‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
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MOVIE REVIEW Anonymous (2011)
Columbia Pictures Rhys Ifans stars in “Anonymous,” directed by Roland Emmerich. How Could a Commoner Write Such Great Plays? By A. O. SCOTT Published: October 27, 2011
“Anonymous,” a costume spectacle directed RECOMMEND by Roland Emmerich, from a script by John TWITTER Orloff, is a vulgar prank on the English LINKEDIN literary tradition, a travesty of British SIGN IN TO E-MAIL history and a brutal insult to the human PRINT imagination. Apart from that, it’s not bad. REPRINTS
SHARE More About This Movie First things first. Overview The film’s premise is that Log in to see what your friends are sharing on Log In With Facebook nytimes.com. Privacy Policy | What’s This? Tickets & Showtimes the plays and New York Times poems What’s Popular Now Review commonly attributed to William America’s Exploding Pipe Officers Unleash Anger at Shakespeare are actually the work Dream Ticket-Fixing Arraignments in Cast, Credits & Awards the Bronx of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Readers' Reviews Oxford. This notion, sometimes granted the unwarranted dignity of Tickets & Showtimes being called a theory, is hardly Enter your ZIP code or city to view tickets and showtimes in your area. new. It represents a hoary form of City, State or ZIP literary birtherism that has MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 ARTICLES) More Theaters Near You » persisted for a century or so, in Movie Review: A Fairy Tale Mix happy defiance of reason and With 9 Lives and Dozens of Egg Jokes evidence. The arrival of MOST E-MAILED Read More »
1 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
Trailers & Clips “Anonymous” has roused 1. Presidential Candidates? Few Are the 99 Percent Shakespeareans more learned than I to the weary task of re-debunking 2. OP-ED COLUMNIST — in the past two weeks The New America’s Exploding Pipe Dream York Times has published both an Op-Ed piece and a Sunday 3. College Application Essay as Haiku? For Some, 500 Words Aren’t Enough magazine Riff opposing the PRESENTED BY Oxfordian position — and to their Log in to discover more articles based on what you‘ve read. Related cogent arguments I can offer only a What’s This? | Don’t Show Brush Up Your Shakespeare, or small corrective. This is a Roland Whoever (October 23, 2011) Emmerich film. (At least I assume ArtsBeat | Theater Talkback: it is, though I guess, in the spirit of Who Wrote Shakespeare? Who the enterprise, I should be open to Cares? (October 27, 2011) other possibilities. Joe Swanberg? Enlarge This Image Brett Ratner? Zhang Yimou? It all seems eerily plausible, once you start to think about it.)
My point is that it might be a mistake to suppose that the director of “10,000 B.C.” — to mention only the most salient example — should be taken as a reliable guide to history. Perhaps
Columbia Pictures he and Mr. Orloff (“Legend of the Rafe Spall as Shakespeare, a Guardians: The Owls of scoundrel in “Anonymous,” directed by Roland Emmerich. Ga’Hoole”), rather than advancing
Enlarge This Image the case for Edward de Vere, set out to undermine it by exposing the absurd prejudices and fallacies on which the hypothesis rests. These can be boiled down to a sentimental and reactionary fantasy of class. How could Shakespeare, the half-educated son of an unlettered provincial glove maker, have written all those masterpieces? Surely it is more Reiner Bajo/Columbia Pictures Vanessa Redgrave as Queen plausible to suppose that they were Elizabeth I in the film, which posits the work of one of his betters. that an earl wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. “Anonymous” has great fun with this insight, and it is amusing to watch Rafe Spall turn his Shakespeare into a shallow, duplicitous fraud (not to mention a whoremonger, a MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 blackmailer and a murderer). Rhys Ifans, who plays the Earl of ARTICLES) Oxford, is a touching picture of aristocratic melancholy, his Movie Review: A Fairy long face and hooded eyes suggesting the weariness of a decent, disappointed soul. The poor Earl, prevented by family Tale Mix With 9 Lives circumstances from pursuing his literary dreams, has spent a and Dozens of Egg lifetime quilling up secret masterpieces about gloomy Danish Jokes princes, midsummer night’s dreams and other curious Read More »
2 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
subjects.
