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Review of
Anonymous, by Richard M. Waugaman
Roland Emmerich’s new film,
Anonymous, is inspired by
the same theory that gripped Sigmund Freud during the last
dozen years of his life—that “William Shakespeare” was the
pseudonym and front man of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford
(1550-1604). The film has generated much debate, some of it
acrimonious. Why should this be?
A film is just a film,
after all. But this one challenges widely accepted “truths.”
And those ostensible truths are intertwined with an
idealizing transference to the bard. Freud observed that we
know so little about the traditional author that we can
imagine he was every bit as great as his works are.
The acting in the film has
won praise from many critics. Vanessa Redgrave portrays the
older Queen Elizabeth most convincingly, while her daughter
Joely Richardson is the younger Elizabeth. Rhys Ifans
departs from his past film roles to become the older Edward
de Vere. He brings to life de Vere’s intensity, his passion
for writing, his reckless impulsivity, and his resigned
awareness that he would not receive credit for his
politically polemical works.
Anonymous
chooses one among many possible narratives as to the how and
why of de Vere’s choice of Shakespeare of Stratford to serve
as his front man. It depicts the theory that the offspring
of de Vere’s affair with Queen Elizabeth was the Earl of
Southampton. This was the earl to whom Shakespeare’s two
long poems of 1593 and 1594 were dedicated. Many of us
believe that Sonnets 1-126, the so-called “Fair Youth”
sonnets, address Southampton. But this is where any
consensus disintegrates. Some of us believe the bisexual de
Vere had an affair with the bisexual Southampton.
Others—possibly because of their intolerance of the idea
that de Vere was bisexual—instead claim that Southampton was
de Vere’s son by Queen Elizabeth. They can then explain the
unusual warmth of these sonnets as reflecting paternal
rather than erotic love. Incest is indeed a theme in the
film. But the allusions to incest in the plays might reflect
de Vere’s quasi-incestuous relationship with his first
wife—they grew up as virtual step-siblings.
Confused? I’m not
surprised. There is no end to the complexities of this
story. But can’t we just ignore it? Don’t you have to be a
snob and a conspiracy theorist to doubt the simple truth
that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare? Actually, Elizabethan
authorship was a bit more complicated than it is today. Most
plays were published without the author’s name. Literary
anonymity and pseudonymity were common before the 20th century.
We often study
paradigm changes
retrospectively. But we are in the midst of such a paradigm
change right now when it comes to Shakespeare’s identity. A
recent poll found that only 70% of people still accept the
traditional Shakespeare as author of the canon. We now have
a chance to study the individual and group psychology of
asking people to reconsider their assumptions about the
identity of the greatest author in English literature.
Ben Jonson plays an
intriguing if invented role in the film. He was ostensibly
de Vere’s first choice to serve as his front man, but he
declined. His admiration for de Vere’s literary genius stirs
deep envy in him. Here, the screenwriter John Orloff was
making his homage to
Amadeus, which
was a major inspiration for him. In fact, the soundtrack
includes a brief snippet of Mozart’s
Requiem during de Vere’s
wedding to Anne Cecil. This wedding follows on the heels of
the adolescent de Vere murdering a servant who was spying on
him, in the home of his guardian William Cecil (yes, Anne’s
father).
In reality, de Vere did
kill a servant with his fencing rapier when he was 17 and,
as in the film, Cecil assisted in de Vere’s legal defense.
However, I doubt that his marriage to Cecil’s daughter four
years later was any sort of quid pro quo. This is one of
many moments in the film where poetic license trumps a
strict (if less dramatic) hewing to the documented
historical record.
When his wife Anne pleads
with de Vere to stop writing plays, he replies, “The voices!
