Meanwhile...

[selenak]

One good think Roland Emmerich did: his Anonymous produces the best collection of snarky reviews on an academic subject in a long while. Also it confirms that non-genre fans behave just like everyone else in a flame war. One tearing-into-shreds of the Oxfordian extravaganza provoked the scriptwriter to appear - you can read it all here - and to be yet another example of why the author should never, ever, get into internet arguments with people reviewing his work. It's all "why are you so mean?" and "you didn't do this to Tom Stoppard when he wrote Shakespeare in Love, did you?!?". (Whereupon both the reviewer and a lot of posters pointed out that that no one involved in the production of Shakespeare in Love includcing Tom Stoppard ever claimed this was THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OMG but emphasized it was playful fiction. WHereas Roland Emmerich is currently making me cringe due to our shared nationality by declaring no English director would have been courageous enough to film the truth about how only the noble Oxford and not the hack from Stratford could have written Shakespeare. Stick with Godzilla, for God's sake, Roland, stick with Godzilla. Every time you tackle history it's just that special extra cringeworthy. (See also: The Patriot, starring only free black workers in pre-Independence South Carolina happily employed by our hero, and a scene directly ripped off from Hitlerjunge Quex for the grand climax.) Anyway, if you hand out packages to schools claiming a film that gives Elizabeth I. three illegitimate bastards and manages to misdate every single Shakespeare play is of educational value, you have only yourself to blame if you get flamed as a result.


****

On another note, recently I came across this pretty photo:



Subtitled: The Beatles’ style council: Brian Epstein and Astrid Kirchherr. Which is funny because it's true. Astrid gave them the hair cut (well, half of them) and the black leather, plus she taught them to pose for photographers, and Brian gave them the suits, the bows, and of course the record contract. But I'd never seen a photo of the two of them together, and they look pretty smashing, I must say.

Comments

[gehayi]

Did you know that the Shakespeare wank ended up on Fandom Wank? (And apparently most people on FW are Stratfordians.)

[selenak]

Well, that's where it belongs.:) Also, I guess the Oxfordians are too snobbish for FW.

[gehayi]

Or don't want to go up again a large group of people who know the actual history. One or the other.

You're right, though. That is the PERFECT place for it.

[legionseagle]

Actually, critics did tear into Tom Stoppard, just not about history (IIRC, they suggested that the script was somewhat too close to Brahms and Simon's No Bed for Bacon which Stoppard asserted he had not read, prompting Clive James to comment that given Stoppard had borrowed his copy and was yet to return it he had some scepticism about this).

The tone of the Oxfordians in the comments was just hair-tearing, including their inability to believe publication dates even given the need to register at Stationer's Hall

[selenak]

I know. The stupid, it burns. They're just embarassing themselves.

[neotoma]

My local public radio had a short segment on this movie the other day, and I have to say I wanted to yell at every single anti-Stratfordian they had on, even Derek Jacobi (I'm reminded why I try to know *nothing* about actors whose performances I like).

The anti-Stratfordians arguments all boil down to classism, in my opinion -- they don't want to admit someone from a fairly unremarkable background with a fairly mediocre education could be *the* writer of the English language.

[selenak]

It's complete snobbery and classism, and George Bernard Shaw already said wittily and devastatingly as much several generations ago.

Incidentally, re: mediocre education, what's especially galling about this is that if you look at what a grammar school, including the one in Stratford-upon-Avon in Elizabethan times, taught, it's miles ahead of anything taught at your avarage high school today (where presumably the boys and girls don't have to make verses in Latin or read Plutarch). Also, the Oxfordians never bother to go for a compare and contrast with the other Elizabethan playwrights. A recent article compared Shakespeare's vocabulary with that of his fellow playwrights (contrary to myth, he doesn't come out as the one with the largest vocabulary but ranks on No.7 in terms of how many different words he uses on avarage) and then looked at their social backgrounds. The results:


1. Webster
2. Dekker
3. Peele
4. Marlowe
5. Jonson
6. Greene
7. Shakespeare
8. Lyly
9. Chapman
10. Heywood
11. Middleton
12. Fletcher
13. Wilson

Or, expressed differently:

1. Coach-maker’s son, no university education, probably attended the Middle Temple
2. Of obscure, possibly Dutch, origin
3. Clerk’s son, B.A. and M.A., Oxford
4. Cobbler’s son, B.A. and M.A., Cambridge
5. Bricklayer’s son (to all intents and purposes), no university education
6. Saddler’s or innkeeper’s son, B.A. and M.A., Cambridge; M.A., Oxford
7. Glover’s son, no university education
8. Notary’s son (and from a leading humanist family), B.A. and M.A., Oxford
9. Yeoman’s son, no evidence of university education
10. Rector’s son, some university education (Cambridge), degree uncertain; though possibly for a while Fellow of Peterhouse
11. Bricklayer’s son, some university education (Oxford), but no degree
12. Minister’s (later bishop’s) son, almost certainly B.A. and M.A. (Cambridge)
13. Of obscure origin; a yeoman

In other words, there appears to be no direct connection between levels of formal education and verbal prodigiousness: Fletcher, as a bishop’s son surely the most culturally elevated of the thirteen, barely ranks above obscure Robert Wilson in vocabulary.