Ifans as the Earl of Oxford in "Anonymous"
Film Friday
I normally make it a principle not to write on movies that I haven’t seen, but the new film claiming that Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare’s plays has made me so mad that I can’t let it pass.
Anonymous apparently claims the Shakespeare was a fraud who took credit for the work of others. Oxford, so it is asserted, saw is as ungentlemanly to write for the theater and used Shakespeare as a front.
If Oxford really did write the plays, he’s even more of a genius that Anonymous suggests since at least nine of them were composed after he was dead, including Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. Oh, but maybe he wrote them before his death with orders that they be parceled out afterwards to keep up the illusion. But if that’s the case, what are we to make of the fact that a couple of them were pretty clearly inspired by events that happened after his death? Maybe he’s such a genius that he could see into the future as well. Or maybe he channeled them through the fraud Shakespeare from beyond the grave.
I don’t normally get this exercised about how Hollywood butchers history. Shakespeare in Love, which I find delightful, plays fast and loose with a few facts. With such films I amuse myself by noting the discrepancies between fact and fiction and then go with the flow.
Maybe this one stings because so many people seem ready to believe in another author. I don’t know how many times over the years I, as an English professor, have been asked whether Shakespeare really wrote his plays. (People have been speculating about this since the 19th century.) I’ve come to the conclusion that the interesting question is not whether Shakespeare wrote his own plays—his contemporary playwrights thought that he did, as do all reputable experts today—but why people have so much investment in thinking he didn’t.
Part of the explanation lies, I think, in people wanting to dethrone someone. Shakespeare is foisted on them from high school on, sometimes earlier, as “the greatest writer who ever lived.” While I happen to think that Shakespeare indeed was the greatest writer who ever lived, some part of us chafes at what is called Bardolatry. Indeed, there’s a secret thrill in believing that perhaps the emperor has no clothes. Maybe we also want to expose as frauds those English teachers who forced us to plow through long passages of Renaissance English.
Beth Charlebois, our college’s Shakespeare scholar, believes that class snobbery motivates many of the anti-Shakespeareans. After all, could the son of a glove maker with only a secondary school education have created many of literature’s most striking characters and memorable lines? A critic from the time saw Shakespeare as “an upstart crow” and perhaps more recent doubters do as well.
For me, a convincing argument in favor of Shakespearean authorship is that, given how small the theater world was (and continues to be), a secret of this magnitude could not have been kept. Gossip ran rampant then as it runs now. Don’t you think that a rival like Ben Jonson would have smoked Shakespeare out if he had been a fraud? And yet Jonson wrote, after Shakespeare’s death, “Soul of the age!/The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!” and “He was not of an age but of all time.” Oh, but I forgot that Jonson was in league with Oxford.
Every argument in favor of other authors depends on elaborate conspiracy theories, absences that are claimed to be significant (why don’t have any manuscripts in Shakespeare’s handwriting), and strained interpretations. To skeptics I note that all plausible alternatives to Shakespeare have been eliminated and quote the Sherlock Holmes maxim, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Not that I find it improbable that a man with only a secondary school education could become a major author.
The few verses that we know are Oxford’s, by the way, are fairly bland, despite his university training. Oh, but maybe these were just a decoy to put us off the scent.
I think the film makes me angry because I am so deeply grateful to Shakespeare for his work that I take it amiss when people want to deprive him of what is his due. I feel like they’re dumping on a personal friend.
There used to be a joke that the plays of William Shakespeare were not written by William Shakespeare but by another man with the same name. Forty years ago I remember reading a comic article in The Atlantic Monthly that pretended to take the joke seriously and then searched Shakespeare’s plays for textual evidence. As indication that there was some rivalry between these two Shakespeares, the article uncovered such lines as “the devil will shake,” which can be found in the Comedy of Errors passage “if you give it her/The devil will shake her chain.” After finding several such lines, the article concluded that the plays of William Shakespeare were not written by William Shakespeare nor by another man with the same name but by a third man named William Shakespeare who had no relation to the other two.
That’s a more plausible argument than the one advanced by Anonymous.
13 Comments
Glad you wrote this post. Saves me the trouble of crafting my own rant…
Slightly off topic, but have you thought about reflecting on Coriolanus in light of current political events? I’ve just read the play this week. Many things about the play seemed wonderful, but my constantly-changing opinions of the citizens and my anger toward Brutus and Sicinius must owe something to current events.
