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Sony Pictures Entertainment has released a trailer for Anonymous, the latest film by Roland Emmerich and a departure from his usual blowing-up-the-world thing. Here, it airs the long-rumored suspicion that William Shakespeare’s plays were actually penned by Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford. The film bows Sept. 30.
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well, i’m confused….Is this even based on a Mayan Phophecy?
That is a truly simple minded post…
Nah, yours was.
Hey that guy, did you know that Roland actually has a Mayan script on his shelf for real? I know you were making a joke, but he really does.
Interesting cast. Not sure why it needs to start in present day.
I agree. Looks really promising, but the present-day frame seems like something they’d use for another National Treasure flick.
SPOILER: Shakespeare blows up the world with a massive wave in the end.
The trailer starts in present day to indicate a need to reorient one’s perspective. The implications that arise from the Earl of Oxford possibly writing these plays significantly changes history. Perhaps dangerously so.
Some years ago I picked up a book on this topic as a laugh, but ended up exploring an actually engaging argument by people who were not wacky Baconian cryptogram enthusiasts.
Don’t dismiss this out of hand. To the patient and balanced thinker, the argument that Oxford wrote these plays is stronger than the argument that Will of Stratford did. Of course, such an argument messes with myths. And as Churchill said, “I don’t like my myths mess with.”
I… No, you win. I’m speechless.
I agree with Mark at least go with an open mind.
I’m so glad someone will finally expose the lie that one person could write all of Shakespeare’s plays… by making a movie about how one person wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays.
There’s no middle ground. This will either be utterly fascinating or a massive wank.
True nothing appears to blow up in the trailer but Roland certainly managed to work plenty of special effects in it.
I don’t get it. Where’s Goldblum?
I see the comedians are out – you know Emmerich also made The Patriot, a quite good non-apocalypse movie.
I am not sure wether to laugh or to cry….
Othello would have been slightly different: “O beware, my lord, of jealousy, tis the huge green lizard that doth stomp on New York.”
Guess I need to bring my night vision googles. Was Peter Hyams the DP?
Is Sony giving Radiohead love in their trailer because they think it connects to a younger generation? I think it worked well for a film about a current topic like Social Network, but the complete anachronistic tie between an Elizabethan setting/subject and a post-modern rock classic seems weak. It’s not even much of a climatic song. Maybe Motion Picture Soundtrack would have been a better fit if you were dead set on RH. Organs have an older feel and it crescendo’s well with tragic undertones. Or You and Who’s Army. That would have been great.
Lookeeee, a specialist in his field…
What would you think of Macho Man Randy Savage’s “Be A Man” instead of Radiohead?
Please answer as thoroughly as you did above.
Fred, you are the Godzilla of these comments.
It needs more whooshing noises.
The intro gives context. For example– did you know NOT A SINGLE WORD WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE HAS EVER BEEN FOUND? not a letter, not a manuscript. Not in 400 years. Oh, we have letters and manuscripts by his contemporaries… we have letters by Cervantes, by Dante. But not Shakespeare. Not. One. Word. Or did you know his father was illiterate? Couldn’t write his own name. AND NEITHER COULD SHAKESPEARE’S CHILDREN. IN his will, he famously left his second best bed to the wife he never wrote a letter to while he was in London– but makes no mention of owning a single book at his death (which were practically priceless in his time). Or did you know whoever wrote the plays had to know Latin, Greek, French and Italian? Yet no record exists of Shakespeare going to school.
etc, etc.
THAT is why there is an intro….
This isn’t some wacky theory– it’s something Mark Twain believed. Henry James. Nabokov. Emerson, John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, etc, etc…
…and it’s a well-known fact that Shakespeare never produced his long-form birth certificate.
I have been arguing with “tinker” about this film for months on the IMDB. I’m not surprised he’s still getting so many facts wrong. For example, his statement that Shakespeare’s children couldn’t write is demonstrably wrong. We have a signature from Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna. Even the more knowlegeable Oxfordians will acknowledge this. Google “Susanna Shakespeare” and “signature” and you can see her signature on the web, including on some Oxfordian sites. With respect to the claim that Nabokov beleived this nonsense, that’s simply not true. In his fiction, Nabokov has a character say some crazy things about Shakespeare, but that doesn’t mean Nabokov believed this. No one has ever found any quote from Nabokov writing as himself in which he expresses any doubt as to who wrote the plays. Furthermore, with respect to John Gielgud, I’ve been searching for any quote from him expressing a belief Shakespeare didn’t write the plays, but found nothing. Toward the end of his life, he signed a statement saying that the authorship question was worth looking into, but he did not say he didn’t think Shakespeare wrote the plays. In a book about Shakespearean acting, on which Gielgud was named a co-author, it says Gielgud believed the author was an actor, because he knew enough about acting to give the actors playing Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth time to rest up before the climaxes of the plays. Oxford was not an author. I did see a claim in a newspaper that said Gielgud was sympathetic to Oxfordian beliefs – but it offered no quotes. Until I see a quote from Gielgud, I’m going to assume this is more Oxfordian nonsense.