I can’t stop them. They come to me. I would go mad if I
didn’t write down what the voices say.” This is an
intriguing surmise about de Vere’s creative process, as
though his Muse speaks to him aloud. In fact, I suspect that
some form of unusual awareness and tolerance of multiple
self states plays a crucial role for some literary geniuses
such as de Vere. Part of Shakespeare’s magic is that he
evokes specific self states in us. Great authors tap into
several of their own respective self states when they write.
Writing under pseudonyms may loosen the grip of the author’s
central self state, and activate a wider range of ego
states.
Psychoanalysts are in a
unique position to elucidate the psychology of literary
anonymity and pseudonymity. The evidence suggests that
keeping one’s authorship secret helps promote what Keats
called Shakespeare’s “negative capability”—keeping his own
identity in the background as he created hundreds of utterly
convincing characters. For another example, the Portugese
poet Fernando Pessoa wrote to a friend that
the 70 “heteronyms” who did his writing were real
characters to him. In a sense, Edward de Vere’s most magical
character of all was his pseudonym and front man, “William
Shakespeare.” With some likely assistance from the man from
Stratford, this character lives on for most people more
vividly than does de Vere himself.
Why did de Vere have to
conceal his authorship? For many reasons. Nobility did not
write for the common theater. They rarely published poems
under their own name during their lifetime. And the plays of
Shakespeare spoof many powerful court figures, and comment
on various court intrigues.
The film has de Vere tell
Ben Jonson, “All art is political.” Attributing the plays’
authorship to a commoner helped conceal some of their
provocative critiques. Even so, the Elizabethan theater
audience as depicted in the film recognized the character
Richard III as a spoof of de Vere’s hunch-backed
brother-in-law, Robert Cecil. They also recognized Polonius
in
Hamlet as a disguised portrayal of
de Vere’s father-in-law. Some Shakespeare scholars still
admit the latter is correct, though others have backed off
from this identification, since it strengthens the case for
de Vere’s authorship.
Anonymous is introduced by
Derek Jacobi, who also provides the epilogue. This was an
inspired choice, since Jacobi is a highly respected
Shakespearean actor who happens to believe de Vere wrote the
canon. He is thus an apt intermediary to introduce the
film’s audience to its controversial and theatrical subject.
Other great Shakespearean actors who have rejected the
traditional author include Mark Rylance, Michael York, and
Sir John Gielgud.
In 2007, Jacobi and Rylance
announced their support for the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt,” that
acknowledges room for honest disagreement about
Shakespeare’s identity. Stanley Wells, Chairman of the
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, reacted venomously.
Wells said “the time for tolerance is over.” He cited the
fact that one 19th century
authorship skeptic died in a mental hospital, then added,
“So beware, Mark [Rylance] and Sir Derek [Jacobi]!” Rylance
replied, “I think [Wells] is blinded by an attachment to the
Stratford actor… more worrying to me is his tendency to
simply ignore evidence if it contradicts his argument… We
shouldn’t let ourselves be bullied out of a natural
curiousity” about the authorship question.
You may have read some of
the vitriolic attacks on
Anonymous by Columbia University’s James Shapiro and
others. This fierce backlash intrigues me. The academic
Shakespeare establishment usually treats the authorship
question as taboo. In other words, many Shakespeare
organizations and publications will not even discuss it. One
English professor told me it would be “academic suicide”
to research de Vere’s possible authorship. A Shakespearean
publication invited me to write a book review, then changed
their mind once they read it, explaining that they had
“blundered,” and would never publish anything by an
Oxfordian (that is, someone who thinks de Vere, Earl of
Oxford, wrote the works of Shakespeare).
So it’s my hunch that if
these bright scholars are going to enforce their taboo, they
have to convince themselves that it is justified—that all
challenges to the traditional author are, as they claim,
based on ignorance or mental aberrations, ranging from
snobbism all the way to psychosis. This makes it unlikely
they can evaluate contradictory evidence objectively.
Both Emmerich and Orloff
admit their film takes poetic license in order to provoke
and entertain. But the Stratfordians are not amused. Their
over-reaction to the film is
Inquisitional in its tone. We instinctively
sympathize with the underdog, all things being equal. The
Shakespeare establishment may have made things worse for
itself by forgetting this is just a film.