When he was younger (and played, poutily and prettily, by Jamie Campbell Bower), Edward presented his pieces at court, where they delighted the young Queen Elizabeth I (Joely Richardson) so much that she went to bed with him. Later, when she has aged into a regal Vanessa Redgrave (Ms. Richardson’s mother), she will be so worked up by a “Shakespearean” performance that she will be compelled to undo the buttons of her bodice.
The filmmakers take a literal view of the power of poetry in the public arena as well. Give the masses a play with a hunchbacked villain, and they will take to the streets against an actual hunchback (Sir Robert Cecil, played by Edward Hogg. David Thewlis is Sir Robert’s equally sinister father, William, Elizabeth’s most trusted and least trustworthy adviser, as well as de Vere’s father-in-law).
It is an Oxfordian commonplace that de Vere composed some of his history plays (“Henry V,” “Richard III”) to assert some behind-the-scenes influence over the affairs of state. “Anonymous” gives him complicated reasons for wanting to keep King James of Scotland off the English throne once Elizabeth is gone, and to sustain the Tudor line by promoting the ascendance of the Earl of Southampton (Xavier Samuel). The Earl of Southampton is a close friend of the Earl of Essex (Sam Reid), to whom de Vere is close for reasons that may shock you, or else reduce you to incredulous giggling.
“All plays are political,” Edward de Vere insists, and “Anonymous” proposes as a corollary that only political players can produce theater of real consequence. A mere professional, like Shakespeare or his colleague and sometime rival Ben Jonson, could never dream of committing masterpieces like “King Lear” or “Macbeth.” Only an inspired, noble amateur could achieve such greatness. The history of English letters refutes this notion at almost every turn — there are far more hacks than gentlemen to be found in the canon — and it seems disingenuous for Hollywood hacks to be endorsing it.
Or maybe just modest. Still, the show-business professionalism that “Anonymous” goes to such great lengths to disdain turns out to be its saving virtue. As a work of serious history, it is beyond useless. You would never know that Ben MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 Jonson, played with thick-tongued mopiness by Sebastian ARTICLES) Armesto, was a great comic writer, nor that Elizabeth was a Movie Review: A Fairy shrewd and ruthless political operator, as opposed to the Tale Mix With 9 Lives dreamy, dithering mooncalf depicted here. (Don’t get me started on poor Christopher Marlowe.) And yet there is no and Dozens of Egg reason to deny Mr. Emmerich and Mr. Orloff the liberties that Jokes Shakespeare himself — and I do mean Shakespeare, the Read More »
3 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
commercial entertainer, not some sad peer of the realm — was so free in taking.
Which is not to say that “Anonymous” rises to any great heights of art. Only, as I said before, that it is in many ways not bad. Mr. Orloff’s puffed-up dialogue is enlivened by infusions of actual Shakespeare, some of it performed by Mark Rylance, one of Shakespeare’s leading modern interpreters. (It is, by contrast, a little depressing to see another, Derek Jacobi, lending his imprimatur to this folly in the role of a present-day narrator). The production design (by Sebastian T. Krawinkel) and the costumes (by Lisy Christl) are superb, blending with Anna J. Foerster’s dark and rich cinematography to produce a plausibly Elizabethan atmosphere, with interiors that often look like Holbein paintings.
And in the end the players are the thing. Mediocre actors are often undone by great material, but good ones can burnish even meretricious nonsense with craft and conviction. And so it is here. Ms. Redgrave and Mr. Ifans are so full of feeling, Mr. Thewlis and Mr. Hogg are so full of bile and fanaticism, and Mr. Spall is so full of baloney that you are tempted to suspend disbelief, even if Mr. Emmerich finally makes it impossible.
“Anonymous” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Swordplay, bodice ripping, bawdy speech and the cold-blooded murder of the truth.