I’ve been arguing with “tinker” about this film for months on the IMDB. His statement that Shakespeare’s children couldn’t write their own names is demonstrably false. We have Susanna’s signature. It’s on several sites on the internet, including Oxfordian sites. As for Shakespeare’s parents being illiterate, if illiterate parents only had illiterate children, we’d all be illiterate today. As for never writing a letter, it’s ridiculous to expect ALL correspondence from Shakespeare’s time to have survived. And Nabokov wasn’t an anti-Strat. And as for the will, Francis Bacon didn’t mention books in his will either.
Daughter #1 signed her name with an X.
But there is indeed onE signature of daughter #2, Susanna’s, that survives… but it was not uncommon for people to be able to write their name, but be illiterate.
Susanna Shakspere married John Hall, a respected physician. Dr. James Cooke translated Hall’s casebook from Latin into English and published it. In his introduction, Cooke gives an account of his interview with Susanna and describes how he obtained the manuscript:
…”to see the Books left by Mr. Hall. After a view of them, she told me she had some Books left, by one that professed Physick, with her Husband, for some mony. I told her, if I liked them, I would give her the mony again; she brought them forth, amongst which there was this with another of the Authors, both intended for the Presse. I being acquainted with Mr. Hall’s hand, told her that one or two of them were her Husband’s and shewed them her; she denyed, I affirmed, till I perceived she begun to be offended. At last I returned her the mony.”
So she could sign her name… but not read her own husbands writing… This is a CONTEMPORARY account mind you, first hand….
@Tinker bravo!
No to belabor the point, but Henry James, the father of the modern novel, and who some consider to be the foremost literary critic of the late 19th century wrote: “I am haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public”.
Also, Mark Rylance– no doubt the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation– not only ran the Globe theater in London for 10 years– BUT ALSO DOESN’T THINK SHAKESPEARE WROTE A SINGLE WORD.
Think about that-the creative director of The Globe Theater– who knows more than any of us will about Elizabethan theater– is absolutely convinced Shakespeare was not the author!
I have no doubt Mark Rylance (who is indeed a fine actor) knows more about Shakespeare than “tinker.” I’m not convinced he knows more about Shakespeare than I do. Speak for yourself, tinker.
Well Nathan, I have spoken with Mark about it at great length– and I’ll put my money on Rylance over you….
Well done Nathan. Agree with you 100%. Tinker is clearly a troll (or perhaps just a celeb-f*ker) who cares more about famous folks’ opinions than whether something is demonstrably fact. As any scholar with any modicum of knowledge will tell you, it’s clear that Shakespeare wrote his works. No manuscripts of any plays of that era in their original form by the original authors survive. So…who cares that S’s don’t? Only conspiracy theorists with a desperation beyond sanity. Paper was worth much at that time, indeed, and often was sold to make money. They didn’t put a value on original plays/books as we do, as most of that era didn’t even bother mentioning them in their wills. And the plays themselves were worthless in their original hand at that time. Why bother holding on to paper, when you could sell it during your own lifetime and make $$?
seems like a mean streak running here. This looks compelling and well done. Stop snarking.
Cute that they case well known Oxfordians Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance.
I see Martin Sheen as moot
Who plays the Gwyneth Paltrow character in this remake?
This looks good, but hate “weve all been played” tagline. Shitty. On the nose.
With that music I kept expecting a bare bodkin to come flying out of the eye-sockets of a skull that rises from a bubbling cauldron while a witch tries to wash her hands and a merchant – oh forget it, I think I just pulled something. Intriguing trailer, but I just don’t see a lot of people caring.
Wait a minute, now he wants respect? The money wasn’t enough?
Ugh. Now people will actually believe the anti-Strafordian conspiracy rubbish. Great.
When the film actually comes out, I think it will convince people that the Oxfordians are crazy. SPOILER ALERT – It has been widely reported all over the Internet that the film espouses the fringe “Prince Tudor 2″ theory that Oxford was both Queen Elizabeth’s son and the father of her child (which child became the Earl of Southampton). This theory is so crazy it tends to enrage many anti-Strats. What I can’t understand is why people like Jacobi, who are serious Oxfordians, would be in a film that would do so much damage to their side – if the rumors about the script are true.
It’s already obvious they’re batsht crazy. Anyone who disregards scholarship in favor of sentimentality is really sad.
“NOT.ONE.WORD”. Jeez, the drama of it all is just gut-wrenching. (Yawn) Well, it would be better a lot of useless attention on whether Billy Boy wrote or not than our culture’s endless current fixation on Charlie Sheen. Wait, now that I think about it, how about a stage presentation of Charlie as Hamlet? Maybe one of his porn stars as Ophelia, Ron Jeremy as Claudius, Hugh Hefner as King Hamlet (Marty Sheen is too obvious)and throw in the cast of Jersey Shore in various roles. That would be hysterical! And best part of all, no residuals to the damn writer!