Although
Anonymous is bringing fresh attention to the issue,
the authorship debate is longstanding. In my view,
Oxfordians tried repeatedly for 90 years to introduce new
evidence into the discussion. Traditional Shakespeareans
don’t even admit their theory is a hypothesis—they claim
absolute certainty. So, instead of arguing
ad rem, about the issue itself, they keep reverting to arguing
ad hominem, with personal
attacks on us authorship “heretics.” We’re accused of being
like Holocaust deniers; being anti-semitic; being like the
birthers who deny that Obama is a U.S. citizen; being like
people who claim we never landed on the moon, or who claim
the U.S. organized the 9/11 attacks. Seriously. Do you
detect a whiff of desperation in such despicable
accusations? Orthodox Shakespeareans are clearly enraged
that their authority is being challenged. Rather than admit
to themselves that they’re afraid of being proven wrong,
they seem compelled to rationalize the source of their
anger, however irrationally they may do so.
Many of the reviews of
Anonymous have panned the film because its premise
is so controversial. A common theme in these critical
reviews is the assumption that the Shakespeare scholars must
be correct, and there is “no evidence whatsoever” that
Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare. Certain premises are
repeatedly asserted to be incontrovertible refutations that
de Vere could be the author. You’ve heard that many
plays of Shakespeare are known with certainty to have been
written after 1604, the year that de Vere died. But, as some
Shakespeare scholars admit, we simply do not know with
certainty when any of the plays were written. The
conventional dating of the plays is based on Shakespeare of
Stratford having died in 1616. So it was assumed he wrote
roughly two plays per year, and these assumptions played a
crucial if circular role in the conjectured dating of when
the plays were written.
What about the possibility
that de Vere left some unfinished manuscripts at his death,
and playwrights such as Fletcher finished them? Since the
late plays do show evidence of collaboration, I find this
narrative more plausible than the orthodox speculation that
Shakespeare “apprenticed himself” to other playwrights when
he began writing Romances such as
The Tempest.
I have noticed an
intriguing pattern in orthodox attacks on de Vere and his
supporters. Again and again, they launch attacks about
issues where they are actually themselves most vulnerable.
They thus seem desperate to distract us from the weakness of
their own case. I would suggest that William Shakspere of
Stratford was born 14 years too late to have been the
author, since many plays of “Shakespeare” rewrote earlier
plays that were written when Stratford was only a boy.
Because of circular reasoning, many scholars assume these
anonymous earlier plays had to be written by playwrights
other than Shakespeare. They accuse Oxfordians of being too
wedded to their theory. We all need to be cautious to avoid
cherry-picking evidence that confirms our preconceptions.
When I am told that
Oxfordians are simply unable to admit they’re wrong, I point
out that most Oxfordians started as Stratfordians, until
they looked into the matter more deeply. So it doesn’t look
as though we’re the ones incapable of admitting we’re wrong.
Oxfordians are told we do not know how to evaluate the
historical evidence. In reality, all the recent evidence
about the ubiquity of anonymity and pseudonymity in
Elizabethan authorship is mostly getting ignored by the
Shakespeare specialists.
If we want a strictly
accurate film about de Vere, Emmerich has failed us. But if
the goal is to introduce the general public to the
Shakespeare authorship theory that so seized Freud’s
imagination, then Emmerich has succeeded admirably. After
all, even Shakespeare’s own history plays sometimes play
loose with the historical facts.
When you see this film and ponder its thesis, I hope you
will remind yourself that Freud was passionately intrigued
by the likelihood that de Vere was Shakespeare. Before long,
I predict Freud will be vindicated.
If you’d like to read more,
my website http://www.oxfreudian.com
has the full text of many of my 40 publications on this
topic, along with links to several other relevant websites.