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By James Bowman on 11.30.11 @ 6:03AM

Who wrote Shakespeare’s plays? The latest in idiot fantasy at the movies.

Not this again! Over fourteen years ago, I reviewed the late Joe Sobran’s book Alias Shakespeare for the Washington Times and said all I had to say on the ridiculous “authorship controversy” over Shakespeare’s plays which pops up every few years to excite the media and believers in literary perpetual motion. That Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays is a fact about as well attested as any you can find from 400 years ago. There is simply no reason to doubt it, apart from wishful thinking on the part of ambitious historians who imagine they have uncovered a four-century old secret. But on Mr. Sobran’s behalf, one had at least to say that he made a serious if unavailing effort to fit his crazy theory to the known facts of Shakespeare’s life and times. Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous doesn’t even bother trying to make the theory look plausible. The screenplay, by John Orloff, is an unashamed fantasia on Elizabethan themes which adds to the rather boring mix of speculation as to the real authorship — his candidate is, as Sobran’s was, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford — a lot of lively but utterly fanciful stuff even more improbable and unevidenced than the Oxford-as-Shakespeare thesis.

Most prominently — and, indeed, taking up most of the film — this fantasy history includes a hitherto unsuspected drama of the royal succession as multiple bastard children (at least one conceived incestuously) of the first Queen Elizabeth (played by Vanessa Redgrave in age and by her daughter Joely Richardson in youth) appear as potential claimants to the throne. Before the old Queen’s death in 1603, however, all come to bad ends thanks to the machinations of Lord Burghley (David Thewlis) and his son Robert (Edward Hogg), later Earl of Salisbury, to ensure that the crown goes to James VI of Scotland (James Clyde). All that “Virgin Queen” stuff must have been ironic, I guess — and doubtless a great if very inside joke in the court and the playhouses of Shakespeare’s day. The part borne by the movie’s Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) in this drama, as in that of the mystery playwright of the Globe, is a central one. Like all good movie heroes, he has more than one iron in the fire of our interest, though you have to wonder how even a rich aristocrat managed to find the time for it all.

Even on its own terms, the movie does a pretty poor job of story-telling. A framing device has Derek Jacobi, one of several prominent thesps who have disgracefully lent their name to this enterprise, appearing unexplained on a stage before a modern audience to tell them of the mystery of Shakespearean authorship that the movie purports to solve. There then follows the leap backwards to Elizabethan times followed by so much jumping back and forth between the early days of the Queen’s reign and the late, and between the playhouses and streets of London and the court, that it is extremely difficult to keep track of what is going on, let alone what it all has to do with Shakespeare as we know him.

This turns out, not surprisingly, to be very little. A performance of Hamlet appears to end with the “To be” speech, which comes after the murder of Polonious, while the duel between Hamlet and Laertes appears to take place off stage altogether. Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto) is supposed to be the one who puts Oxford in touch with the semi-literate bumpkin Shakespeare (Rafe Spall) and who acts as intermediary between them, but so many are apparently aware of Oxford’s scribbler’s itch and his loudly proclaimed unwillingness to be caught writing publicly that Jonson’s subsequent tribute to Shakespeare as Shakespeare in the First Folio must have been as big a joke to le tout London as the late Queen’s virginity. Funny that no contemporary hint of either has come down to us.

Even more gratingly, the picture is crammed with lines of dialogue that no 17th century person could ever have pronounced. “Oh, Marlowe, spot me a few pence, will you?” says someone, possibly Shakespeare. Marlowe, by the way, played by Trystan Gravelle, is murdered in the street rather than a tavern and seemingly by Shakespeare himself to protect his secret. “I am Edward, Earl of Oxford; I hear that you are an earl as well,” says de Vere to the Earl of Southampton (Xavier Samuel), supposed to be his own illegitimate son by the Queen, who is also his own mother. “So we shall be earls together.” Those aristocrats! But Oxford must seek solace where he can find it, since “I have the dubious distinction of being married to [Burghley’s] only daughter.” Dubious distinction? Well, just listen to the woman (Helen Baxendale): “My God! You’re [pause] writing again. Writing! Why must you continue to humiliate my family?”