ANONYMOUS
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Roland Emmerich; written by John Orloff; director of photography, Anna J. Foerster; edited by Peter R. Adam; music by Thomas Wander and Harald Kloser; production design by Sebastian T. Krawinkel; costumes by Lisy Christl; produced by Mr. Emmerich, Larry Franco and Robert Léger; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.
WITH: Rhys Ifans (Earl of Oxford), Vanessa Redgrave (Queen Elizabeth I), Joely Richardson (Young Queen Elizabeth), David Thewlis (William Cecil), Xavier Samuel (Earl of Southampton), Sebastian Armesto (Ben Jonson), Rafe Spall (William Shakespeare), Sam Reid (Earl of Essex), Jamie Campbell Bower (Young Earl of Oxford), Edward Hogg (Robert Cecil), Mark Rylance (Condell) and Derek Jacobi MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 ARTICLES) (Prologue). Movie Review: A Fairy A version of this review appeared in print on October 28, 2011, Tale Mix With 9 Lives on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: How Could a Commoner Write Such Great Plays?. and Dozens of Egg Jokes SIGN IN TO E-MAIL Read More »
4 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
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33 Readers' Reviews
ALL COMMENTS READERS' RECOMMENDATIONS
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October 28th, 2011 1:40 pm Rating: 33. Why I'll see it I once had a great teacher of freshman English in college, who made the class read "Of Human Bondage" which a good ten percent of the class, including, disliked, including me. In response he said that you have to expose yourself to the bad things in order to fully appreciate the really good and great things. So I suppose I have to see "Anonymous" before I sit down with Hamlet and Lear again.
– Hans Nepomuk in Los Angeles, Ca, Los Angeles, CA
Recommend Recommended by 1 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:40 pm Rating: 32. Class resentment Wow...... superbly written. Time for Mr.Emmerich to be history, real or made-up. MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 – adb, Bay area ARTICLES) Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers Movie Review: A Fairy October 28th, 2011 1:40 pm Rating: 31. The Masque of William Shakespeare Tale Mix With 9 Lives I read an essay on Amazon Kindle with the above title that convinces me and Dozens of Egg that Shakespeare was not the writer. The article on Kindle was exciting, too. Probably would have made a better movie, too. Jokes Read More »
5 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
– Rhea, NYC
Recommend Recommended by 1 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:40 pm Rating: 30. Oh, the indignation, A.O.! A.O., please dispense with the outraged, histrionic puffery—do you really want to suggest that Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi, both committed Oxfordians, are just a couple of ignorant, class-conscious rubes? The authorship question is not about class—that's a cheap, long discredited shot—it's about evidence, and as "Shakespeare By Another Name," by Mark Anderson credibly describes, it's virtually all in De Vere's corner. The dating of the plays' creation is likewise highly tenuous—what scares you people? (Or do you simply have lunch with Stratford apologist James Shapiro on Wednesdays, discussing how to become working-class heroes?)
– rotovybe, Brooklyn, NY
Recommend Recommended by 10 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: 29. A.O. Scott's final review line worth the ether it's written on.. I'm sure I will love this movie; I'm sure no one alive will know the truth, so why not another very well thought-out alternative theory? If it brings to the movie theaters (or home entertainment units) another great British import with marvelous language, costumes, actors, etc., as I say, why not? There is a serious dearth of alternatives, as we all know! BTW, A.O.'s review presents the dryest, best closing line (hidden in the ratings language at the end) to any movie review written--and I'm sure will dissuade no one from attending! Evangeline Weck
– Evangeline Weck, chesterfield, va
Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: 28. Of course the writings of Shakespeare were really the work of educated nobility! After all, throughout history the greatest works of literature have been composed exclusively by nobility. There is the example of .... Or how about... Wait, there must be something....
