did, it was still James Bond you saw on the screen.

To this day, I still have no idea what the rationale could be for denying that the works of Shakespeare were not written by him. I mean, Holocaust deniers usually have some anti-Semitic agenda, creationists are usually pushing Christianity (or Islam), but I haven't been able to figure out anything of the sort for the Anti-Stratfordian position. I suppose that there's always the possibility of class warfare.

[Justtristo]

Michael Wood wrote a book and hosted a documentary series "In Search of Shakespeare" he argued well for the case that William Shakespeare wrote his plays. However that does not leave out the possibility that other people along with Shakespeare wrote some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare.

While William Shakespeare did not complete Grammar School it was doubtless he was trained intensely in Latin (maybe a bit of Greek) language, grammar and "The Classics".

[Rev. Rye]

Michael Wood wrote a book and hosted a documentary series "In Search of Shakespeare" he argued well for the case that William Shakespeare wrote his plays. However that does not leave out the possibility that other people along with Shakespeare wrote some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare was certainty no illiterate by the way, while he did not complete Grammar School it was doubtless he was trained intensely in Latin (maybe a bit of Greek) language, grammar and "The Classics".

Well, there were definitely some plays that were written with other people; plays like 2 Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII, but they were both shite.

[Justtristo]

To this day, I still have no idea what the rationale could be for denying that the works of Shakespeare were not written by him. I mean, Holocaust deniers usually have some anti-Semitic agenda, creationists are usually pushing Christianity (or Islam), but I haven't been able to figure out anything of the sort for the Anti-Stratfordian position. I suppose that there's always the possibility of class warfare.

Some people struggle to understand why a man such as Shakespeare who today would be considered a high school drop-out be the greatest literary genius in the English language.

[Rev. Rye]

To this day, I still have no idea what the rationale could be for denying that the works of Shakespeare were not written by him. I mean, Holocaust deniers usually have some anti-Semitic agenda, creationists are usually pushing Christianity (or Islam), but I haven't been able to figure out anything of the sort for the Anti-Stratfordian position. I suppose that there's always the possibility of class warfare.

Some people struggle to understand why a man such as Shakespeare who today would be considered a high school drop-out be the greatest literary genius in the English language.

Hey, if I can teach myself to read at the age of one and a half, then a man with access to commedia dell'arte and Holinshed can easily teach himself to write excellent plays based on them.

[Cyberman]

Maybe part of his success in retrospect is down to his contributions to the English language? After all, many times when he was stuck for a word or a phrase, he'd just invent one.

[The Winter Saint]

Really, Thomad Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, John Lyly and some others were the original Inklings of England and, much like Tolkien, Lewis, and their friends, who drink heavily and talk (er, more brag) about what they were working on. They were probably the first creative writing workshop in history, and a lot of them did fill in to help write someone else's plays.

I actually enjoyed this film. All of the little nods to other plays of the time were very rewarding, and the use of Ben Johnson was brilliant. Personally, I believe that if Marlowe wasn't murdered, it would be his plays we reference to over and over again, but alas he was killed too early in his career. The tragedy of Dr. Faustus is the best play of that era (and, in fact, there is a good evidence that either Shakespeare or Johnson wrote the middle--and actually lesser part--of the play), and the fact that he was able to make Mephistopheles a tragic hero at a time of heightened religious prosecution is simply amazing. There was one theory that, because Marlowe really did get into a lot of trouble, when the oppurtunity arose after Shakespeare was killed in a bar fight, he took Shakespeare's name and let people think that he died instead. After all, plays like Richard III and Hamlet are very close in style to Marlowe's.

What did irritate me in the movie was that they released the plays in the wrong order. One glaring mistake was Macbeth, which Shakespeare had to revise because King James took the throne, and the play as he originally wrote it made the Scots look pretty bad. But oh well, what can you do?

FAUSTUS: And what are you that live with Lucifer?
MEPHISTOPHELES: Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer,
Conspir'd against our God with Lucifer,
And are for ever damn'd with Lucifer.
FAUSTUS: Where are you damn'd?
MEPHISTOPHELES: In hell.
FAUSTUS: How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?
MEPHISTOPHELES: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it

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* Why does DeVere need even Ben Jonson as a proxy?
* If Jonson really is such a literary cipher, as DeVere claims, then why has his own play The Alchemist remained so popular when other non-Shakespearean authors have vanished into the Æther?

I think it was that Ben Jonson was much younger at the time, and DeVere actually made the mistake of thinking Jonson couldn't amount to anything on his own. Plus, they needed Jonson as a character because of the introduction he wrote for the collected works of Shakespeare. But DeVere would see him as someone who "has no voice" because his early plays actually sucked. Sejanus (which come on, anus is right in there) would be the box office equivalent of a bomb today, and when his early tragedies failed, he wrote a bunch of comedies all based on Everyman in some form or another. Ironically enough, at this time, Johnson was seen much the same way we look at Roland Emmerich.

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Oh god...I'm having flashbacks to English Lit seminars. Must drink....