We all know that it’s coming – Anonymous, the “Shakespeare didn’t write his plays” movie. I’m getting inundated by articles and events both pro and con, on a daily basis.
I’m torn about what to do. On the one hand, as one of the bigger places where we talk about events in the Shakespeare-related community, I feel somewhat obliged to do something more than ignore it.
However, I also think that we’re making it a bigger deal than it needs to be. I saw somebody the other day saying that this movie is poised to significantly alter people’s perceptions of Shakespeare’s authorship for generations to come. Are you kidding me? It’s just a movie by a guy known primarily for disaster flicks. I am expecting people to care as much about the authorship question after this movie as they do before it – some people will have an opinion that will not change, and some people will continue not to care. I feel pretty safe in thinking that if somebody was actually convinced to believe the Oxford theory based solely on this movie? Any Stratfordian would not find that a difficult debate to win. Shakespeare in Love came out, what, 10+ years ago? And I’ve yet to meet someone who thinks that Shakespeare’s life was anything like that.
So, I’m putting it open to discussion. Do you want to hear about every (well, most) bit of goings-on regarding this event? Do you think we should be making a more active effort to shoot it down before it catches on like the folks at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust are doing with their “60 Minutes” project? I fear that if we actually take up the trolls on this one, we’ll have to spend all of our time dealing with questions of whether Shakespeare was a gay atheist, too.
As a writer and Shakespeare (works) enthusiast, I have to say that I am now a believer that Edward de Vere was indeed the author of the Works.
Seek out a hard-to-find but new book by Michael A'Dair, Four Essays on Authorship, and perhaps you, too, will be persuaded.
It's not big deal. Someone wrote the Works. While it doesn't really matter who wrote them, it fascinating to now have changed my mind — or rather my mind has opened to new information.
Lanny
The handwriting is on the wall. The best thing you can do is read JT Loony's Shakespeare Identified. If you are not convinced then you should do what three centuries of scholarship have been unable to do: find some real evidence linking the man from Stratford with the works that don't seem to resemble him at all. The absence of real evidence is what drives the search for the real author, and justifies the theory of a cover-up. Good luck!
Editorial note – I'm not going to delete Bob's Oxfordian comment just because I disagree with it. He's not spamming or otherwise being unacceptably offensive.
Having said that, I resort to the answer that I've already given – this is not science, and it is impossible to prove or disprove a past event. Therefore it is a matter of politics and belief systems, and the most you can ever hope to do is change someone's opinion or belief based on their own evaluation of the evidence. As such, I have no interest in getting dragged into a discussion where my inability to "prove" my position is somehow twisted into evidence that it proves the other. I know what I believe, and I've not yet seen evidence to dissuade me from that position.
I think we do need to take it seriously. Some people love when the so-called "intellectual elite" take one on the nose, and this movie seems to be trying to do just that. It's not that they will care about the authorship, but it will give some people more proof that Shakespeare doesn't matter. Look – people who spend all that time learning about his stuff don't even know that he didn't really write it – what do they know? You get a similar backlash in science and medicine when someone publishes a claim that seems to fly in the face of established Theory/Fact. It becomes proof that those scientists/doctors don't know any more than Joe the Plumber about these things.
I think you're right Rob.
All the hubbub ain't just about "Shakespeare".
The underlying ideological and political class elements of this issue have been apparent since its inception. Once a particular element within a subject has been accepted within its own context, it only takes a concentrated focus to drive home the 'veracity' of that claim, as it's agenda is sweepingly applied, blanket fashion, to anything remotely related. The possible ramifications of an issue such as this one aren't immediately apparent. But those who might have an interest in an issue's possible 'ancillary' uses never expect a windfall result. The larger results are eventual–and sometimes permanent. The mountain is built piece by piece until it eventually blocks the vision to what it stands before–namely, another viewpoint. Completely altering perception is achieved through employing a cumulative technique, its ramifications only felt later.
As I said above, I think the visibility this has now achieved has the potential to affect much more than our perceptions of 'who wrote the plays?'. The proponents of all of this continue to make a push back necessary for reasons which become more numerous commensurate to the size of its scope.
Hi all,
I found a pdf called Historicizing Shakespeare by David Chandler who challenges the Orthodoxian pov, which several commenters here do too. http://web.archive.org/web/20060506133739/http://www.jmucci.com/ER/articles/chandler.htm
The movie is only the first stage. There is a pdf being sent to educators and there will be a dvd on the controversy brought out. This issue will not die when people have seen the movie and judged for themselves or achieve enlightenment that the establishment has lied to them all along.
There will be a reply from the orthodox camp in a book being planned and written by Stanley and Paul. But of course that will be dismissed by the Oxfordians et al.
I still fail to see what will happen if it is proven one way or the other. How does it alter my your our interpretations and appreciation of the plays and poems as plays and poems?
Plus ca change…
Shakespeare lives with his through his works and not as a person. I couldnt care less, if the guy who wrote the finest plays, was a grammar school graduate or some highly educated earl.
Whats the fuss about finding the real shakespeare and making it into a movie? Isnt history itself a mere lie : a concoction of narratives and ideals?
This movie, I think is just a cheap way to lure people (OMG! Shakespeare is not who we think he is) and make money.
For me the image of Shakespeare is still the same. The guy who wrote masterpieces like Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice, Romeo & Juliet.
Why do people waste so much time debating about who the real Shakespeare was, instead of understanding his work?
