Anonymous (2012)

It is hard to keep track of who is bedding whom, and who's back is being stabbed in yet another "Who done it?" about the true identity of William Shakespeare.

Here's the contention.  The writer of the 37 existing plays attributed to Shakespeare was a prodigious and gifted playwright.  The man we know as Shakespeare didn't really have a background commensurate to the task.  So if not he, who?

This story has it that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, and a known poet and playwright, was the true author.  Some facts that are known--which are included in the movie as well--are that he was made the ward of Queen Elizabeth when his parents died. She entrusted his upbringing and education to William Cecil, who was her trusted adviser, and probably not a nice guy.  Edward inherited immense wealth and died a poor man--and probably Cecil had a hand in that, but maybe not.  Edward married Cecil's daughter.  What is less clear is Cecil's abhorrence of the theater--which is critical to the plot here--it is the driving reason for Edward handing his work over to be staged under the name of another.  Cecil was a Protestant, but did he differ so from his queen on this point in particular?  The film also has Elizabeth as being far from the Virgin Queen--she has at least two sons, one is the Earl of Essex, and the other, fathered by the far younger Edward (yet another ward being bedded by the person entrusted to raise them), is the Earl of Southhampton--both having the unmistakable red hair of their purported mother.   Since Elizabeth has no legitimate offspring and a much hated successor in King James of Scotland, one of the boys feels he has a shot at the throne--if not for the devious and conniving Cecils.  So much intrigue, so few data.

Rhys Ifans is spectacular as the Earl of Oxford.  And unrecognizable from previous roles--really, if you are a fan (and I am), this is a must see.  Vanessa Redgrave plays the elderly Queen Elizabeth, and her daughter plays the younger queen--not too sympathetically, but well done.  This is a fun sort of mystery that plays out well in Renaissance England.