Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays? Roland Emmerich's Film 'Anonymous' Addresses Question

Emmerich is helming the upcoming film, "Anonymous," which, through a swirl of drama, political intrigue and even CGI, posits that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the plays credited to Shakespeare. The film also forwards the idea that Oxford had an affair with Queen Elizabeth, bringing much of the drama to the plot.

"We talked a lot and discovered this movie could be about the most important thing at that time - who will succeed Elizabeth?," Emmerich told Time Out Magazine. "There were a lot of provocative ideas, which I liked. I said, 'Look, if we provoke, let's provoke all the way.'"

The film stars Rhys Ifans as Oxford; he's best known for his role in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" as Luna Lovegood's father. He also appeared in 2010's "Greenberg" and will play The Lizard in the film reboot of "Spider-Man."

"It's a story that asks the question and goes a long way to answering it: the theory, conspiracy theory if you like, that William Shakespeare was not necessarily the author of all, if any, of his works," Ifans told MTV. "So it will put a glorious [wrench] in... the English-speaking world of academia, which I have always endeavored to do, since I was a schoolchild."

Emmerich is best known as an action film director, with huge hits in "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012."

WATCH:

Comments

[Blumenfeld]

08:10 PM on 04/08/2011

Too bad Emmerich doesn't realize that the Marlowe story is much more exciting and interesting than the Oxford story, and that it would make a much better movie. I suggest that readers go to the Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection blog to see what it's all about. I have no doubt that some day a movie will be made of the Marlowe story.

[Gasparilla]

08:40 PM on 04/08/2011

Much Ado About Nothing

[Sandworm Wrangler]

12:20 AM on 04/09/2011

F&F as they say. There's always room for Shakespeare.

[MSCblogspot]

08:29 PM on 04/09/2011

Can't resist, Gasparilla . . . Actually, the PBS/Frontline special that explored Marlowe-as-Shakespeare theory is Much Ado About Something, by Emmy-winning filmmaker Mike Rubbo. Here's a clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsJTbWF1-lg&feature=player_embedded

Mark Rylance, who's in Emmerich's film, is also in the clip/documentary.

[MSCblogspot]

03:20 PM on 04/08/2011

The death of Christopher Marlowe? See lead post by Peter Farey.

http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/

[Spartan112]

03:39 PM on 04/08/2011

That was convincing...

[MSCblogspot]

03:55 PM on 04/08/2011

Putting aside any authorship issues, if we can, the events surrounding his death are a bit strange. All professional liars in the room. Two spies (Marlowe and the very seasoned Poley) and a fight over the bill??? Would Marlowe have been that "stupid"?

And Spartan, if YOU were Marlowe and you knew what awaited you with the Privy Council/Star Chamber, etc. (the accusations against him were VERY serious), what would you have done?

Please enlighten us with your Super User wisdom . . .

And let's put aside the authorship issue just for a second. Thanks. ;)

[MSCblogspot]

03:57 PM on 04/08/2011

Well, it's a little more complex than a simple tavern brawl . . .

[Gasparilla]

01:44 PM on 04/08/2011

As an aside, I was reading a biography of Rudyard Kipling about a year ago. He and his sister and parents had a regular parlor game where they would read lines of the Bard. Except some were simply made up and they had to guess. Some of his fake passages were pretty funny.

[MSCblogspot]

01:37 PM on 04/08/2011

I'd like to take some credit for Professor Shapiro's statements!

"At the same time he [James Shapiro] notes the recent proliferation of websites dedicated to Christopher Marlowe and wonders whether Marlowe may not be destined to oust Oxford as the foremost rival claimant."
(Commentary Magazine, "Denying Shakespeare," March 2010)

"Meanwhile, the authorship debate shows no signs of fading away. Francis Bacon's star has waned, eclipsed long ago by the Earl of Oxford's. Now Christopher Marlowe's star is on the rise. 'It looks like there's a shelf life to every candidate' of about 75 or 80 years, Shapiro says. 'There's a lot more energy and enthusiasm behind Marlowe.'"
(The Chronicle of Higher Education, "A Shakespeare Scholar Takes on a 'Taboo' Subject," 28 March 2010)

Cheers!
The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
http://www.marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com

[Spartan112]

02:06 PM on 04/08/2011

You do realize that Shapiro doesn't agree with you right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHApDxuGgw8&feature=related

His comment that "Marlowe's star is on the rise" is not meant to say he believes that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare.