But such wretchedly banal and anachronistic dialogue is of a piece with the ahistorical events represented. On occasion over the past several years, I may have mentioned the corrupting influence that fantasy has on the movies, as on the other arts. If readers have been disposed to doubt me before this, I submit Anonymous to their consideration as a prime manifestation of that corruption. You can’t libel people who have been dead for centuries the way you can, at least if you are a movie writer or director, living people like Mark Zuckerberg or George W. Bush, but it seems to me that you can traduce a whole historical period and, with it, the idea of history itself by showing such contempt for historical knowledge. The movies have always and routinely been untrue to the letter of historical fact, but at their best they have tried to be true to the spirit. A sympathetic approach to the great men and women of the past may make the odd adjustment to the record in the interest of dramatic power and coherence while still giving us some idea of what it might have been like to be alive at the time and acquainted with them. Like so many other historical films today, Anonymous has no interest in such truths but only in the sensationalism of the fantasizing it has borrowed from the junk cinema of superheroes and other forms of childish wish-fulfillment. It’s all just entertainment, I know — which wouldn’t matter so much if it wasn’t also what most people’s only knowledge of the past consists of.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (46) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

Andrew B| 11.30.11 @ 7:18AM

I find the "Who Wrote Shakespeare" controversy to be incredibly strange, at least among Americans. Aren't we the nation of Abraham Lincoln and Bill Gates? Did either of them require aristocratic birth to nurture their innate talents? Worse still, have any of our "aristocrats" really demonstrated much genius? Could Patrick Kennedy or John Kerry have written "Hop On Pop", much less "Othello?"

Jacob R| 11.30.11 @ 8:04AM

Wasn't George Washington an aristocrat?

Eh,no matter to me, I feel no special fondness for deists.

Jacob R| 11.30.11 @ 8:00AM

Wonderful!

I often find myself contemplating suicide when I think of the quality of the arts in the world at present.

Unfortunately immoral socieities never produce great art in abundance.

Le Cracquere| 11.30.11 @ 8:25AM

That second statement's pretty difficult to back up. There's probably little correlation at all, but if anything, artistic golden ages seem to coincide with periods of tension between high morality and libertinism.

skip| 11.30.11 @ 1:42PM

Music falls under the category of art, yes?

I still have not tired of 60's hard rock, and am amazed at how intense and powerful the chords they seemingly randomly distorted are, and the notes seemingly horribly randomly vocalized are.

Led Zep, the Dead, the Stones, the Beatles, Dylan, Clapton, the whole lot of them, if they were categorized by just one characteristic, it would have to be morality, no!

Bill| 11.30.11 @ 8:52AM

Define the term "immoral society" and please provide an example or two of immoral societies.

Bill| 11.30.11 @ 8:51AM

I don't understand why Emmerich (or anyone else) would produce a big-budget movie on the "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays" question. After all, the number of people who are interested in an answer are pretty limited. I mean, it almost insures that, no matter how well-produced and acted and filmed the movie is, it's probably going to be box-office poison.

I mean, how many people are going to be interested enough to pay upwards of $10 to go see it?

Bob K.| 11.30.11 @ 9:12AM

I learned from my English Professor in college on the first day of a class on Shakespeare's plays that William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him. In fact, the Professor said that they were really written by another man who had the very same name!

And we discussed the matter no further.

D. Singh| 12.1.11 @ 3:33AM

The will of Augustine Phillips, executed 5 May 1605, proved 16 May 1605, bequeaths, "to my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings peece in gould, To my Fellowe Henry Condell one other thirty shillinge peece in gould . . . To my Fellowe Lawrence Fletcher twenty shillings in gould, To my Fellowe Robert Armyne twenty shillings in gould . . . ." All of the people who Phillips calls his "fellows" were actors in the King's Men. Augustine Phillips's bequest of 30 shillings to his "Fellowe" Shakespeare was written 11 months after the Earl of Oxford's death. If Oxford were Shakespeare, Phillips would have known that he was dead.

henry| 11.30.11 @ 9:15AM

I always find it fascinating to remember that Shakespeare wrote his plays, which take up a whole evening to perform, for the audiences of the day, who obviously grasped his concepts and understood his language use. They must have had a good attention span, and been quite intelligent.
I read recently that he is now being translated into modern gutter English so that contemporary British students have a chance of grasping his work. Incidentally, Elizabeth I was reputed to have been a congenital syphilitic, and therefore sterile

Ryan| 12.1.11 @ 3:15PM

Ummm...some of them aren't all that complicated, and weren't necessarily written in highbrow language for the time.

