what is surely one of the more effective openings in recent reviewery, A. O. Scott writing for the New York Times begins his critique of the new Shakespeare costume thriller
Anonymous with this account: "a vulgar prank on the English literary tradition,a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it’s not bad." He is more generous later on: "My point is that it might be a mistake to suppose that the director of
10,000 B.C. — to mention only the most salient example — should be taken as a reliable guide to history." Oh come on, Mr. Scott; that may be part of your point, but not the whole of it. The full review, which asks the question "How well does the director manager this complex question?" of a film which asks, "How could a commoner write such great plays?", appears at
http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/movies/anonymous-by-roland-emmerich-review.html.
Nota bene: Here is an excerpt (
from an article on the NPR website) from Mark Twain's pamphlet response to the incredulity exhibited by skeptics of Shakespeare's authorship:
is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT: just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Behring Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercisers of that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a 'trot-line' Sundays."