My opinion. IGNORE IT. This film will sink without a trace and be out of the public's consciousness by Thanksgiving Day, It won't even be in first run theatres by new years day. There is no real star power attached to this film! Vanessa Redgrave is all they have and she hasn't been a box office draw since the 1970's! Joely Richardson is best know for Nip/Tuck, a tv show , AND she can see 50 from her front porch! The incest angle will have any evengelicals or Fox News type viewers heading for the pitch forks and torches, and the typical American movie goer wouldn't know Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance or any of the others if they tripped over them. Box office gold, this ain't
! And Hollywood is all about the Benjamins, baby. Trust me on this, the movie will FAIL and sink into the obscurity it deserves.
The answer is not complicated. We should read up on the debate and refrain from pseudo-sociological analyses such as that offered by "J.M." and a number of other commentators here. The people that are "at risk" here — to borrow the unfortunately prejudicial terminology — are those unwilling to re-examine their own assumptions that the sun circles around the planet of bardolatry.
here are a few resources to begin your education:
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org
http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com
http://www.shake-speares-bible.com
http://www.facebook.com/groups/shakesvere/
KJ says:
"Traditionalists . . . take an extreme position that in that time life could not inform art."
I don't think that this is the issue (and I think it's overstated as well). Oxfordians in general argue that life must inform art."
Actually, KJ, if you follow the arguments made by the current leading public "Stratfordian," namely Professor Shapiro, this is exactly the point. He insists that it is anachronistic to think that the work of Elizabethan writers was in any way influenced by their lives. He categorically states in myriad ways that this cannot be done, and then to cover his positions adds that even if they did, we'll never understand how.
The Oxfordian position is NOT that life *must* inform art (although most reasonable persons would, I think, find it hard to understand how this would not be so – even though exactly *how* this happens will vary tremendously from one writer to another.
The Oxfordian position is that in this case, life *did and does* inform the work. Smart traditionalists know that you cannot say this with any conviction following the orthodox view of authorship. Your example at finding a biographical connection with marriage really proves this point. Hence they skip the biography as irrelevant. But it is worse than that. The traditional biography is an impediment to understanding the work. Exactly the opposite is true for Oxford,as serious students of the question have understood for ninety years.
Try reading act five of AYLI and ask yourself why William is the butt of the Touchstone's joke.
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/etexts/si/00.htm
psi, The subject here happens to be "Anonymous".
But do you suppose none here have read all about the issue and refuse, even still, to become 'true believers'?
–And "pseudo sociological" analyses?
You are speaking of the totally conjectural pseudo sociological analysis on why Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written the works, adopted by every unsuccessful agenda-driven opportunist since the 1800s, now trumpeted so loudly in Anonymous?
And by the way, there's nothing "pseudo"–at all– about the sociological manipulation of selling conjecture and out and out fictional historical "fact" (read LIES) wrapped very prettily in sensationalism, *as* fact to school kids. Perhaps a little education on behaviorism and marketing techniques is in order.
You can "begin your education" (your words) with John B. Watson and advertising.
psi–
Forgive the brevity of this comment.
I think that CRS and I will be in complete agreement on this: Reading a work for the purpose of finding biographical details about the author is reductive in the extreme.
Reading Act V of As You Like It as a joke on William Shakespeare really doesn't make much sense—but if we feel the need to read it in light of its author's biography, we don't have to go far to imagine that William Shakespeare could have made jokes at his own expense.
Thanks for the forum for invigorating discussion you provide, Shakespeare Geek!
kj
Kenkap99 said:
“I find any negative self righteous response by the traditional community after "Shakespeare in Love", which was a ridiculous Strat fantasy and won the OSCAR FOR BEST PICTURE to be hypocritical to say the least.”
Why? The makers of Shakespeare in Love were absolutely upfront that it was a fantasy: Stoppard and Madden did everything short of jumping up and down behind the actor’s heads waving placards reading “This movie is a JOKE, folks!” (Will’s garret containing a coffee-mug saying “A Prefent from Stratford upon Avon”; his weekly sessions on the couch with a priest of Psyche; et cetera et cetera). In what way is there any hypocrisy or inconsistency at all in enjoying a spoof like that and objecting to Anonymous being sold as a true story?
BTW, Duane, if it’s really true that you’ve “yet to meet someone who thinks that Shakespeare's life was anything like that”, you’ve been remarkably fortunate, because I have met a whole slew of people, some of them not even semi-literate, who took it as a serious information film. Shortly after its release the Museums Journal (the magazine of the Museums Association, the professional body for UK museum curators) carried a letter from a member asking “how do we know that it isn’t true? Shakespeare could have got inspiration for the story of Romeo and Juliet in just this way!”
I used to be a strong “Oxfordian”. I presented at conferences and avidly followed online debates. My position at the moment is agnostic but I do feel strongly about one thing. The traditional position is so closed, it ignores imo important conduits of potential Shakespeare influences and currents. The biography and signatures are so vapid and troubling, as outlined by Price, that one has to be curious. Shapiro’s “Contested Will” demonstrates how confused the Orthodox community is in dealing with the issue for the book is a mess. One HAS to wonder at Hamlet for it is filled with allusions and influence (such as Cardanus Comforte and the Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia triangle) that point to some association with Devere. I feel the traditional community has been so threatened it has closed ranks against important areas of investigation. For example, Shakespeare is credited in OED for first use of “murder” in the figurative in Venus and Adonis in 1593 but Devere uses it for the first time far more elegantly in 1573 (at age 23) in the Bedingfield letter (the intro to the translation into English of Cardanus Comforte that Devere sponsored ). To say Polonius is not Burghley is idiocy and Shapiro uses circular reasoning to evade the argument. Burghley died in 1598, Shakespeare openly skewers him on stage (symbolically and literally) in 1599? Are you kidding? This is just the tip of the iceberg. I am convinced the men knew each other at the least. My God, the early Sonnets point to Southampton’s engagement to Devere’s daughter. London was not that big a town.