Dai Alanye | 11.30.11 @ 10:00AM

Have these people no clue?! Anyone who's seen Shakespeare In Love knows Bill was the author of Romeo and Juliet at least... with a great deal of help from Marlowe. ;~}

Seriously, the idea that a Renaissance man like Oxford would have been ashamed of being a poet is the most preposterous idea of all, and destroys these wild hypotheses of the phantom writer. Besides, we have a examples of Oxford's writing, and ready for immortality he ain't.

Petronius| 11.30.11 @ 10:35AM

Lament of a movie goer
"I wasted time. And now doth time waste me..."
for the content be well below the value of 7 Pounds 50 for to see this superluminated yet stale tosh.
exeunt

Jack von Bauer| 12.1.11 @ 10:19AM

"I wasted time. And now doth time waste me..."

A line that is breathtaking in its simplicity -- and sublime in its content.

Which is why William Shakespeare echoes through the centuries as the most influential writer in the English language.

Renaissance Nerd | 11.30.11 @ 11:00AM

Terrifying thought: "...it wasn't also what most people's only knowledge of the past consists of." In recent years the only historical movie I've seen without major anachronisms was "Master and Commander," and it told little enough history, though it was a sort of 'slice of life' from the era. What bothers me though is that I know it had no anachronisms (well some the songs were a few years off) because of what I've read about the era from many sources. How would one judge, without that other knowledge? I'm making myself shudder. I hope and pray that you're wrong--surely nobody has no knowledge of history outside of movies. It can't be so...it can't be so...

Bob K.| 11.30.11 @ 11:21AM

There are chapters on "History as Literature" and "History and the Novel." pp 81-137.

"I have said in this book what I said numberless times before: that history does not have a language of its own, that it should be, and it is, not only written but taught and spoken and thought for almost anyone capable of reading." p.174.

Casey Abell| 11.30.11 @ 11:05AM

Anonymous had a production budget of $30 million. It managed to gross (a good word for this flick) $12.9 million worldwide. To bomb or not to bomb...that is not longer the question for this turkey. http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=anonymous.htm

Seek| 11.30.11 @ 12:43PM

Movies are intended for the long term. The opening weeks are a dog and pony show. A movie can "bomb" in its intial run, but produce enormous returns via TV, pay per view, DVDs and web downloads. Thinks decades, Casey, not weeks. "Gettysburg," for example, bombed at the box office when released in 1993, but since has become a profitable must-have classic for every Civil War buff's DVD collection.

In any event, content and box office are two separate things.

Grzmlyk| 11.30.11 @ 1:28PM

I tried to sit through Gettysburg. I found it leaden and tedious, but I don't think I made it past 45 minutes. Maybe I'll try it again.

As for Shakespeare, there is no question that he wrote his plays; as the author points out, the documentation about his life and authorship are quite good for the period - prior to the days of ubiquitous bureaucratic/technological tethering that memorializes for eternity even the most mundane moments, transactions and events in our lives.

I believe the romance about someone else writing Shakespeare's plays is of a piece with those who luxuriate in the JFK conspiracy theories and the 9/11 fantasies.

Thus, while such flights of fancy may not be entirely limited to the liberal mind, they are perfect microcosms of it. To wit: Why must we, the elite, the superior, the chosen people of the world, be bound by causal reality? By facts? By historical records? By empirical evidence?

Reality is what we SAY it is. Reality is a thing that exists only to reflect our own glory back at us; and, in this instance, the funhouse mirror is much more flattering than the legitimate looking glass.

Hence Keynesian. Hence the rise of libertinism and chimeras like "multiculturalism," "diversity" and "tolerance." Hence the romantic appeal of socialism, which doesn't even exist in the real world (it is always and everywhere the beneficent facade that hides a destructive, corrupt, totalitarian kleptocracy).

And hence the global warming canard, a relatively obvious hoax that is embraced with religious zeal by hyper-educated - and ironically scrupulously secular - liberals whose most egregious act of stupidity isn't their belief in global warming; it's their conviction that they are enlightened ubermenschen and not the benighted fools they really are.

