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The End of the World as We Know It

By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (31)

ShakespeareOperator-thumb-260x377-9186.jpg

The interwebs have been all atwitter over the explosion of unconfirmed rumors that Independence Day sequels are in the works (ID5 and ID6? ID4-B and ID4-C? Maybe ID4er and ID4est?), but the most important news is the tiny detail tossed in as an aside by most of the blogs: the fact that Roland Emmerich can’t start work right away because his next project is a period piece about Shakespeare.

The film (Anonymous) is only in pre-production at the moment but Emmerich is slated to direct and there’s a script by John Orloff (who wrote A Mighty Heart and a couple episodes of Band of Brothers). The plot description is as unmoving as it is terse:

A political thriller about who actually wrote the plays of William Shakespeare— Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford— set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her.

Well shit guys, don’t strain yourselves trying too hard at getting us to care. The story is actually a fairly interesting one if you haven’t heard it before and are the sort to wallow away hours at work hitting “random page” on wikipedia. It turns out there’s an entire school of thought in literature espousing the “Oxfordian theory,” which is a fancy way for saying that this Earl of Oxford may secretly have been Shakespeare and used the plays as an outlet. It’s a compelling idea, that one of the most famous men in history simply didn’t exist as more than a house of cards. Plus it makes Shakespeare kind of like Batman.

Emmerich and Shakespeare though, that’s its own punchline right there.









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Comments

Without reading that entire Wikipedia page, I never was a huge fan of the Bard, why would a nobleman need to write under a pseudonym? Shakespeare never was much for satirizing the court, was he?

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at March 31, 2010 9:30 AM

A political thriller? About Shakespeare? That has nothing to do with future kings and queens brutally slaughtering each other?

What is this, bizarroworld? Just do a good job on Richard II/III and call it a day, people. You can't get much more politically thriller than that based in the immortal words of The Bard.

Or, if you want action, do a bloodier Macbeth or King Lear or even Hamlet. Shoot, even The Winter's Tale has the great scene where a man is ripped to shreds by a bear on the coasts of Bohemia.

By the way, the correct answer is: Who cares who wrote Shakespeare? The plays are phenomenal and have (mostly) stood the test of time. For shows written to get butts in seats and shoeless feet on dirty ground, they have surprising levels of depth and wonderful characterizations, unlike the modern equivalent in cinema. Was the world really better off knowing Stephen King was Richard Bachman? I don't think so.

Posted by: Robert at March 31, 2010 9:47 AM

This just reopens the wound from this morning when my channel guide said that Bravo was showing the Kenneth Branaugh version of Hamlet, but it was really the Mel Gibson one. No thank you.

Also, I'm starting to think you guys are just doing an April Fools Week of posts. Yes, let's go with that. Lalala. I can't hear you. I SAID LA!

Posted by: jM at March 31, 2010 10:07 AM

Holy freakin' crap, this is beyond lame. Willie Shakespeare's rollin' his zombie eyes at you, Emmerich. When the zombie apocalypse comes, you will pay.

Posted by: Jelinas at March 31, 2010 10:11 AM

"Oxford Theory" : Shakespeare studies :: Creationism : Actual goddamned science

Posted by: Mike B. at March 31, 2010 10:27 AM

As a nerd, I've been interested in the Oxfordian argument. Anyone who digs beneath the surface can see that the lame, under-educated, hack actor that we normally associate with Shakespeare could not have pulled off writing those plays/sonnets. More likely, it was a courtier with extensive knowledge of the classics. Oxford fit that bill, but it could have been someone else of that ilk.

Posted by: Mickey at March 31, 2010 10:35 AM

So was the Earl of Oxford gay too?

Posted by: DeistBrawler at March 31, 2010 10:37 AM

I hate that story. I've heard it a million times, and it never sounds any more convincing.

Posted by: ChristianSeymourHoffman at March 31, 2010 10:39 AM

Shakespeare...Batman...Shakespeare...Batman...

Steven, you just broke my brain with that. How incredibly awesome would a Shakespearean Batman actually be? Oh my god.

@Mike B.: Harsh! But hilarious!

Posted by: Snath at March 31, 2010 10:43 AM

In his will, Shakespeare left his wife his "second best bed." And that's all.

Now tell me he couldn't have written "Hamlet." I will fart in your mouth.

Posted by: superasente at March 31, 2010 10:53 AM

Meh. It's not that much of a desecration. After all, the most popular play in Shakespeare's lifetime was "Titus Andronicus", which makes the Saw movies look like a Merchant-Ivory production. I think he'd be okay with an action movie 'based' on his life as long as it does well at the box office.

