Oct 1, 2011

Nigel Tufnel's Guide to William Shakespeare

I don't get the whole "Shakespeare didn't write his plays" conspiracy theories, as given dramatic form in the new Roland Emmerich film, Anonymous. Who do they think Shakespeare is? So little is known about the guy that most scholars use the name "Shakespeare" near-tautologically to mean "the guy who wrote Shakespeare's plays." This puts Emmerich's film in the gymanastically ambitious position of having to fictionalise someone who it then wants to unmask as a fraud. To say that person is someone other than William Shakespeare is not far off Nigel Tufnel's boast that his amplifier "goes to eleven" in This is Spinal Tap.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
Similarly, I say to Roland Emmerich: so you think someone else other than William Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays? Why don't you just decide who wrote them and then call that guy Shakespeare? It wouldn't alter much.

No comments:

Post a Comment