If only they could bear to tear their collective gaze away from the flattering reflection in the funhouse mirror, they'd quickly learn "what fools these mortals be."

cuban pete| 11.30.11 @ 3:20PM

G-Man:
re: Gettysburg
Jeff Daniels doing Joshua Chamberlain's speech to soldiers who were refusing to fight is worth the effort. If you want to short cut watch the scene on You Tube.
All the best,
CP

Grzmlyk| 11.30.11 @ 3:48PM

Thanks, CP - I really do want to give it a second effort; I'll check out the Youtube clip.

cuban pete| 11.30.11 @ 11:25AM

I recommend "Contested Will" by James S.Shapiro. Very well done.

Bill| 11.30.11 @ 11:58AM

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

davelnaf| 11.30.11 @ 12:38PM

'Anonymous' can also be seen as cultural cannibalism. I’ve always had great respect for Derek Jacobi’s as an actor. But the sentiments that led him to take filthy lucre for participating in this slut of a movie leaves me more than a little disappointed. For a Shakespearean to do this is the equivalent of Judas betraying Christ.

David| 11.30.11 @ 12:53PM

Um... I'm pretty certain that it was established that Shakespeare used a ghost writer for some of his work, which technically means he didn't write it, though his ideas and thoughts and creativity were driving the writing.

No need to get your panties twisted, Mr. Bowman. It's ok. Shakespeare still gets credit and still is a must read for everyone. You can stop frothing now. lol

Bob K.| 11.30.11 @ 1:25PM

Really? He used Ghost Writers? First time I heard that.

I've heard of 'Ghost Riders in the Sky' though.

Maybe they are similar? "They're write'n hard to catch the Bard but they ain't caught him yet."

Grzmlyk| 11.30.11 @ 4:04PM

I'm wondering who "established" this. The only thing most academics agree on is that Shakespeare collaborated on Henry VIII.

Of course he appropriated inferior secondary sources as fodder; that's well-established.

But the genius is Shakespeare's and Shakespeare's alone.

Why don't we hear about how Al Gore's forefathers wrote Mozart's sypmphonies?

skip| 11.30.11 @ 7:22PM

'Conspiracies are long on theory and short on fact'

Sugartown Super| 11.30.11 @ 1:04PM

Repeat after me: "You don't get your history from the movies" - To wit: "The Patriot", "Inglorious Basterds", "Gone With The Wind", etc., etc., etc.

skip| 11.30.11 @ 1:48PM

Excepting Michael Moore and Oliver Stone of course.

gene| 11.30.11 @ 1:37PM

The logic behind all of this is that IF a writer does not have an extensive classic education then he or she could not have written certain manuscripts. A "theory" developed by over-educated but UNpublished egotistical people.
Using this logic,
- Mark Twain could not have written "Huckelberry Finn" or "Tom Sawyer".
- Ernest Heminway, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and ONLY a HS Graduate could not have written "The Old Man and the Sea".
- John Steinbeck could not have written "The Grapes of Wrath" or won the Nobel Prize for Literature for the same reasons.
- Robert Frost never wrote any of his poetry and did not deserve FOUR Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry. Taking this logic to its conclusion only demonstrates that these egotistical people continue to confuse Education with Intelligence and more importantly - TALENT and Genius!

shipley130| 11.30.11 @ 3:08PM

It's Hollywood, they are idiots, enough said.

smokedaddy| 11.30.11 @ 4:54PM

I've got no opinion on the movie, not having seen it, nor Sobran's book for that matter, ditto. But I have read Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare by Another Name" and would challenge Bowman or anyone here to honestly dismiss the evidence of DeVere's authorship with an open mind. The plays and the sonnets themselves are the proof of the pudding when compared with the documented events of DeVere's life and his associations. The detailed knowledge of Italian customs and cities are a near perfect match with DeVere's extensive travels there where he pretty much blew his inheritance. As for motive, the embarassment angle has been overplayed. The reality is that "Shakespeare's" plays were filled with wicked slanders and rumors aimed at court figures that a figure like DeVere could get away with behind a veil of anonymity. The real, Stratford, Shakespeare would have been treated much more harshly. Also, its interesting to note that the notoriously penurious Queen was exceedingly generous to DeVere with an unusually large annual stipend that lasted decades past their probable liaison. In essence, in addition to being the English language's finest writer, ever, DeVere was a paid propagandist for the Tudor's take on historical events. Following Elizabeth's death, DeVere, his family, and other Tudors were definitely out of favor with the Stuarts when politics could be a blood sport. Devere and his family needed an outman. James could stomach the portfolio if the "author" was the inconsequential Shakespeare, but not coming from the Earl of Oxford. The motive for the alias was likely to posit deniability, both under Elizabeth, and later under James.

