viz.

(Image credit: BBC)

It’s only halfway through the week and we’ve already seen new images of King Richard III and Robert Johnson. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the week has in store. These pictures are a big deal. The images help us to reimagine the persona of these figures, and seeing that I thought I’d take a moment in this week’s post to highlight the discoveries. The Tudor kings who came to the English thrown after Richard III perpetrated history that suggested Richard was a grotesque tyrant. Commentators on this week’s discovery are suggesting how traditional renderings, perpetuated by luminaries such as William Shakespeare, might be historically inaccurate. Shakespeare’s Richard III is a complex plotter who we appreciate for his witticisms, but whose disgusting figure personified his vileness. This understanding might be far from the truth, for whatever it’s worth. Richard III did have scoliosis (see the remnants of his spine below), but scholars are revisiting the extent of his supposed vileness. As for Robert Johnson, previously only two images of the guitar player were known to exist, one of them merely being the size of a postage stamp. In this newly authenticated image, we’re treated to another glimpse of someone we hardly know.

Anonymous opened in theatres across the country yesterday, and I have already heard much grumbling about the ways in which the film neglects history. Anonymous engages the Shakespearean authorship question, and depicts a fiction in which Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, is the pen behind some of the greatest verse written in the English language. Such unorthodoxy is nothing new: the theory was first advanced by J. Thomas Looney in his 1920 book, “Shakespeare” Indentified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. This hypothesis has subsequently become known as “the Oxfordian theory,” and hasn’t received much critical attention since the 1950s. Modern Shakespeare scholars don’t even seriously think about it. So, surely the friction caused by Anonymous is justified, right? I’m not so sure. Several of Shakespeare’s histories go off the tracks factually. Given the Bard’s penchant for good entertainment, is it possible to speculate what he might have thought about an entertainment such as Anonymous?

There’s really no question about Shakespeare’s life. While I am not a Renaissance scholar, I do know that we have more biographical information on William Shakespeare than we do on many of his contemporaries. Pick up any modern edition of the Bard’s work and you are likely to find facts substantiating this claim. We know that Shakespeare probably came from a Catholic family in a time when such beliefs were not tolerated. We know that Shakespeare’s father held an important political position in his town until the Protestants kicked him out. We know where Shakespeare went to grammar school. We know he was a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and later in the King’s Men. We know of certain apartments that Shakespeare leased while living in London. We know of lawsuits in which he was called upon as a witness. We know he purchased a large house in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1597, and we know which grain stocks he invested in later in life. This is more than we know about, say, Robert Green.

Anonymous is a major Hollywood film (and thus fictional), not a documentary. Although the picture’s humble $30m budget is relatively small, it’s much larger than John Sayles’ Amigo. Perhaps the small endowment is more of a reflection of the economy than anything else. Nevertheless, because Anonymous has big studio money behind it, it must appeal to as broad an audience as possible, otherwise Columbia Pictures will never recoup their $30m investment. Surely Shakespeare, ever the savvy investor, would understand these circumstances. Yes, the film diverges from history, but all the world’s a stage. If Anonymous inspires some 8-year old kid to pick up his parents’ dusty copy of Shakespeare, I think literary folk have much to be happy about.

Putting the plot aside for a moment, we might stop and consider the visual appeal of the film (see trailer above). Roland Emmerich and his production team masterfully recreated early-seventeenth century London. Broad aerial shots of the city depict a bustling Renaissance environment. If nothing else, the groundlings and those in the 5-penny seats should find the visuals of Anonymous stimulating.