– David, St Louis
Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: 27. The Bard by Any Other Name Is everyone here really considering this film as history? Did everyone feel the same about SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE? Where was the furor over Amy Freed's stage play THE BEARD OF AVON (which even dealt with de Vere) or William Gibson's play A CRY OF PLAYERS? The movie is fun with great visuals of Elizabethan London (not to mention Elizabeth herself). The historical recreation of an era is wonderfully evoked, no matter the fictiveness of the plot. And that's my point: someone wove a fiction around one of the conspiracy theories. I, for one, am awaiting the film where Kit Marlowe is the central figure. After all, isn't he really the one who wrote the plays in questions? He may be MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 been the son of a tailor, but he did go to Cambridge. What a yarn that ARTICLES) would make! Movie Review: A Fairy
– Skip D, New York City, Manhattan Tale Mix With 9 Lives Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers and Dozens of Egg October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: Jokes 26. conditions for inspired writing Read More »
6 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
I'm an admirer, not an expert. I visited Shakespeare's home last Spring. He had a large family. The home is tiny. How can a writer write such beautiful prose and verses in such crowded and probably noisy circumstances? I couldn't imagine how as I walked through the cramped space.
– A. C. Rodriguez, PhD, LCSW, Orlando, FL
Recommend Recommended by 1 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: 25. Truthiness strikes again So truthiness has finally tried to claim even Shakespeare, eh? Our culture has become a bottomless pit of idiotic credulity. What fools these mortals be!
– Fred White, Baltimore
Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: 24. Uh, no nycharles12 wrote:
> That the works attributed to Shakespeare are genius is undisputed. But significant forensic computer analysis of the extensive letters and early writings of de Vere show an extremely high correlation to those works.
Sorry, but they prove exactly the opposite. See Ward Elliott and Robert Valenza's "My Other Car is a Shakespeare", Oxfordian X: 142–153 (2007).
– Not an idiot or an Oxfordian, but I repeat myself, Texas
Recommend Recommended by 5 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: 23. Enough said. "My point is that it might be a mistake to suppose that the director of “10,000 B.C.” — to mention only the most salient example — should be taken as a reliable guide to history."
Enough said.
– Scott, Virginia
Recommend Recommended by 5 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: 22. Whati Is Genius? With no hard evidence - there can be no "theory," just circumstantial innuendo and tendentious piffle. Just another example of blind religious faith, and every blind faith requires die-hard defenders. So many "candidates" have been put forward in the Great Quackery that the only "argument" is against the nature of genius itself.
– V, CT MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 Recommend Recommended by 1 Readers ARTICLES) October 28th, 2011 1:37 pm Rating: Movie Review: A Fairy 21. Excellent Era Whatever you think of the authorship question, this is a well-made and Tale Mix With 9 Lives well-acted film set in one of the most intriguing periods of English and Dozens of Egg history - an era with so many stories to tell. The filmmakers should be commended for that. Jokes Read More »
7 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
- M. G. Scarsbrook, author of THE MARLOWE CONSPIRACY, an historical novel featuring Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare teaming up to expose a high-level government conspiracy.
– M. G. Scarsbrook, London, UK
Recommend Recommended by 3 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: 20. The stars are for the review, not the film. Great review.
I was sucked into a long and involved epistolary debate with a Shakespeare conspiracy theorists once (or thrice, actually). His general tactic and the general tactic of the conspiracy theorists from whom he borrowed his arguments was to harp continually on tiny historically points while ignoring entirely the broader logical error. The tiny historical points were invariably invalid upon examination, of course, but it was tedious having to bother with them at all. Well, it's interesting to see then, that many of the reader comments here employ the same strategy.
Re: "Mr. Scott needs to stick to movie reviews."
He IS sticking here to movie reviews--and doing remarkably well at it. This is why (or one reason among others, actually), he doesn't refute all the questionable assertions the various conspiracy theorists in these comments advance. It is necessary for the review to state, however, the premise upon which this movie is based and necessary to mention that it is historically wildly implausible. That's all.
