Krononymous on Anonymous

SPOILER ALERT: I am going to tell you the deep dark secret so if you think you want to see it, just remember that Bruce Willis was dead the entire time!

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive


Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)


No, it's not old Shakey although many people assume that it is.  Many people also assume that old Shakey was in fact William Shakespeare.  I am one of those people.  Other people like to assume that it was someone else.  Someone like Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.  The film in question does everything in its power to prove this point and in the end, does everything in its power to not only disprove the point, but make the theory fly at "Ludicrous Speed"!

The movie begins with Derek Jacobi on stage for the set up.  If you are thinking, "Gee, this is a bit like Branagh's Henry V" then you'd be thinking along the same lines as me.  Jacobi's prologue posits the first of many persuasive arguments against Shakespeare: his father, his wife, and his daughter were all illiterate!    Now, I am not sure what the literacy rate of the merchant class was in late 16th century England so I googled it and found a quote from John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century:


"Male literacy in England slowly and steadily increased from ten percent in 1500 to forty-five percent in 1714..."


Even with two women who don't belong in the sample group, I am thinking that it is indeed possible that Will attended grammar school and learnt his letters.  This was possible even for the son of a glove maker and that brings us to our second argument: the son of a glove maker could not possibly have written such beautiful prose!  Now that's just a bit 1% me thinks.  I'd like to just dismiss this claim out right as it's just snobby but I did read a book (and I'd look it up if I wasn't too lazy) that spent about 400 pages refuting this argument.  The author's proofs were pulled from the plays wherein the author, whoever he might have been, displayed a curious and intimate knowledge of  leather tanning methods and mercantile trades.  The author's conclusion was that someone of Edward de Vere's status would never have known these intimate details.


Both of these damning statements occur in the first minutes of what is quite a long film and as you, my dear reader, and the viewers are now convinced that Shakespeare was indeed a fraud, what further proofs could possibly be needed?   Well, lots of sex obviously!  Lots and lots of unprotected sex.  


Allow me to offer crib notes for the final damning pieces of "evidence" because I really don't want to bore you with all the details:


Edward de Vere, (a ginger) like Hamlet, heard voices and the only way to tame those voices was to write the plays.  Of course this only proves to his wife, the daughter of William Cecil, that it is all the work of the devil.  de Vere attempts to get Ben Jonson, the first Poet Laureate of England, to put on and take credit for his plays as the are of a seditious nature and seek to affect the succession (de Vere is anti-James).


Ben Jonson (did I mention he is the first Poet Laureate of England?) is too much the artiste to take credit - besides "it is not in his voice" and spills the beans to an unscrupulous actor, Will Shakespeare.


Will Shakespeare likes booze, money, whores, fame and not necessarily in that order.  He is a minor character in the film but I am here to tell you that the great irony is that he is the most likable character and Rafe Spall without a doubt, gives the best performance.


Elizabeth (a ginger) is the Virgin Queen of England and she likes sex.  In fact the fastest way into her pants is through prose.  Utter a few lines and she's all yours.  She also doesn't suffer from the fertility issues of the rest of her clan.


William Cecil, Secretary of State and Master of the Court Wards, was a boring Puritan who wanted James VI of Scotland to be James I of England (because he was the son of Mary Queen of Scots who was the daughter of Margaret Tudor and Henry Stuart, both grandchildren of Henry VII, the Pretender who stole the crown from Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, who laid claim to the throne via his mother Margaret Beaufort who was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III - got it!) is an evil manipulator of the Queen.  de Vere is placed in his household as a Ward after his *parents* die but he is not allowed to write his beloved words because they are the work of the devil.  Bad things ensue, including the murder of a servant who is caught lurking behind a curtain and stabbed by de Vere (Hamlet!).  Despite all this he is married to William's daughter.  When Hamlet is performed it is clear that Pelonius is William Cecil although that doesn't really work for me because it's really Hamlet's uncle-father Claudius who is the true villain in this play.  Pelonius is just a bumbling old man with a son (Laertes who is not really like Robert except that he does want to kill de Vere) and a daughter (Ophelia who is not really like his daughter at all except that she does die before de Vere but that's not mentioned in the film).  And anyway, was de Vere's fencing coach Rosencrantz or Guildenstern and wouldn't that make Robert Cecil Claudius?  It's baffling.


Robert Cecil, successor to his father is nothing more than a shadow of papa and a hunchback.  This is important.


The Earls of Essex and Southampton are two Prince Hot Ginges.


Now that the players are in place, take a deep breath...


Elizabeth is a poet groupie.  She *meets* de Vere as a young man after he performs a Midsummer Night's Dream.  They later have an affair after he spews a lot of words at her.  Liz gets pregnant and is not allowed to marry Eddy because old Cecil won't let her.  Liz, the headstrong queen, obeys and "goes on a progress" (i.e. has a baby) as is the normal procedure when she is knocked up.  This information gets out after de Vere has an affair with one of her ladies, who he also gets pregnant but we don't hear about that bastard.  He is banished from the Court for this indiscretion.  de Vere has his plays performed and Shakespeare takes credit after Ben is unable to because he is so moved by a performance of Henry V.  de Vere does not want to see James on the throne so he conspires to use his plays to have the Earl of Essex, who he knows to be a bastard of Liz, succeed.  William dies and is replaced by Robert Cecil, the hunchback.  de Vere has Richard III performed to anger the mob as even the unwashed masses can understand that the evil Tricky Dicky is meant to be Robert Cecil, hunchback (and here I had always thought it was Will playing to his Tudor overlords by legitimatizing their seizure of the throne at the aforementioned Battle of Bosworth Field).  In conjunction with this mob action, our Princes Hot Ginge (Essex and Southampton) are going to make an appeal to the Queen (Essex has been labeled a traitor who wishes to seize the throne by Robert Cecil).  It all goes awry because Ben Jonson squealed on them so de Vere (who was waiting to see the Queen - she had recently agreed to forgive him) is left to watch the plan fall apart.  Liz is whisked away for her safety and de Vere is alone with Robert Cecil wherein tangled web is unraveled:


SPOILER ALERT - I AM GIVING AWAY THE GOODS NOW: Robert tells de Vere that Southampton is his son with Liz.  He also tells him that this is not the only ginger bastard roaming England.  In fact Bastardo Numero Uno was conceived when Liz was 16 and was none other than de Vere.  So he had sex with his mother (how Oedipus Rex and yet also Mel Gibson as Hamlet with Glenn Close as Gertrude) who gave birth to Southampton who was her son and her grandson at the same time.  Despite all this inbreeding, the fertility rate is astounding!  William Cecil continued to forgive de Vere his transgressions as he knew he was the first bastard son of the Virgin Queen and was therefore working to make him King and his daughter Queen Consort.  Their child, his grandson, would eventually be King.  I guess James was a Plan B?  In any event, de Vere's plan goes awry and Essex has his head chopped off by his mother, Southampton is saved from execution after de Vere appeals to the Queen, James succeeds Liz, he likes plays so Robert Cecil has to put up with some more of that, de Vere dies but gives all his manuscripts to Ben on his deathbed.  He is caught by de Vere's wife (Robert's sister who at this point is actually dead if you care about history) and she tattles to Robert who has Ben arrested and burns down the theater wherein the manuscripts are all burnt but they're not and they are eventually published.  Ben goes on to be a good playwright and be named the first Poet Laureate of England, blah, blah, blah! Oh, and I hope you now have resolution on those tricky love sonnets dedicated to the Earl of Southampton!  No, the so-called Shakespeare was not gay, he was de Vere and he dedicated erotic love sonnets to his bastard son.  Smashing!