Roland Emmerich's Anonymous addresses the question of Shakespeare's identity in this tale of Edward de Vere and his actions in the court of Queen Elizabeth. The film starts a prologue by the eminent Shakespearean actor Derek Jacobi, and then leads us into a scene with Ben Johnson running about London, fleeing from the knights of Robert Cecil while carrying the Complete Works. From there we flash back five years to the first time Johnson was arrested for authoring a "seditious" play, while de Vere, Christopher Marlowe and other luminaries of the London dramatic scene watched. From there, a second flashback of another 40 years sends us to watch de Vere's youth and his first encounters with the Cecils and with Queen Elizabeth.
Throughout the film we follow three periods of time: de Vere's youth and his growing love for the Queen; the peak of the Shakespearean arc in London, when de Vere was feeding plays to Shakespeare and involving himself in intrigues of London surrounding the question of Elizabeth's heir; and to a much lesser extent, the actions of Johnson and Cecil in the aftermath of the deaths of Elizabeth and de Vere, and the coronation of King James I. Some have complained that the various swings from one time line to another are confusing, but I found it easy to differentiate between young Edward and young Elizabeth and their much older counterparts.
The main body of the film centers around the contest between de Vere's actions to place the Earl of Essex in the line of succession, and the competing interests of the Cecils (first William, then Robert) to steer the throne to King James of Scotland. Thankfully for the viewer, it is easy to differentiate between the two camps, as Essex and his entourage are all fair-haired, while James and the Cecils are dark-haired.
There will be controversy about this film due to the great liberties it takes with historical facts. John Orloff's screenplay ranges from facts well established in the historical record to some points that are debated by experts with varying points of view and interpretations, to some fictions that are introduced and can only be viewed as flatly false. Who wrote the plays and poems we attribute to Shakespeare? This is at least a topic for debate. Who killed Christopher Marlowe? This film provides an extremely unlikely answer to this question. Was Elizabeth truly a "Virgin Queen"? A modern viewer might think this to be unlikely (especially considering who her father was) but the number and variety of her children suggested by the film seems extremely unlikely. And then there are facts not in dispute at all that are contradicted by the film (such as the fact that Edward de Vere survived his first wife Anne Cecil de Vere and indeed remarried).
It is important, then, to understand that this film is a work of fiction and is not presenting what it believes to be the literal truth regarding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. With that in mind, it comes out well in comparison to the feather-light Shakespeare in Love. The production values of the film are tremendous. The producers have gone to great efforts to replicate Elizabethan London, with its architecture and much and the wooden planks used in place of modern sidewalks. The acting is tremendous, especially Rhys Ifans as de Vere and Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth.
I recommend this film highly, not as a serious treatment of the authorship question, but as an entertaining piece of historical fiction. It might have been interesting to see a film that was a more serious treatment of the Oxfordian point-of-view, but such a film might well have been fairly boring in comparison.
Throughout the film we follow three periods of time: de Vere's youth and his growing love for the Queen; the peak of the Shakespearean arc in London, when de Vere was feeding plays to Shakespeare and involving himself in intrigues of London surrounding the question of Elizabeth's heir; and to a much lesser extent, the actions of Johnson and Cecil in the aftermath of the deaths of Elizabeth and de Vere, and the coronation of King James I. Some have complained that the various swings from one time line to another are confusing, but I found it easy to differentiate between young Edward and young Elizabeth and their much older counterparts.
The main body of the film centers around the contest between de Vere's actions to place the Earl of Essex in the line of succession, and the competing interests of the Cecils (first William, then Robert) to steer the throne to King James of Scotland. Thankfully for the viewer, it is easy to differentiate between the two camps, as Essex and his entourage are all fair-haired, while James and the Cecils are dark-haired.
There will be controversy about this film due to the great liberties it takes with historical facts. John Orloff's screenplay ranges from facts well established in the historical record to some points that are debated by experts with varying points of view and interpretations, to some fictions that are introduced and can only be viewed as flatly false. Who wrote the plays and poems we attribute to Shakespeare? This is at least a topic for debate. Who killed Christopher Marlowe? This film provides an extremely unlikely answer to this question. Was Elizabeth truly a "Virgin Queen"? A modern viewer might think this to be unlikely (especially considering who her father was) but the number and variety of her children suggested by the film seems extremely unlikely. And then there are facts not in dispute at all that are contradicted by the film (such as the fact that Edward de Vere survived his first wife Anne Cecil de Vere and indeed remarried).
It is important, then, to understand that this film is a work of fiction and is not presenting what it believes to be the literal truth regarding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. With that in mind, it comes out well in comparison to the feather-light Shakespeare in Love. The production values of the film are tremendous. The producers have gone to great efforts to replicate Elizabethan London, with its architecture and much and the wooden planks used in place of modern sidewalks. The acting is tremendous, especially Rhys Ifans as de Vere and Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth.
I recommend this film highly, not as a serious treatment of the authorship question, but as an entertaining piece of historical fiction. It might have been interesting to see a film that was a more serious treatment of the Oxfordian point-of-view, but such a film might well have been fairly boring in comparison.