What’s in a Name? Not much, if Shakespeare was Anonymous

Conspiracy theories are popular things. The one claiming that Shakespeare wasn’t really Shakespeare, for example, hasn’t been laid to rest since it was first proposed a hundred and fifty years ago. The Shakespeare experts have debunked all the theories by now, yet those theories persist in rearing their ugly heads now and again. Some theories are better than others, while some make better stories. Anonymous falls into the latter category: it’s a well-told tale if one doesn’t take it seriously.

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Its saving grace is, perhaps, the fact that it doesn’t expect to be accepted with complete seriousness.  Beginning, unexpectedly, in the modern day, it presents itself as a play within a play, rather resembling a live transmission of theatre to cinemas. It ends in the same theatre, emptied of its audience, bringing to mind the epilogue of A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear..

The film, if you wish it so, is but a vision upon a stage. A dramatic vision, Shakespearean in both senses of the word, for there’s love, murder, adultery, treachery, treason, incest, court intrigue, and just about anything else found in a Shakespeare play.

The film makes the case for Shakespeare really being Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), who is forced to hide behind a nom de plume because proper Elizabethan gentlemen didn’t write plays. Though originally intending to pose as Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto), he ends up as “Will Shakespeare,” a barely literate actor. But that’s only half the story: a tempestuous love affair with Queen Elizabeth (Vanessa Redgrave), leading to illegitimate heirs to the throne, political blackmail, and rebellion, make up the rest. It’s a tale as much about the Shakespearean authorship question as it is about Elizabethan intrigue, and the crux of the plot lies in the entanglement of the two.

An entanglement that’s a little too entangled: with its numerous jumps back and forth in time, political scheming, and pesky strings of aristocratic titles, the plot is an exercise in mental gymnastics. The film really could have used a dramatis personae, which would be in keeping with its theme of making “all the world … a stage” — which, thankfully, it manages without actually quoting the by-now clichéd line itself.

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures

The stage is a surprisingly accurate Elizabethan England, one which lacks the usual varnish of historical drama films. London is a painstaking virtual recreation based on research and photography of every medieval building England possesses; from the castles and cathedrals to the bird’s eye view of London, the stunning cinematography creates a breathtaking journey back in time. The historical events are elegantly integrated into the plot, though their dates have been rather shuffled around. Then again, not even Shakespeare himself was a particularly meticulous historian.

But the real core of the story is de Vere’s touching tale. Whether or not one believes the film’s claim about his identity, he evokes the man who has not yet become a myth. In this version, Shakespeare’s words don’t yet have the omnipotence they’ve since acquired, causing him only ruin, suffering, and disrespectability. In a particular scene of heartbreaking misunderstanding, de Vere passionately describes the inspiration driving him to put quill to parchment; his wife sinks to the floor in angry, bitter tears. It’s excruciating to watch as she fearfully asks The Greatest Playwright of All Time, “Are you possessed?”  “Perhaps,” the Bard sadly replies.

The source of Shakespeare’s genius remains just as foggy today; it will likely continue to fascinate as long as his stories continue to inspire. This convoluted, dramatic, and enjoyable tale is yet another testament to that fact.