Will The Real Shakespeare Please Stand Up

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:29:08 -0400
anonymous, democracy, irc, james-shapiro, new-york-times, news, politics, shakespeare, umbc, usdemocrazy

WARNING: this post is for dorks only.

[Video]

It’s hard to say how many people today are fans of Shakespeare.

Maybe because he didn’t write Hamlet in 140 characters. Regardless, there is a new movie out that contends the worlds greatest writer never wrote a single character.

Furthermore, that daring movie is excellently critiqued by James Shapiro over at the New York Times.

“Anonymous” makes a cinematic argument that those impenetrably dense plays you were forced to read in high school were actually the product of the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

The theory goes like this; Shakespeare was not noble and did not have a noble education, de Vere was and did.

De Vere’s life closely mirrors some of the plays in Shakespeare’s name. Finally, de Vere was the illegitimate child of the (not so) virgin Queen Elizabeth and could not put his name on his work for political reasons.

The problem? None of these theories are substantial. As Shapiro puts it:

Promoters of de Vere’s cause have a lot of evidence to explain away, including testimony of contemporary writers, court records and much else that confirms that Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him. Meanwhile, not a shred of documentary evidence has ever been found that connects de Vere to any of the plays or poems.

So, ok… a movie is just a movie right?

True… except Sony Pictures has been circulating lesson plans to teachers that are based on Anonymous. This speaks to our culture; we live in an age and a place where believability is based on digestibility, truth by 140 characters.

De Vere himself describes this phenomenon perfectly in the movie…

He is quoted in Anonymous saying “all art is political … otherwise it is just decoration.”

He believes in the power of propaganda, which is really what this movie is doing; rewriting history using style instead of facts as an authority.

Mr. Emmerich has made a film for our time, in which claims based on conviction are as valid as those based on hard evidence.