by Luis Lira

The film “Anonymous” explores a subject that has been debated for centuries.  Did William Shakespeare write his own works or was he a fraud? I loved the beginning of the movie, which takes place in modern day Broadway. As legendary actor Sir Derek Jacobi arrives at the theater fashionably late, he takes a deep breath and begins with Shakespeare’s accomplishments. “Shakespeare wrote thirty-seven plays, one hundred fifty-four sonnets, and several narrative poems which are considered to be the ultimate expressions known in the English language. But, not a single manuscript has been found in his own hand.” Shakespeare died at the age of fifty-two and his widow and two daughters were illiterate. Sir Derek Jacobi offers a darker tale of Shakespeare’s life which takes us back in time.

The film gives us an alternative writer to Shakespeare’s works, Edward De Vere the Earl of Oxford. Because of his nobility, he could not endorse his own work.  Shakespeare just happens to be at the right time and place to take credit for De Vere’s work. The film also intertwines the lives of Ben Jonson, William Cecil, his son Robert Cecil, and Queen Elizabeth I of England in this historical alternative to what we have read in the history books. The film does provide sufficient theories that do leave the viewer with the curiosity of “Was Shakespeare a Fraud?”