I think Prof. Charlebois’ theory about the elitist roots of the Oxford thesis makes sense, but so does the anti-elitist angle. All those scholarly types who believe in Shakespeare, who research and “know things”, who suggest that some things are more brilliant than can be easily comprehended…those scholarly types will get their comeuppance and be shown as fools.
Yeah, right. I can’t say that I usually get particularly worked up about author biographies, being one who tends to focus on the text itself, but context is especially fascinating here. The anti-Stratfordian theses — especially as done in the promotional material for this film — are often delivered with glee that seems to derive more from the iconoclasm than the scholarship. I love a good argument, but think even the best one can be delivered with some class and humility.
(Deniers of climate-change may want to take note….)
Coriolanus would be a great play to revisit, Philosophotarian. I haven’t read it for years but you’re right, it gets at many of our political frustrations today. You’ve got me charged up to go look at it again. Incidentally, I was just rereading Macbeth and Richard III for a post next week on Qaddafi’s fall.
I’m finding the contempt for scientific expertise from many Republicans rather breathtaking, Carl. I think it was Rick Perry who said something to the effect that kids should be presented with evolution and creationism in the public schools and make up their own minds. As a teacher, you know what’s wrong with that. Not that teachers, scholars and scientists are always right, but they have truth as their first order of concern, not political convenience. When they’re wrong, they’re supposed to retract, not double down. I’ve heard that the film, as publicity, is actually sending study guides to high school English teachers so that they can raise the issue with their students. This would be like Charlton Heston’s Ten Commandments sending study guides to biology teachers to account for the Egyptian plagues. Tell me if you get one of the Anonymous packets.
A number of the film’s critics have compared it to the ravings of Birthers, those people who don’t think Obama was born in the U.S. That seems right.
I read someone, maybe Ron Rosenbaum (author of The Shakespeare Wars), say that what bothers him most about the the Oxfordians (those who believe that Oxford wrote the plays) is that they’re not interested in the plays themselves, just the conspiracy. That tells me everything I need to know about them.
As a high school teacher, I did receive one of those packets. I am not a fan of this movie at all and was going to throw it away, but I thought to look at what they would present so that teachers would send potential ticket purchasers to the movie theatres.
They present the facts everyone agrees upon and the possible alternative authors to be considered. Then they settle on de Vere. They present his facts and it seems a bit plausible until they state in a very small sentence that several plays including Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello were released several years after his death. The text admits this is a small problem but pushes it aside to consider the possibility that de Vere is truly the author. Those lines alone earned its placement into the circular file never to be seen again nor mentioned by me to any of students as a “must see.”
Lots of great protein in your reply, Robin. It got me going, so I apologize in advance for an overlong reply:
(1) I am on the lookout, with great glee, for the Anonymous packet, about which I had not heard. I promise to photocopy it and mail it to you if I get one (oh please please please!).
(2) The Rosenbaum insight is brilliant: frankly, anyone who cares more about the conspiracy than the literature is like an ambulance-chaser who doesn’t care if the patient gets well — delight in the tear-down, no regard for humanity.
(3) Your second paragraph addresses one of my favorite topics. Were I a teacher of biology, I would be as sure to mention the controversy about evolution as I am sure to address the charges of racism that assail The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which you and your compatriots have addressed with such class here and here and here, not to mention the whole first week of May 2009, among other posts). Call it “Better Living Through Biology”: it is good for the scholar’s brain and soul to be alert to the interactions between the “academic” subject matter and the real world.
On one level, then, I don’t have a big problem with Perry and others calling for addressing what he calls “both sides” of the evolution debate. On a deeper level, however, Perry’s call is so profoundly uninformed as to be stone-headedly obtuse, because he apparently believes — in a way that only someone completely anti-intellectual can — that addressing the conflict means that the opposing sides should come out equal. The irony of this is rich: American conservatism rails against relativism (perhaps most eloquently in the words of the late Allan Bloom, a real conservative who I suspect would find Perry and that ilk reprehensible), and then certain conservative politicians try to carve out an exception for relativism when it suits their needs. Sorry, fella, but that’s pathetic.
