Et tu, Derek? Meanwhile, back in the USSR....

[selenak]

What you learn from the internet: the Oxfordians are at it again. Actually, I knew that was Roland Emmerich's latest project, but I didn't know Derek Jacobi signed on to the "Will is dead" theory. (Obscure Beatles joke is not obscure.) This actually makes me only facepalm in a fond way, similarly to Simon Callow declaring last year that Shakespeare

Comments

[ffutures]

Gorgeous - now I must see if I can get hold of the film.

[selenak]

I must confess I have not seen it, either, save for that one scene which I discovered on YouTube last year.

[ffutures]

Turns out I can get it for £1.97 from play.com, so I've ordered it.

[kathyh]

Also I find it irresistable to imagine this film as an lj post with disclaimers "dark fic, tudorcest lol!, read and review!!!!"

Bwahahaha... The sad thing is that this film probably cost millions of dollars!

Sir Derek just lost a few brownie points from me I'm afraid. The temptation to send him a copy of Contested Will by James Shapiro is quite strong!

[selenak]

No "probably" about it. It's an Emmerich production. Therefore, it did cost millioins of dollars.

If you have an address for him, send away! The man is playing Lear right now. It feels blasphemous he should do so while believing lousy de Vere to have penned it...

[ponygirl2000]

That trailer was (unintentionally) hilarious! With the extra-angsty Radiohead song and the clips of wildly gesturing high drama - including Elizabethan crowd-surfing? Somehow I don't think any of Shakespeare's humour is going to play a big role in the movie.

[selenak]

A hit, a veritable hit. Also, again, it's Roland Emmerich. I've seen all of two films from him - Stargate and The Patriot - and a sense of humour is never his strong suit. (I hope you don't blame his nationality. Contrary to cliché, we do comedy in Germany.)

...this reminds me: in the late 19th century, when everyone was wildly nationalistic there were a few crazy professors at our universities who wanted to prove Shakespeare was really German. Alas, their theory never had the same impact as the Bacon/Oxford/Marlowe etc. ones did.

[ponygirl2000]

Thinking about this a bit more the choice of song is really annoying - and it's a song I usually like. Saying "everything in its right place" while promoting a film about how, of course, a commoner couldn't write Shakespeare's plays, it must have been a nobleman, and not just any nobleman, the most special one of all - the secret child of a virgin queen (darn those pesky midichlorians!) - really drives the point home. I can't blame Emmerich for the trailer, but I'm glad he's come along to help us get this all sorted. Why if people believed that genius could occur in just anyone they might want things like public education, or removing barriers to long-standing institutions - it's enough to make my monocle pop out in dismay!

[selenak]

Oh, it's pure classism, and Anakin Skywalker reference for the win! Here's what my beloved GBS had to say on the matter many a decade ago:

No year passes without the arrival of a batch of books contending that Shakespeare was somebody else. The argument is always the same. Such early works as Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Love's Labour's Lost, could not possibly have been written by an illiterate clown and poacher who could hardly write his own name. This is unquestionably true. But the inference that Shakespeare did not write them does not follow. What does follow is that Shakespeare was not an illiterate clown but a well read grammar-schooled son in a family of good middle-class standing, cultured enough to be habitual playgoers and private entertainers of the players

[innocentsmith]

...Yeah, I'm just going to assume for the sake of my sanity that this is Jacobi!Master messing around to get back at Elizabeth I for shagging the Doctor.

Because otherwise, all I can hear in my head is the ghost of William Cecil banging his head against a spectral wall.

[selenak]

Your explanation is as sensible as anything about this... enterprise.:)

Poor old Cecil. I think knowing about this version would be worse to him than learning he's been shown as an old man and retired at the start of Elizabeht's reign in the Cate Blanchett version...

[innocentsmith]

Do not get me started about those movies. I can go on for HOURS. Though I think Cecil would at least have gotten some enjoyment out of the first one's idea that Elizabeth dropped Dudley and never spoke to him again after the Amy Robsart mess went down. Cecil wishes.

No, it's definitely Jacobi!Master having a laugh. You can tell, because it's so ludicrously overcomplicated.

[selenak]

Cecil wishes indeed. And I didn't even see the second movie, because hte first one was enough. Love ya, Cate, but the script was too horrible. And if I had any doubt, the news that the second one dared to rewrite the freaking Tilbury speech would have settled it.

True, it's completely a Masterly scheme of overcomplication. Which leaves only one question: when will it backfire on him and how? Because his schemes always do.

[night_train_fm]

This seems as appropriate a place as any to mention that I got to see Sir Derek perform King Lear less than a week ago. Smug? Me? What gives you that impression? *whistles innocently*

[selenak]

I am duly envious but have to mention I saw him on stage as Macbeth several years ago. :)