Movie Review for GRC School Newspaper

Note: for a teenage audience and with a roughly 300 word length limit, but thought I'd share in case anyone was considering the movie.  Enjoy.


Anonymous (PG-13)

Reading Shakespeare is one of life’s true pleasures. Is it difficult? Sure. But if you give it time, you get to encounter true brilliance.

But a small, vocal set of scholars reject the idea that such brilliance is possible from William Shakespeare—the poorly educated son of an illiterate glove maker.  They insist it must be a cover up, with Shakespeare being a front for some cultured, well-educated nobleman.  Literary lip-synching, if you will.

The new movie Anonymous promotes a popular candidate for these conspiracy theorists: Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.  According to the movie, de Vere had been forced to hide his passion for theatre because drama was considered a low-class profession.

The film suggests de Vere (who, conveniently, had drafts of Macbeth and Hamlet just gathering dust in his office) got his catalog of plays anonymously performed in London as part of a complicated plot to determine England’s next king. 

The film’s mood is quite dark, and it could take a page from Shakespeare’s (oops, de Vere’s) playbook and include more comic relief.  The main humor comes at the expense of Shakespeare himself, who is reduced to a nasty, buffoonish character who takes credit for de Vere’s plays and tries to cash in on his undeserved fame. 

However, Anonymous has some redeeming qualities.  Beyond the political intrigue, there is a twisted romance plot and well-staged swordfights.  The film shines in its depiction of the raucous, interactive experience of seeing a play in Shakespeare’s time. 

But does Anonymous present a convincing argument? Should I tear down my classroom's Shakespeare posters and replace them with paintings of de Vere? 

Not quite. Nearly all scholars believe the historical evidence that indicates Shakespeare wrote the plays.  While the de Vere theory is interesting, it is ironic that the filmmakers argue a complex, bizarre political conspiracy is somehow easier to believe than the notion that some poor kid from Stratford just happened to be born a genius.