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Did he or didn’t he? That is the question. The debate over whether William Shakespeare could write his own name, let alone the body of works considered among the greatest in English literature, has consumed minds for more than 150 years.

Now a new film, Anonymous, by Independence Day director Roland Emmerich, is about to throw more fuel on the fire.

Anonymous, released on October 28, is set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England. It asserts that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the Bard’s plays. And Shakespeare, an actor, was a mere provincial frontman for the plays so Oxford’s authorship could remain secret.

The film includes a masterful performance from Rhys Ifans as the brooding genius Oxford, with the mother-and-daughter team of Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave playing the young and old Queen Elizabeth. Ifans might seem a more obvious choice for the comic role of the buffoonish, scheming Shakespeare, but that part is taken by Rafe Spall, son of Timothy.

Anonymous is no wordy but drab costume drama. Emmerich brings his epic style to bear on the exterior shots, swooping over Tudor London in all its teeming glory and culminating in Elizabeth’s funeral procession along a frozen Thames, an icy finality to the story.

 

It is however, the Shakespeare question which will spark most talk. Perhaps the identity of the genius behind the work is not important. The plays speak for themselves. But the row between the Shakespeare-supporting “Stratfordians” and the earl-backing “Oxfordians” is as heated now as when it first raged in the 1850s.
We ask two experts to present their opposing cases:
Charles Beauclerk argues that William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him
Professor Stanley Wells believes that Shakespeare did write the plays