This Movie Has To Open NOW

I read this (and thanks to Robby Karol  for passing it along!) and still don't quite believe it: Roland Emmerich, film director famed for repeatedly destroying the world's major landmarks (2012, Independence Day, and Godzilla are among his credits) has started making his next film--and it's about Shakespeare.

Well, not exactly. In fact, it's about how Shakespeare's plays were not written by Shakespeare himself, but by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. (A frequently repeated, if generally discredited, theory.) Additionally (and this is a new bit), according to the movie, de Vere was the secret son of Elizabeth I! So secret, indeed, that when he grew to adulthood, he became her lover! And they sired Henry Wriothesley, who was the "young man" to whom the sonnets were addressed!

I generally take a dim view of the arguments against Shakespeare having written his own plays--they seem founded on equal parts classism (How could a provincial actor who never traveled the world possibly have the experience needed to write such great plays? It must have beena  nobleman!) and wild conspiracy theorizing. I have yet to find a really convincing argument.

More to the point, I think it's a blind alley. Who cares who wrote them? They were written! That's amazing! And there is so much to find in them, and get from them. This also ties into my belief that far too much energy is spent analyzing them as literary artifacts, rather than theatre. Far too much Shakespeare scholarship mummifies the work, and I'm much more interested in lines of inquiry that bring it to life. But the "who wrote Shakespeare" argument is worse: it makes the work itself almost beside the point: why plumb Hamlet's sould when you can play Da Vinci Code?

All that aside though: Roland Emmerich directing a costume drama! With a plot that loony! And Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth I, not to mention the super-human Mark Rylance as one of the Globe's actors! This is going to be an amazing train wreck. (Armada wreck?)

I don't know if I can stand waiting another year