Movies Movies

By chance, I've bought quite a number of Movie DVDs dirt cheap. Couldn't wait, so despite getting home late at nights after work, I still squeezed in one to two hours to watch one before sleep. All good one indeed.

The few I watched thus far, are The Help, Anonymous, The Artist and My Week with Marilyn.

If you know me well, guess which is my favorite.

Of coz, it is Anonymous.

Was Shakespeare a fraud ? I've came across the authorship debate quite a while ago from a book on books of which the title I can't recall off hand. According to Wikipedia, his authorship was first questioned in the middle of the 19th century when adulation of Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time had become widespread. Shakespeare's biography, particularly his humble origins and obscure life, seemed incompatible with his poetic eminence and his reputation for genius, thus arousing suspicion that Shakespeare might not have written the works at all. The controversy has since spawned a vast body of literature, and more than 70 authorship candidates have been proposed, including Francis Bacon, the 6th Earl of Derby, Christopher Marlowe, and the 17th Earl of Oxford. In Anonymous, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, an Elizabethan courtier, is projected as the true author of Shakespeare's plays. To add more spices, the film dramatizes events leading to the succession of Queen Elizabeth I and the Essex Rebellion against her. De Vere is depicted as a literary prodigy and the Queen's sometime lover, with whom he sires a son, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, only to discover that he himself may be the Queen's son by an earlier lover. De Vere eventually sees his suppressed plays performed through a frontman (Shakespeare - an actor actually, who can read but can't write), using his production of Richard III to support a rebellion led by his son and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. The insurrection fails, and as a condition for sparing the life of their son, the Queen declares that de Vere will never be known as the author of his plays and poems.

So, was Shakespeare a fraud ? The debate still goes on.

To me, I always find it kind of romantic with some twists and turns to the facts or official beliefs of history.