– Jake, Wisconsin
Recommend Recommended by 14 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: 19. MarkTwain's conclusion ... Francis Bacon was Shakespeare Sam Clemens/Mark Twain wrote an extensive essay explaining why he believed Francis Bacon was the Bard. One reason he gave was the extensive references to legal reasoning and terms, which Shakespeare would never have had close contact with. But Bacon did.
www.baconsocietyinc.org/baconiana/baconiana2/mclellan.htm
– Missouri Reader, Missouri
Recommend Recommended by 2 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: 18. An Inconvenient Commoner So, all commoners are incapable of higher thought? I think Al Gore was the real author of this movie, not John Orloff.
– R, NY
Recommend Recommended by 1 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 17. ANONYMOUS ARTICLES) Anonymous is....a vulgar prank. For once I stand with Mr. Scott across the beltway from people who say the Pentagon was exploded from the Movie Review: A Fairy inside out, President Obama wasn't born in the US, the grassy knoll, and all the rest. Look at the directors other movies and imagine his Tale Mix With 9 Lives imagination at work. Make things up and call them plausible. Enough and Dozens of Egg effects, costumes, action and....dare I say it....conspiracy, and the society of dunces we are now a part of will accept anything. Did I say Will? Jokes Read More »
8 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
– LOUIS ADESSA, NEW YORK, NY
Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: 16. Evidence to the contrary trumps absence of evidence While there is no proof that the Stratford man could write, there is no evidence that he couldn't either. There is evidence that he could have, since Stratford had a grammar school. The theorists like to harp on the bad handwriting in surviving signatures. So what? Adam Smith had such bad handwriting all his work had to be dictated. There is however plenty of easily accessible evidence that there are topical references in the plays that postdate the death of Mr. De Vere, and I suspect that the stylistic analyses that show that Macbeth et al. were written by one hand are at least as strong as any correlation through computational methods of the early writings of De Vere to those of Shakespeare's plays. You'd have to have statistically stronger evidence of the De Vere similarity than of the unity of Macbeth or an alternate explanation of the topical references to seriously support this theory. I haven't seen the comparison thus far. Also, does anybody know what the finances of the Globe theatre were, and whether they would have permitted a slow rollout of the supposedly pre-existing material?
– David, Berkeley, CA
Recommend Recommended by 5 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: 15. Response to Mr. Goff Mr. Goff, one did not need to be reading law at the Inns of Court to know of a popular case. You are referring, I presume, to the 1562 case of Hales v. Petit. Shakespeare, and many others, would have known of this case from Plowden's "Commentaries." The language of the Gravedigger scene hews very closely to this report (not some highfalutin' "Law French" only recently published). Luke Wilson's article "Hamlet, Hales v. Petit, and the Hysteresis of Action" [ELH , Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), pp. 17-55] offers a classic New Historicist reading of the case and the play, wherein he gives due credit to the first to note the connection between the two: Sir John Hawkins.
– Keith, D.C.
Recommend Recommended by 5 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: 14. Sequels? English literature is filled with great writers without a university education. Teenager Charles Dickens was forced to leave school to work in a blacking warehouse when his father was sent to debtor's prison. Perhaps the most erudite of contemporary playwrights, Tom Stoppard, ended his formal education at age 17. The possibilities for even sillier sequels to "Anonymous" seems endless.
– Bruce, Upstate NY
Recommend Recommended by 3 Readers MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: ARTICLES) 13. Stratfordians are Flimflammers The Oxfordian theory, "sometimes granted the unwarranted dignity of Movie Review: A Fairy being called a theory, is hardly new." Okay Mr. Smartypants Stratfordian, let's review how ALL Shakespearean biographies are Tale Mix With 9 Lives written, since we know about ten solid facts about him (his entire family and Dozens of Egg was illiterate, there were no books in his home other than the Bible and some business receipts). Jokes Read More »
9 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
This is how they're written: The author begins with the assumption that the Stratford businessman wrote the works attributed to him and then reverse engineers a lengthy biography with (uniformly) such constructions as "Plays such as the Merchant of Venice are so replete with Venetian lore, geography, and local intrigue that it forces us to conclude that Shakespeare must have snuck off across the Alps during those fabled Lost Years." In other words, we don't know but since we assume he wrote the stuff we can postulate that he must have blahblahblahblahblah. That's all you've got.