Posted by: Claire at March 31, 2010 11:28 AM

FYI, in April PBS is scheduled to show the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2009 production of "Hamlet" starring David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius. And it's out on DVD in May.

Posted by: sandyk at March 31, 2010 11:35 AM

There isn't enough destruction in Shakespeare for Emmerich. Elizabethan english does not lend itself well to carefully crafted CGI and explosions.

Posted by: Melody at March 31, 2010 11:53 AM

sandyk, your news makes up for the news in this post.

When I saw it, I got so excited that I almost puked.

I saw the Derek Jacobi version of Hamlet, and Patrick Stewart was Claudius in that one, too. At that point in my life, I only knew him as Jean-Luc Picard, so I was totally weirded out.

Posted by: Jelinas at March 31, 2010 12:11 PM

"As a nerd, I've been interested in the Oxfordian argument. Anyone who digs beneath the surface can see that the lame, under-educated, hack actor that we normally associate with Shakespeare could not have pulled off writing those plays/sonnets. More likely, it was a courtier with extensive knowledge of the classics. Oxford fit that bill, but it could have been someone else of that ilk."

That's not you being a nerd; that's you being super wrong about a catalog of things. There is just an overwhelming preponderance of actual evidence that supports the claim that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- not weird suppositions about Oxford or Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, Derby, or Marlowe.

This, and arguments that Lewis Carroll was actually Jack the Ripper, means it's time for everyone to take a time-out and think about what they're doing wrong with stuff like logic and reason.

Posted by: Mike B. at March 31, 2010 12:28 PM

There's a whole ton of odd contradictions and evidence that point to Shakes not actually being...Shakes.

Weird stuff like the fact that his daughters couldn't read, and that the only records in Stratford (or whatever) is that of a Shakespeare who was a trader in farming (vague, but something along those lines).

The real strange idea behind all of this is that there really isn't that much strong evidence that Shakespeare existed as the person most people are familiar with.

It's not like trying to prove Jesus existed--Shakes was on this earth about 400 years ago, when things like "records" and "first-hand accounts" and "relatives" etc. existed.

If you muck through the real crazy conspiracy stuff (I want to believe it was Marlowe, but he faked his own death and mailed the plays from Italy?), it's really not inconceivable to say that someone else (Oxford) wrote the plays, and had them filtered through a pseudonym attached to another for personal reasons.

p.s. I kinda like the Gibson version of Hamlet, he plays it a bit more unhinged. There needs to be a bit of madness in the interpretation, even a bit of over-the-top.

Now, this is slightly out of context (this speech is supposed to be spoken to Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, and some of the text is clipped), but this is my favorite Hamlet clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zEVZGuU3BU

I like my Hamlet with a good dose of drunk, desperate, dour, downtrodden, and manipulation.

Posted by: D-Day at March 31, 2010 12:38 PM

(also I'm on the fence about the whole thing, as I've never dug deep enough as Mike B. professes to have done so. So no flame me!)

Posted by: D-Day at March 31, 2010 12:42 PM

I kind of go with the April Fools angle on this one.
Although it is an interesting debate.
Personally, I believe an "uneducated country bumpkin", who has spent hours watching nature by a stream, building up his imagination, could indeed write about "court life". It would actually be quite easy to figure out. I doubt that it would be the same for a court raised, priveleged, "nobleman" to achieve the same depth of nature imagery, in all its savagery and beauty, that Shakespeare achieves. He wouldn't even consider it. In the same way, the "courtier" wouldn't have the same depth of sensitivity for "the commoners" and "low lifes" that populate these plays.
There is more to these plays than just "court life" and politics. And for me, Nature imagery and Plebe life outweighs Court life 2 to one. The Oxford camp is just snobbery and elitism.

Posted by: Odnon at March 31, 2010 12:43 PM

Posted by: Mike B. at March 31, 2010 12:49 PM

"Weird stuff like the fact that his daughters couldn't read"

That's not so odd, being as how the daughters are (*spoiler alert*) girls. Girls of the common class weren't educated. They wouldn't need it, since they would be in charge of whatever household they ended up in, and that wouldn't require reading.

"the only records in Stratford (or whatever) is that of a Shakespeare who was a trader in farming (vague, but something along those lines)"

That doesn't ring true to me, since all of Shakespeare's plays have his name on them, and he's listed as an actor with the Lord Chamberlain's Company. There's also his testimony about his time in a house on Silver Street -- the closest we have to his actual words in his actual cadence.

Posted by: Mike B. at March 31, 2010 12:57 PM

We're looking in the wrong direction! Don't you SEE!
Shakespeare...
is...
BATMAN.