I would want my imagined bio students to hear the charges leveled against the theory of evolution, in the voices of the levelers (that word offers a nice pun, but I won’t pursue it now!), just as surely as I give my lit students primary source critiques of Whitman and Twain and Hemingway. And then we look at the critiques critically and evaluate them as thoroughly as they do the original text. Fallacies are unraveled, legitimate concerns — and there are some, no doubt about it — are illuminated. In bio, our enduring understandings would include a scientific definition of the term “theory”, which elucidates the difference between Darwin’s robust scientific one and the fallacy-of-equivocation analogies often given by opponents.
To present the opposition and then say “Every opinion is equally valid” violates every rule of legitimate critical analysis. There is the subjective and then there is the normative; a well-informed person must understand that there is a conflict, must understand that conflict, and should come to a conclusion, even if that conclusion is “More evidence is needed.” My own extensive consideration of the evolution issue, which includes plenty of reading from the best authorities on “both sides,” reveals the robustness of Darwin’s theory as clearly as it sheds light on the non-scientific but culturally relevant psychology that drives the opposition. I’m all the happier to respect and understand a cultural movement of such force in my nation…so long as it doesn’t trample underfoot respect for science and the possibility of advancing our knowledge of the world in which we really live.
Rick Perry should probably be aware that any educator with intellectual integrity probably already does what he asks, and that the students in that educator’s class probably come out with a more robust appreciation for the scientific theory of evolution. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Rick Perry is aware of anything nearly that profound.
Wow, Lisa! I love the “small problem” which negates the whole. See yourself as fighting the good fight as yet another spin machine takes aim at your students.
I just came across the following attack by Stephen Marche in The New York Times which puts the movie in a larger context:
The Shakespeare controversy, which emerged in the 19th century (at that time, theorists proposed that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare), was one of the origins of the willful ignorance and insidious false balance that is now rotting away our capacity to have meaningful discussions. The wider public, which has no reason to be familiar with questions of either Renaissance chronology or climate science, assumes that if there are arguments, there must be reasons for those arguments. Along with a right-wing antielitism, an unthinking left-wing open-mindedness and relativism have also given lunatic ideas soil to grow in. Our politeness has actually led us to believe that everybody deserves a say.
The problem is that not everybody does deserve a say. Just because an opinion exists does not mean that the opinion is worthy of respect. Some people deserve to be marginalized and excluded. There are many questions in this world over which rational people can have sensible confrontations: whether lower taxes stimulate or stagnate growth; whether abortion is immoral; whether the ’60s were an achievement or a disaster; whether the universe is motivated by a force for benevolence; whether the Fonz jumping on water skis over a shark was cool or lame. Whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is not one of these questions.
I suspect you’ll like the Marche passage I just cited in response to Lisa, Carl, since it says roughly what you are saying. If Lisa’s trash hasn’t been taken out yet, maybe she’ll send you the notes. I agree that the issue of authorship should be raised since students are going to encounter it anyway, and not just through the movie. As I say, as an English professor I’ve been asked about this for years so it’s out there in the culture. Maybe one gives them a chance to exercise their critical thinking skills to take apart an argument which has no substance. Then they can impress their friends by pointing out the discrepancy between Oxford’s death and the publication dates.
I think one of my problem is that many would rather talk about this than engage with the works themselves–just like some creationists would rather speak about their faith than wrestle with concepts like ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. Compared to the deep wisdom, some of it very relevant to their lives, that our students can get out of Twelfth Night or King Lear, why waste the time on lunatic conspiracy theories?
I always found it a bit curious that a man with such ability to ‘poetically effuse’ did not get burned out – reminds me of the quip..’my heart is all on fire, but my soul is all on ice’.
I find it takes something out of me every time ‘i grapple’ with emotions like that – having my heart ‘all on fire’ that is, and for Shakespeare to write such hum drum tales, draped in the language of beuty, its really seems like a marathon.
To bring in something else curious – 60 Minutes did a tale of Van Gogh about two weeks ago, and during one of the scenes there is a comparison shot of him and his brother Theo . They look identical – the same, albeit the one on the left is confident, with status, normal social skills, abilities, a family, etc. The one on the right looks on like a beaten dog, hair bedeviled, etc -
Is it better to live a life with ‘hearts all on fire’ – creating artwork that takes something out of you, life with burning emotions and nervous system imbalance all for the sake of posterity thinking your work worthy and beautiful, or is a life more common, one without the emotional heyday but with all that comes with normal society worthwhile?