And yet, you preening literary flimflammers have the nerve to dismiss the far more coherent narrative that plausibly postulates DeVere as the true author behind Shakespeare's works. The sonnets, in particular, have a convincing association with DeVere's own life that cannot be so easily dismissed.
Get a clue.
– TJANVIER, Alameda, CA
Recommend Recommended by 5 Readers
October 28th, 2011 1:33 pm Rating: 12. Deciding for ourselves This seems to be one of those reviews that is more about the reviewer than the work reviewed - not exactly a service to the readers. It's remarkable how a question, supposedly about the past, excites such visceral defenses in people of the present. Many argue, heatedly, that this question should not even be asked. What's that about? I think movie viewers will have to decide for themselves.
– Merilee Karr, Portland, Oregon
Recommend Recommended by 3 Readers
October 27th, 2011 5:27 pm Rating: 11. Mr. Enjoyed the venomous review and this movie can join the ranks of other masterpieces like the absurd National Treasure series.
– JSHAF, Indiana
Recommend Recommended by 15 Readers
October 27th, 2011 4:36 pm Rating: 10. "Anonymous" No Vulgar Prank Contrary to Mr. Scott's notion, the Oxfordian point of view, represented a tad unevenly by "Anonymous," is not without logic. How many readers of the Times, here given the unsupported assertion that the theory is preposterous, will ever be permitted to read that Elizabethan plays could function as propaganda? Yes, we can agree that "Henry V" and "Richard III" don't fit the historical time frame the movie depicts; but the Essex Rebellion was preceded by a performance of Shakespeare's "Richard II," used as Essex-promoting propaganda--and, although the players of "Shakespeare's" company were called in by the authorities to explain the matter, not once was any "Shakespeare" brought in, much less mentioned. MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 ARTICLES) Mr. Scott's readers, told the theory is bunk, will never read that the repartee of the Gravedigger's Scene in "Hamlet" is based on an actual Movie Review: A Fairy case in property law, accessible to students at Gray's Inn, where the Earl of Oxford studied law--and the casebooks, not printed until the Tale Mix With 9 Lives twentieth century, were written in "law French," a governmental and Dozens of Egg derivative of Norman French. At least, despite his slanted presentation of the evidence, Mr. Scott rather likes the movie: he's doing his job as a Jokes reviewer and granting the film its premise. Read More »
10 of 11 10/29/11 10:09 AM ‘Anonymous,’ by Roland Emmerich - Review - NYTimes.com http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymou...
– Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
Recommend Recommended by 20 Readers
October 27th, 2011 4:34 pm Rating: 9. Not So Anonymous That the works attributed to Shakespeare are genius is undisputed. But significant forensic computer analysis of the extensive letters and early writings of de Vere show an extremely high correlation to those works. Shakespeare left no other writing of any kind expect for the Plays and Poems attributed to Shakespeare. No letters, no diary, nothing. The only example of his handwriting is his signature on his will. A will that left his second best bed to his wife but no books, no poems, and no plays despite the fact that several of the plays were published after his death. How did Shakespeare so accurately describe geographical and architectural features of Italy without ever traveling outside of England? In Much Ado About Nothing a still existing villa in Sicily is exactly described in detail. de Vere traveled extensively in Italy and was a guest at the Villa. In the days before encyclopedia’s, Wikipedia’s and Google, how could Shakespeare ever have learned the details? These and a hundred other reasons go to the heart of he theory that de Vere was the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. Nothing in the article goes to dispute these or any other claim. The “Class Warfare” theory is as accurate for Scott as it is for the Repubs.
– nycharles12, New York
Recommend Recommended by 24 Readers
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MORE IN MOVIES (18 OF 49 ARTICLES) Movie Review: A Fairy Tale Mix With 9 Lives and Dozens of Egg Jokes Read More »
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