Posted by: Jim Doggie at March 31, 2010 12:59 PM

Batspeare!

Posted by: Odnon at March 31, 2010 1:28 PM

What Mike B. has said. There is no real logical reason to think Shakespeare didn't write his plays. As for the town records, they are crap, honestly, and there's tons of non-government written records on his family. His father was a town elder. His family was solidly merchant class. Spelling was inconsistent and most records from that time have been lost anyway.

He was enrolled in the local school where he learned to read and write English and Latin. That is known.

His father was friends with a book seller in London, which is where Shakespeare started out after he moved (which would give him better access to literature than an Oxford student, so that argument is out.).

His daughters didn't read because girls did not go to school and he didn't live with them to teach them himself. If he even would have bothered to do so.

He owned shares in his theater companies. He owned property in London. You don't get to that level of wealth by being an actor.

Contemporaries talk about him as the author. Then as now gossip travels fast, especially amongst theater people. It would have been common, if unspoken, knowledge if he were covering for someone and the other writers wouldn't have bothered talking the shit they did about him if he weren't the real threat to their popularity.

Lastly, the idea that just because he didn't go to University makes him incapable of writing what he wrote is elitist crap. Genius doesn't just appear in the rich and educated. Hemingway never went to college either. Are we to then assume he didn't write For Whom the Bell Tolls?

Is it possible he didn't write them? Of course. Is it likely? Not really.

Posted by: lumenatrix at March 31, 2010 1:35 PM

I wonder if he carried a Shakespeararang?

To be Batman, or not to be?
That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous villains
Or, by punching, end them?

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at March 31, 2010 1:35 PM

@ lumenatrix: "Lastly, the idea that just because he didn't go to University makes him incapable of writing what he wrote is elitist crap. Genius doesn't just appear in the rich and educated."

Exactly. It's also why I think, for me, this perpetual "debate" rankles: I'm a college drop-out who also did terribly in high school. I can read a lot of college grads under the table. Boy, do I not like this defensive side of me.

Posted by: Mike B. at March 31, 2010 1:47 PM

I don't have enough information to debate this point by point. Apparently in no hurry, the first folio was first published 7 years after Bat-Shakes' death. One of the many sites that contains a variety of speculation follows:

http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-identity-problem.htm

Posted by: Mickey at March 31, 2010 2:30 PM

@Mickey That's not uncommon. If you published your work other companies could then steal it and produce it themselves. There was no copyright protection of any kind and a company's original scripts were its bread and butter. First and foremost he was a businessman looking out for the best interests of his company. If another company wanted to produce a play he had written they had to copy the script from memory of seeing it (or steal or buy it from a company member) that made it tough to get the genuine article so they didn't have to worry about losing audiences to knock off companies.

I'm not trying to bulldoze you or anything, but the fact is that for all the arguments against him being the author I have heard there are very easy counters if you know the history of the period.

Posted by: lumenatrix at March 31, 2010 2:46 PM

I think my favorite angle of this debate was revealed in Al Pacino's excellent Searching For Richard when they interview a Marlovian or two (people who believed it was Christopher Marlowe who wrote the plays). I swear it's not just their stupid name but these people were one roll of Reynolds Wrap foil away from total cuckoobirds.

Posted by: coveredinbees at March 31, 2010 2:52 PM

But I know the history of the period, and I know the plays, and that is why I am confident that Emmerich and Batman will straighten this all out for us.

Posted by: Mickey at March 31, 2010 2:56 PM

Yes, Batman always finds the answer. We can trust in him.

Posted by: lumenatrix at March 31, 2010 2:59 PM

Uy. I got lost somewhere partway through their argument that Shakespeare may not exist or have written his plays because of the Droeshout Engraving (the image of Shakespeare that most of us are familiar with).

The main argument seems to be that since the collar looks screwy and there are other oddities in the engraving, there must be some sort of Da Vinci Codeian mystery. The simpler argument might be: it's not a photograph. Someone drew that. It's going to look a little weird. One might say that New York doesn't exist because there is currently not a Cloverfield-style monster.

Also, Charles Dickens didn't doubt Shakespeare's authorship (another claim from that site). Here's what he actually wrote: "It is a great comfort, to my way of thinking, that so little is known concerning the poet. The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up."

(Other doubters can be found here. And I guess if you want to be part of a club that would allow that wingnut Sigmund Freud, then geh gezunt a heit. (Though, personal to my former Edwardian Boyfriend John Galsworthy: For shame, man, for shame.) (And personal to Walt Whitman: Shut up.)

Posted by: Mike B. at March 31, 2010 2:59 PM