Is Shakespeare A Fraud?

In spite of a couple of bad reviews about the new movie Anonymous, my girlfriend and I, who both majored in Shakespeare at university, went and saw it on its first day of screening and actually love the controversial flick!

First of all, two thumbs up to the bold German-born director Roland Emmerich who had the guts to question the authenticity of the Bard's works. He must have already foreseen the numerous Shakespearean scholars who would be up in arms after seeing this movie - including James Shaprio, English Professor, Columbia University, who also wrote a negative op-ed piece in The New York Times - when he shot the film with a screenplay that was written some 10 years ago. It's also hard to believe that this is the same director behind such Hollywood epics as Independence Day, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow.

I can fully understand why there's such an uproar. Not only was Shakespeare, the greatest writer and playwright of all times, portrayed as a total fraud, but he was an illiterate buffoon, a scheming blackmailer and murderer, and a whoring commoner with no scruples. This is not the first time that the authenticity of Shakespeare as the real author of his plays is being challenged. Sigmund Freud, Henry James and other notable greats have also raised the same doubts. But Emmerich explored the big question mark in great depths.

But whether you agree with this premiss at all, the strongest merit of this movie is that it's so well done and written in such a witty way that even the Bard himself would have approved in spite of the atrocious defamy of his reputation! I love the Shakespearean themes of the 'play within the play';' the use of the Prologue with Sir Derek Jacobi; the female roles played by male actors in the Elizabethan era; the interactive nature of the plays being staged; a quick glance at some of the most famous scenes from Shakespeare's plays being staged in the movie, including Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and many others; and The Globe Theatre filmed in its full glory.

Also, who could dispute the excellent English cast? Vanessa Redgrave played the older Queen Elizabeth while her daughter Joely Richardson (of Nip, Tuck fame) played the younger monarch. But the most pleasantly surprising performance came from Welsh actor Rhys Ifans (best remembered as Spike in Notting Hill) who played the middle-aged, but still dashing, pensive Duke of Oxford. By playing such credible characters who are distinctly different from movie to movie, Ifans's acting excellence should be admired.

I don't believe the plot has any truth to it, but I would highly recommend this movie because like all other admirable works of art, this film is both provocative and irresistibly attractive and entertaining at the same time. The greatest line in this movie is, "All art is political, otherwise, it's only decorative." The flashbacks and the many characters in their young and old forms can be confusing at times; so, try to go see this movie when you're in top form!