Ever since reading, about ten years ago, the case for Edward De Vere as the true identity of Shakespeare, I have had no trouble believing that this privileged, well-traveled, and highly educated nobleman with time on his hands might have produced the voluminous and exquisite output that we currently attribute to the son of an illiterate glove maker, who was a grain merchant with limited education, and who never set foot outside of England. Now, I don’t know if the true story surrounding De Vere was anything like portrayed in this movie, and frankly I don’t give a shit. This film is a blast from start to finish. My wife and I never imagined we would enjoy it as much as we did.

We feared this film would be schlock, like The Tudors, but it’s definitely a step above. The writing is actually quite decent throughout. The court politics are explained clearly and in a way that is neither manipulative nor overly simplistic. Character development is not bad, especially De Vere. The pacing and quality of the film is even; it doesn’t fall apart at the end, but rather maintains well its dramatic tension. And last but not least, the depictions of the stage performances of Shakespeare’s plays – something which when attempted in other films I usually find to range from completely flat and boring to downright insipid – are kind of beautiful, with lovely acting and very confident and skillful editing. I’ve seen so much damn Shakespeare living in New York City that I’m kind of sick of him at this point, but these scenes actually made me appreciate him again, that’s how good they are.

The performances in Anonymous are solid across the board. Rhys Ifans is superb, just as he is in every role he takes; the guy has to be one of the most overlooked and underrated actors out there. He always manages to impress me. Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson are both excellent and understated as the old and young Queen Elizabeth. David Thewlis (another actor that never seems to disappoint me) is good as William Cecil, and the complete unknown Edward Hogg is just as good as his son. And the casting of Shakespeare himself is absolutely brilliant – Rafe Spall, the guy who played one of “the Andys” in Hot Fuzz! He’s outstanding playing the insufferable, empty-headed hack actor who winds up fronting for the Earl of Oxford.

So, if one can just suspend judgement of this alternative authorship hypothesis and simply go with the flow, Anonymous is very interesting and enjoyable. And why shouldn’t we suspend judgement? It’s not our fault that Shakespeare could barely write his own name; that his parents and children were illiterate; that the extant legal record concerning him is limited to his grain business, his buying of land and houses, and his occasionally getting paid for an acting gig; that not one single scrap of writing from him – not one letter or off-hand note, let alone a draft of a play – exists anywhere despite his years of retirement in affluent leisure (what the fuck was he doing all that time?) It’s not our fault that his copiously detailed last will and testament does not mention any manuscripts of his plays, including the 18 that were yet to be published, nor does it mention any books. It’s not our fault that there was no recorded reaction to his death in London. Let’s face it, the historical record on this guy is really weird, no matter how you cut it. Considering how fucked up the royal families of England have always been, whose to say what could or couldn’t have happened?

Which brings us to the extreme condemnation in academic and critical circles that this film suffered. Here’s my thinking on why this happened. The idea that anyone can achieve anything currently runs very deep in the American psyche. It wasn’t always this way, of course: poor people used to distrust the rich and powerful, and they understood the limitations of their own lives, inherent in their socioeconomic position. But with the insidious notions of positive thinking and self-actualization gathering steam over the last three-quarters of a century and achieving epidemic status in the last decade or two, suddenly it is no longer acceptable to be a realist or to seek truth. So the downtrodden poor-person working three shit jobs and with no health insurance, looks at Andre Agassi with 75 Ferraris and his reaction is “that’s okay, because it means I too have the opportunity to have 75 Ferraris!” Whence the accelerating decay of the (average) American way of life.

The tale of Shakespeare – the basically uneducated commoner that sprung forth fully formed from the head of Jove to become the greatest poet in the history of humanity, writing with unprecedented eloquence on a vast array of super-sophisticated topics he had no experience with whatsoever – is one that must surely resonate in American culture, so much so that it must seem deeply offensive to suddenly think that maybe some horrible member of privileged elite, the kind of person that would be fluent in ancient Greek at age 15, cranked off these plays as an idle amusement.

Add to this the very real phenomenon that academics cling like ticks on a hound to the beliefs and ideas that made their careers. You have a massive industry within academia of people cranking out research papers and building reputations based on or assuming the traditional attribution of authorship, and since these people occupy the high ground on the battlefield there’s no reason why they should admit any other possibilities. As for the movie critics, they are, at their core, afraid of looking stupid. They’re not going to have anything to do with this movie because they are afraid some Ph.D. will make fun of them.

Look, I’m not one to accept circumstantial evidence as proof. It’s a definite leap to attribute authorship to De Vere, no matter how well his life fits the most obvious set of life experiences for an individual producing such works.  After all, it’s pretty hard to get past the fact that all the damn plays have Shakespeare’s name on them! Maybe the fucking country bumpkin did churn out these magnificent and almost wonkishly scholarly plays in all his copious spare time, when he wasn’t running his thriving grain business, ignoring his children’s education, or pursuing his concurrent acting career. Maybe he really did write beautifully, and it’s just his signature that looks like the work of a retarded first grader. Maybe scholars are right, and he really did read Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae in the Stratford Grammar School and then was able to just wing it from there on out, on pure God-given talent. All I’m saying is, there’s enough of a grey area for you to temporarily set aside the moralistic condemnation of egg-headed English professors, and enjoy two hours of fun watching this movie and speculating on the most likely course of history given the facts, or lack of them! I certainly recommend doing just that!