The true authorship of the canon of plays, sonnets and poems attributed to William Shakespeare has long been debated in academic circles.
For the ‘anti-Stratfordians’, penmanship of Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest et al by one William Shakespeare – almost unschooled, with little intimate knowledge of court life or the wider world and a restricted vocabulary – is an anathema. For more than 150 years, they have believed evidence points to the true writer being a member of Queen Elizabeth I’s inner circle.
Many names have been posited, including Sir Francis Bacon; William Stanley, the Earl of Derby; Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland and Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Playwright Christopher Marlowe (Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus) has also been proposed.
Of all the names believed to be ‘Shakespeare’, it is de Vere who has gained most currency among the non-believers in recent years. And it is the story of the Earl of Oxford that is explored in Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous.
Roland Emmerich and William Shakespeare
Popular but potentially seditious, Elizabethan drama and the acting in plays were frowned upon by the puritanical Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to Elizabeth I (and later, King James). Writing of such idle frippery was certainly no pastime of a gentleman and aristocrat.
But Oxford was an incessant writer and something of a great romantic, trapped in a loveless marriage to Cecil’s sister, Anne. Banned from court (due a wonderful twist that is revealed to a horrified de Vere towards the end of the film), writing of poems, plays and essays is one of the aristocrat’s true pleasures.
And so he turns to the erudite Ben Jonson, writer-in-residence at The Rose Theatre, to act as the frontman for his works. Jonson baulks at such a proposal. But in the company of men at The Rose is one William Shakespeare, a bumbling fool of a man who can barely string a sentence together.
Shakespeare is not, however, such a fool that he doesn’t seize the opportunity to claim authorship of the first success at The Rose. And so it his name that goes down in history as the author of the likes of Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth.
Oxford is not best pleased that his words are associated with such a self-centred egoist. And Jonson, having been sworn to secrecy, must now put up with the boasts of the illiterate man from Stratford (at least Jonson was to find his own glory 20 years later with such classics as Volpone and The Alchemist).
As more and more of Oxford’s words are spoken on stage, so Shakespeare’s fame spreads. But running concurrently with the unfolding story of the stage is Oxford’s relationship, past and present, with Elizabeth and with the young earls, Essex and Southampton.
Anonymous debunks Elizabethan drama, politics, court life and the Virgin Queen herself. But, by rewriting history to prove its point (the death of Marlowe delayed by a few years, the burning down of The Globe Theatre a few years early) and serious omissions, it presents an entertaining argument for the ‘true’ author.
Yet there are times when Anonymous takes itself a little too seriously and yet, at other times, not seriously enough.
Rhys Ifans has an appropriate air of gravitas and decorum as Edward de Vere, whilst Vanessa Redgrave is suitably regal as the ageing queen (and, in a nice touch, her own daughter Joely Richardson plays the young Elizabeth I). But sadly, Rafe Spall as Shakespeare is annoying and wholly one-dimensional, thus laying on thick the laboured point as to how could such a man have written Coriolanus, Henry V and The Merchant of Venice.
A costume drama that is more spoken word than action, Anonymous is a slow burner, the result something of a hotchpotch hokum.
Personal rating: 3 stars
Anonymous
- Directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow)
- Written by John Orloff (A Mighty Heart, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole)
- Produced by Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC), Larry J Franco (Batman Begins, 2012), Robert Leger
- Starring Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill, Little Nicky), Vanessa Redgrave (Julia, Howards End), Sebastian Armesto (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Bright Star)
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
Join the Conversation