(Reminds me of Plutarch asking whether its better to be Demosthenes , the writer who spent 10 years on a book, or Demosthenes the General, the mover of armies, doer of actions, maker of castles, mover of stone.
Robin, I was fired up about this today, too. I wrote a post for my English education blog: http://www.huffenglish.com/?p=2066. I agree with you completely. I know you must have read James Shapiro’s wonderful books on Shakespeare: Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? and A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599. I have Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt on my list.
Wonderful post and excellent discussion. I agree with your post overall, but what can we do. People who advance positions like this are no motivated by facts in the first place, so no set of facts will make them see the error of their ways.
I do want to point out one small error in your post. Geoffrey Chaucer is the greatest writer who ever lived. Shakespeare is the second greatest.
Andrew,
We don’t know whether Shakespeare burned out but we do have Prospero’s final speech (“Now my charms are all o’erthrown”) for what may be an insight into the Bard’s motive for retiring: he was tired and ready to move on. In one of his quirky but brilliant essays, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges speculates (in “Everything and Nothing” that Shakespeare one day just lost interest:
At the age of twenty-odd years he went to London. Instinctively he had already become proficient in the habit of simulating that he was someone, so that others would not discover his condition as no one . . . . For twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was suddenly gripped by the tedium and the terror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many suffering lovers who converge, diverge and melodiously expire. That very day he arranged to sell his theatre. Within.. a week he had returned to his native village, where he recovered the trees and rivers of his childhood and did not relate them to the others his muse had celebrated, illustrious with mythological allusions and Latin terms. He had to be ‘someone: he was a retired impresario who had made his fortune and concerned himself with loans, lawsuits and petty usury.
I very much agree with your piece, Dana. When you say that it’s pointless to argue with Oxfordians because their minds are already made up made me think that it’s akin to arguing with a Birther about Obama– the debate doesn’t belong in schools if there’s only the pretense of a debate.
I’m not going to argue with anyone who is in love with Chaucer as much as you are, cbjames. I’m not a Harold Bloom sort who needs to rank every author against every other author so I probably shouldn’t throw around such phrases as “greatest writer that ever lived.” While I myself find more memorable passages and characters in Shakespeare than in Chaucer, I also acknowledge that The Canterbury Tales is a dazzling work and that the Wife of Bath (my favorite Chaucer character) is as deep as any character in Shakespeare. She’s up there with Hamlet.
In his book A New Mimesis: Shakespeare and the Representation of Reality, author A.D. Nuttall talks about how he alway feels that he’s looking up when he reads Shakespeare. (This in contrast to reading Homer, who he thinks he’s figured out.) He never feels that he can encompass him. I would say the same about Chaucer. I believe (though I’m not sure) that Erich Auerbach in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature says that Chaucer made Shakespeare possible. I’m willing to buy that.
If you’ll excuse the silliness and solipsism…
Richard the III was once staged in a hockey rink, or at least with a hockey-theme. This sounds horrible to me, but far be it for me to judge!
Stephen Marche, along with writing about (now) highbrow Shakespeare, recently produced a fun and informative overview about ice hockey for “The Walrus” (http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2011.11-sports-the-meaning-of-hockey/).
Isn’t this mix of high-and-low remarkably Shakespearian? I wonder what the anti-Stratfordians / elitists would make of this range?
And, some food for thought, stolen from Jonathan Bate’s “The Genius of Shakespeare”:
“no major actor has ever been attracted to Anti-Stratfordianism. That is because actors know from the inside that the plays must have been written by an actor.”
As the author of Canadian Hockey Literature, Jason, I can see how you’d be up on plays staged as tough in hockey rinks. So do the Montreal Canadians get to be the legitimate heirs, overthrowing that vile usurper _____ (fill in the name of any once-Canadadian team now based in the U.S.). I think your example of Shakespearean mixing of high and low (for which he was criticized well into the 19th century) is a great Stratfordian argument–he wasn’t as hung up on the unities and other formal requirements as a university-educated writer like Oxford might have been. He just wanted to produce hits and make money.
Bate isn’t entirely correct. I think that Gielgud is an Oxfordian, as are Mark Rylance, Orson Welles, Tyrone Guthrie, and maybe Leslie Howard.
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