D. Singh| 12.1.11 @ 3:10AM

Utter rubbish.

blair| 12.8.11 @ 5:59AM

Very good point Smokedaddy. You are a man with a scientific mind. :o)

Naturalborn Texicanette| 11.30.11 @ 11:00PM

I still have my 8 pound complete edition of the works of Shakespeare from my college class......................Still read my favorites over now and again....

Janis| 12.1.11 @ 12:44AM

I told a teacher in college that Shakespeare did not write his plays. He got very upset and then went on leave....

Steve| 12.1.11 @ 1:11AM

Personally I think the balance of evidence favors the Stratford man who generally went by the name William Shaksper, or Shagsper, or Shakspere at the author. What I don't understand is how people can be so sure. It happened 400 years ago and pseudonyms have been common among writers throughout history.

The evidence for Shaksper is actually rather slim. There is no evidence he ever attended school ( though he may have), no one we know of ever stated that he was an author during the time he was allegedly writing the plays and poems, as opposed to a few reviews at the time who referred to William Shake-speare, or Shakespeare as an author but made no connection to a definite person. There is no evidence he ever owned a book, sent or received a letter, and his will makes no mention of plays, poems or a writing career. The only direct evidence of his writing ability are six awkwardly scribbled signatures, none spelled Shake-speare or Shakespeare.

D. Singh| 12.1.11 @ 3:05AM

Sir

Why would people who are members of the ‘intelligentsia’ on both sides of the Atlantic question William Shakespeare’s authorship of his plays and sonnets?

I think there are two reasons.

1. They are envious that an ordinary man could write plays the quality of which remain unmatched by any other playwright in space and time.
2. The second is they sense ‘another presence’ in the text of his plays: ‘the Word of God’ and their souls resent it.

For example: The Old Testament has a passage on mercy that is echoed by Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Her famous speech on the quality of mercy that "droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven" closely follows Ecclesiasticus 25:19 ("O how faire a thyng is mercy in the tyme of anguish and trouble: it is like a cloud of rayne that commeth in the tyme of drought").

I am sure the more scholarly of your posters could cite many more examples of the relationships between the text of the plays and passages in the Bible.

Jack von Bauer| 12.1.11 @ 10:25AM

But as the King James Bible was written after Shakespeare is it not more likely that those scholars nicked the Bard?

(I know KJB was the third translation into English, so I am not sure of the provenance of the quote.)

Jack von Bauer| 12.1.11 @ 10:30AM

The reason this made up story doesn't RESONATE is because it defies the rules of great storytelling.

You have a man (Shakespeare) whom the detractors malign as a man from the "lower orders" who could not possibly have written those plays because they were so obviously the work of some LORD or someone.

You see the problem here immediately?

Tony in Central PA| 12.1.11 @ 9:06PM

This excreble piece of cinema will be discarded and forgotten long before the works of its subject.

Russell| 12.2.11 @ 12:27AM

The rejection of Shakespeare seems correlated with other forms of zealotry , Emmerich and Bethell having shot themselves in their respective left and right feet by embracing the looniest extremes of fringe climate science.

smokedaddy| 12.2.11 @ 2:48AM

The odds of the Stratfordian Shakser having wrote the plays attributed to him are about the same as one Barack Obama having wrote "Dreams of my Father. In DeVere's case, he had loads of motives, mostly political, for NOT putting his name on the works. In Obama's case, he had a similarly powerful political motive FOR falsely claiming authorship of a highly literate account of his life.

blair| 12.8.11 @ 6:10AM

Its quite OBVIOUS Mr. Bowman has an emotional attachment to his teachers in high school who taught him the silly myth that a man who could not read wrote the greatest works in the English language. He has closed his mind so completely to evidence that points in another direction. From reading this article he shows his ignorance on the subject but like most Stratfordian myth believers he closes his eyes to EVIDENCE. But thats ok the truth will out. So live with the veil over your eyes.

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