[MSCblogspot]

02:13 PM on 04/08/2011

Totally. Just having fun with it. ;)

[Gasparilla]

01:35 PM on 04/08/2011

There are numerous references from people at the time who were involved in the theater and knew Shakespeare and they all give him credit. There are none suggesting anyone else. All this "it couldn't have been him" is nothing more than speculation based on speculation. Round and round.

[MSCblogspot]

01:44 PM on 04/08/2011

Actually, not many. And let's not confuse being an actor with being a playwright.

And why didn't anyone care when the amazing Shakespeare died?

http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2009/04/shakespeares-anonymous-death-by-anthony.html

[Gasparilla]

01:50 PM on 04/08/2011

There are references to him as a playwright and poet. And the fact is that his plays fell into obscurity for a long period of time, only being brought back many years after his death.

[Gasparilla]

01:57 PM on 04/08/2011

And if people then knew it was really Marlowe, how come no one ever said that or wrote it down. That would be real evidence and again, there is none.

[Myrrhis]

01:27 PM on 04/08/2011

At the risk of being flamed, does anyone know of any writing style or word usage studies done over the entire body of works credited to Shakespeare? Given that there may have been some co authorship, how did the style/vocabulary change over time? Could it perhaps point to a string of people using a pseudonym?

[Spartan112]

01:37 PM on 04/08/2011

Ward Elliot and Dan Foster studied it years back.

[MSCblogspot]

01:41 PM on 04/08/2011

Something to spark your interest on stylistics:
http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2009/02/on-mendenhall-and-compelling-evidence.html

http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2010/05/kyd-marlowe-shakespeare-who-wrote.html

http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2009/09/questions-all-oxfordians-must-answer-by.html

[Gasparilla]

02:00 PM on 04/08/2011

All your arguments are tortured logic, leaps of faith, and speculation. Any real hard evidence you just dismiss.

[Spartan112]

02:12 PM on 04/08/2011

Mendenhall's work has been shown to be scientifically invalid as he failed to use a control group and the more authors he added the more similarities he found. He also used the spellings from modern additions for his word counts.

[La Elle]

01:20 PM on 04/08/2011

Don't forget to add Sir Walter Raleigh into the equation as a potential author!

[MSCblogspot]

01:19 PM on 04/08/2011

Similarities between Marlowe and Shakespeare? Hmmm . . .

"Yet Marlowe, himself a wild original, was Shakespeare’s starting point, curiously difficult for
the young Shakespeare to exorcise completely.… And yet that means the strongest writer
known to us served a seven-year apprenticeship to Christopher Marlowe, only a few months
older than himself, but London’s dominant dramatist from 1587 to 1593, the year of Marlowe’
s extinction by the authorities." (Harold Bloom 2002)

"That he was mightily impressed and influenced by Marlowe is not in doubt; it is also clear that
in his earliest plays Shakespeare stole or copied some of his lines, parodied him, and generally
competed with him. Marlowe was the contemporary writer that most exercised him. . . . He
haunts Shakespeare’s expression, like a figure standing by his shoulder." (Peter Ackroyd 2005)

"Shakespeare quotes Marlowe or alludes to his plays repeatedly … practically the whole of
Marlowe’s work as it is now known. . . . The abundance of Shakespeare’s quotations,
echoes, and allusions [of Marlowe] is especially important because he lets his other literary
contemporaries severely alone." (John Bakeless 1942)

"Blank verse, as we understand it, as Shakespeare understood it, came into birth at the bidding
of Christopher Marlowe." (A.W. Verity, 1886)

[MSCblogspot]

12:58 PM on 04/08/2011

If you were Marlowe, England's top playwright­, accused of heresy, atheism, etc., what would you do??? Oh, and you were also a spy: http://mar­lowe-shake­speare.blo­gspot.com/­2010/04/ch­ristopher-­marlowe-se­cret-agent­-man.html

Everyone in the room with Marlowe the day he "died" was a profession­al liar: among them, master spy Robert Poley. http://mar­lowe-shake­speare.blo­gspot.com/­2008/11/wh­o-was-robe­rt-poley-q­uestion-fo­r-daryl.ht­ml

Why the Marlowe was Shakespear­e myth? He was the only writer who could write like Shakespear­e (and he really pioneered blank verse, btw), his "clues" run rampant throughout the Shakespear­e plays, similariti­es of style http://mar­lowe-shake­speare.blo­gspot.com/­2009/02/on­-mendenhal­l-and-comp­elling-evi­dence.html; and everyone in the room with him the day he died was a profession­al liar. Oh, and reasonable people can include that Marlowe, accused of atheism, was going to use his high connection­s to make a run for it. Or should he just hire a lawyer and hope that the radical Archbishop Whitgift, leading quite the Inquisitio­n back then, had sympathy for him?

