Alaskan Range: Anonymous
...“Anonymous” is harmless enough cinematically, but the “viperous motley-minded horse-drenches” who own it are distributing lesson plans depicting de Vere as the true author “to literature and history teachers in the hope of convincing students that Shakespeare was a fraud.” This is despicable...
Greg Hill deplores a film now going the rounds world-wide.
When a Shakespearean Concordance is needed, nothing else will do. A concordance, the American Heritage Dictionary tells us, is “An alphabetical index of all the words in a text or corpus of texts, showing every contextual occurrence of a word: ‘a concordance of Shakespeare’s works.’”
The excellent OneLook.com provided that definition and 43 other dictionaries’ definitions. I turn to OpenSourceShakespeare.org for my ready Bard references. There I learned that Shakespeare used “anger” “59 times in 65 lines within 32 works,” and the relevant quotations are included, such as “Anger’s my meat; I sup upon myself, And so shall starve with feeding.”
“Rage” appeared 136 times, and he used “fury” 71 times, including “Mad ire and wrathful fury makes me weep.” They all describe my feelings for the “filthy piece of work” – thanks, Shakespeare! – who made the new movie “Anonymous.” The film portrays Shakespeare as the uneducated son of a rural tradesman and claims all the works attributed to this small-town boob were actually written by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.
This theory “dates from 1920,” according to a NY Times review by James Shapiro, “when J. Thomas Looney, an English writer who loathed democracy and modernity, argued that only a worldly nobleman could have created such works of genius.” Shapiro points out that “promoters of de Vere’s cause have a lot of evidence to explain away, including testimony of contemporary writers, court records, and much else that confirms that Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him. Meanwhile, not a shred of documentary evidence has ever been found that connects de Vere to any of the plays and poems.”
Reading poetry written by de Vere makes clear he wasn’t the Bard. For example, a typical effort begins, “What cunning can express/ The favor of her face? To whom in this distress/ I do appeal for grace. A thousand Cupids fly/ About her gentle eye.” Or “The lively lark stretched forth her wing/ The messenger of Morning bright;/ And with her cheerful voice did sing/ The Day’s approach, discharging night.” It doesn’t get better.
According to the “Encyclopedia Britannica’s Guide to Shakespeare,” the famous “First Folio,” the compilation of Shakespeare’s plays, was pulled together by two of his close friends and professional colleagues. One was John Heminge, “an integral and prosperous member of the theatrical company that eventually became the King’s Men … Though not an exceptional actor, he … is thought to have been the first to perform the role of Falstaff. More importantly, Heminge served as the company’s business manager, a position he held for more than 25 years.”
Along with the prominent actor Henry Condell, Heminge labored two years to gather 36 Shakespeare plays into the oversized Folio, “a format usually reserved for religious or medical publications.” In the introduction they wrote they did this “without ambition either of self-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend & Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare.” They certainly didn’t believe he faked it.
“Without the publication of the First Folio,” HudsonShakespeare.org notes, “nearly half of Shakespeare’s plays wouldn’t have seen publication.” Bill Bryson’s excellent book, “Shakespeare: The World as Stage,” states that “Of the approximately three thousand plays thought to have been staged in London from about the time of Shakespeare’s birth to the closure of the theaters by the Puritans in a coup of joylessness in 1642, 80 percent are known only by the title.”
“Anonymous” is harmless enough cinematically, but the “viperous motley-minded horse-drenches” who own it are distributing lesson plans depicting de Vere as the true author “to literature and history teachers in the hope of convincing students that Shakespeare was a fraud.” This is despicable, like saying our marvelous library can be replaced by giving everyone a Kindle. Tell that to those who need a computer, a meeting place, correct answers to obscure questions, wiring diagrams, or just want to have 300,000 books, e-books, DVDs and a bevy of powerful databases at their disposal but can’t fit that into their family budgets.
As for “Anonymous,” vote with your wallets and stay away. As Hamlet said, it’s “Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.”
