Went to the movies last night and this was one of the previews. Although I’ve heard of this theory before, I’m not speculating or agreeing that Shakespeare was, in fact, a fraud—I just think the movie looks interesting, and is certainly relevant to our course.
For some reason, I couldn’t embed the video directly in the post, so here is the link:
Anonymous Movie Trailer
It looks as if someone’s spent a lot of money on a fraud. See “A Note on the Anti-Stratfordians, Especially Baconians and Oxfordians,” in the Overview to the Signet Classic Shakespeare editions (xi-xv).
A movie about the Shakespeare identity conspiracy theory, from the director of blockbuster end of the world disaster movie classics such as Independance Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and 10,000 B.C., haha should be great.
It’s always hard to tell with old text what’s what and where it came from. The most plausible theory is that indeed his texts went through a lot of edits, inserts or even possible re-writes by others.
As his written material was more like a guide for actors to play out the plays, it could have fallen into any hands after or during his life. (Actually it did, as I remember reading that intro on this subject from the “Shrew” play.)
As for the movie, I think the director made lot of research and thought out his movie carefully – otherwise he wouldn’t risk making a gaffe – especially as he was a maker of such successful movies such as these mentioned here.
I think the most puzzling facts is that the texts sound different from each other. I came with my hands across his poems from a previous English class, and they were quite excellent. For some of these plays, I wasn’t that thrilled most of the time but the play-texts still peaked my attention from time to time..
Without a doubt, Shakespeare was a good writer – maybe excellent if we can prove that his work is 100% authentic, but it happened so long time ago and they are very few ways to really check facts. We mostly go by assumptions or logical think-through’s, as such what I’m doing here and now. 🙂