People plan fake deaths all of the time:
http://www­.marlowesh­akespeare.­org/FakedD­eaths.html

Marlowe's Edward II and Shakespear­e's Lear? Same author. Too darn similar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwyCpd4zB0A&feature=player_embedded

The PBS/Frontline documentary by Emmy-winning (and highly infuential) documentary filmmaker Mike Rubbo is a good place to start on all this; here's a clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsJTbWF1-lg&feature=player_embedded

[Gasparilla]

01:23 PM on 04/08/2011

Which explains why Marlowe on his death bed did not broadcast to the world he was the real author. Or left letters. Or told someone. He just virtually disappeared after his "fake" death, never to be seen or heard again.

[MSCblogspot]

02:12 PM on 04/08/2011

You got it. Like a witness protection program. Keep in mind he was spy, so he was of a different character make-up, if you follow.

But I do think in "As You Like It" he's crying out, "Look, it's me!"

[MSCblogspot]

12:51 PM on 04/08/2011

A few Shakespeare myth busters:

Why didn't anyone care when Shakespeare died?:
http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2009/04/shakespeares-anonymous-death-by-anthony.html

Lot of evidence that he was a businessman, but writer?:
http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2009/07/william-shakespeare-businessman.html

Oh, and the lame "Shake-scene" argument that Stratfordians make:
http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2008/11/shake-scene-and-shattering-shakespeare.html

[Spartan112]

01:32 PM on 04/08/2011

It was not uncommon at all for eulogies to take there time rolling out to the public (in fact there are no written eulogies to Oxford), but in fact there are some written at the time most notably by William Basse who wrote a poem suggesting that he be buried at Wesminster Abbey along with Chaucer, Beaumont and Spenser. Odd for a simple business man no?

John Taylor included him in a poem dated 1620 that was written to honor great English poets.

Jonson (one of his chief rivals) eulogized him in poem in 1623 for the First Folio and in fact within that same poem Jonson references other English poets including Marlowe.

[Gasparilla]

02:22 PM on 04/08/2011

According to you, if no one "cared" when Shakespeare died, then it must have been because they knew he didn't write them, Marlowe did, but there is not a scrap of evidence for that. Or there is the logical reason, that most of the public had simply forgotten his plays since many were decades before, but the people who did know him remembered and saw to it they were preserved.

[FardelBearer]

09:52 PM on 04/08/2011

Good point about the supposed "absence of euologies" (as if we had a complete record of everything that was written in 1616). If the lack of record of eulogies is supposed to be evidence that people didn't write the plays, why don't we have records of people saying, "Gee, I like that play, 'Hamlet.' I wonder who wrote it." The Marlovians and other anti-Strats can't convincingly argue that a lack of records of people eulogizing Shakespeare is evidence he didn't write the plays, unless they first explain why there is absolutely NO evidence of anyone saying someone else wrote the plays, or at least wondering who wrote them." It's called A DOUBLE STANDARD.

[Mafdet]

12:43 PM on 04/08/2011

I thought everyone knew the Illuminati wrote them.

[MSCblogspot]

12:32 PM on 04/08/2011

The Case against the Earl of Oxford as Shakespeare:
http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2011/03/case-against-oxford-as-shakespeare.html

That 1604 question has yet to be convincingly explained by the Oxfordians.

Former BBC reporter Tim Grout-Smith interviews Ros Barber on the Marlowe-as-Shakespeare theory: http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2011/03/case-against-oxford-as-shakespeare.html

Ms Barber, btw, just signed a nice book deal with Sceptre:
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/sceptre-examine-secret-life-christopher-marlowe.html

[cybolt]

12:30 PM on 04/08/2011

Interesting comments from many friends and others here. Amusing that several offended and were removed.

[jimboy71]

11:53 AM on 04/08/2011

What utter tripe.

[PrinceO]

11:16 AM on 04/08/2011

we all know a black dude wrote those plays.

[Gasparilla]

11:33 AM on 04/08/2011

And who would that be and how do we "know" this.

[PrinceO]

11:47 AM on 04/08/2011

william shakes wrote some sick lyrics. he had to have had a medieval rap artist helping him. like some dude names J-robin hood, or lil windsor you know rappers in his time.