ANONYMOUS

The story
Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England, Anonymous speculates on an issue that has for centuries intrigued academics and brilliant minds such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Sigmund Freud, namely: who actually created the body of work credited to William Shakespeare?  Experts have debated, books have been written, and scholars have devoted their lives to protecting or debunking theories surrounding the authorship of the most renowned works in English literature. Anonymous poses one possible answer, focusing on a time when scandalous political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of greedy nobles lusting for the power of the throne

Did he or did he not?  That is the question
The Shakespeare authorship question is a debate that started over one hundred years ago surrounding the identity of the works traditionally attributed to the bearded Bard from Stratford-Upon-Avon, William Shakespeare.  Was he really the genius behind Hamlet's tragic life, Romeo's burning love, and Lady Macbeth's plaguing guilt? Could the intellectual behind literature's most brilliant characters be this very ordinary man from Stratford?
So little is known about the man from Stratford that many find it impossible to believe that the son of an illiterate tradesman was the author of such literary masterpieces as "The Merchant of Venice," "King Lear," and "Henry V." His education from a village school could never have provided Shakespeare with a vocabulary extensive enough to write the most talked about literature in the world and there is no proof that he travelled to foreign lands let alone learnt to speak their native tongues. The only written documentation historians can ascribe to Shakespeare is several signatures on official documents with at least six different spellings (Shaksp, Shakspe, Shakesper, Shakespere, Shakspere and Shakspeare).  Aside from the plays attributed to him, there are no manuscripts, letters, journals or poems accredited to Shakespeare, which is quite astonishing, considering this was his legacy.  His death in 1616 was met with silence, unlike other celebrated writers of his time, and his illiterate wife and children were bequeathed only his "second best bed" - no money - and even more shockingly, his will mentions no books or manuscripts of any kind.
"Anti-Stratfordians," those that believe there is reasonable doubt that Shakespeare is the real author of the works, include literary greats, teachers, writers, world-renowned actors, directors and scholars such as Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Sir Derek Jacobi, and Sir John Gielgud.  Whilst some believe in group theories (i.e. that a collective group of writers is responsible for the works), others favor singular writers such as Edward De Vere - the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, or Christopher Marlowe.
Oxford is perhaps the leading alternate candidate within anti-Stratfordian circles due to the remarkable concurrences between the nobleman and the scribe.   There are many significant facts to support Oxfordian arguments that simply cannot be debunked by Stratfordians, among them that Oxford took a 16-month tour of the Continent which took him to all to of the cities in Italy with which Shakespeare evinces an easy familiarity, among them Padua, Milan, Verona, Mantua, Florence, and Siena.  Another is that "Hamlet" eerily parallels Oxford's life in an almost autobiographical form, depicting his father-in-law William Cecil as Polonius and his daughter, Anne Cecil, being Ophelia; the Queen herself, on whom Gertrude is modeled, was a surrogate mother to Oxford from the age of twelve and later became his lover.   Was it a pure coincidence that Oxford's annotated copy of the Geneva Bible marks passages that were used by Shakespeare or that Oxford's nickname was "spear shaker?"   
By contrast of course, Stratfordians believe that without a doubt, William Shakespeare from Stratford is, indeed, the man responsible for the 37 plays and 154 sonnets.  To them, there is no authorship question and all the work attributed to Shakespeare was definitely written by the famous playwright who moved to London to seek his fortune.  Their argument is backed up by four main reasons: the name "William Shakespeare" appeared on the title pages of many of the poems and plays published during his lifetime, Ben Jonson referred to the author as "Sweet Swan of Avon" in the preface to the First Folio (published seven years after Shakespeare's death), fellow actors Heminges and Condell  (mentioned in his will) point to him as the author in the Folio, and the effigy and inscription on his Stratford monument suggests that Shakespeare had been a writer.
Like all history of the period, records are vague, and it is easy to find inconsistencies and gaps in any of the theories, but less is known about Shakespeare than most of the other actors and playwrights of his time.  Shakespeare was a writer who was admired - but not revered - in his day, and it was not until the mid-19^th century that the Romantics and the Victorians revived his work with vigor. 
In 1987, US Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens, William Brennan, and Harry Blackmun held a mock trial on the authorship.  Justice Brennan, the Senior Justice on the case, ruled that the Earl of Oxford did not meet the burden of proof required under the law to claim the authorship, however, Justice Harry Blackmun added that whilst this conclusion was the legal answer, he was doubtful it was the correct answer.
Until such time that there is conclusive evidence or definite proof to support any one theory, theoretically there is no right or wrong conclusion to this debate.  However, one important question remains.  As long as these masterpieces live on in our cultural conscience, does it really matter who Shakespeare was?

About the film
It might not seem that Roland Emmerich - best known as the director of the epic blockbusters Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 - would necessarily choose as his next project a story set in Elizabethan England.  However, for nearly ten years, he has wanted to make a film with the Shakespeare authorship question as a backdrop - a yearning that is fulfilled with Anonymous. 
Emmerich first became fascinated with the Shakespeare authorship question after a conversation with screenwriter John Orloff, who had himself been studying the subject for a number of years and had written a draft of a screenplay, then titled Soul of the Age.  Orloff says, "We actually met to talk about another project.  When Roland asked me what else I was working on, I bit the bullet and told him about Soul of the Age."  Read more

Casting the film
For Anonymous, Emmerich compiled what he calls his "dream" cast.  "I got really lucky," he says.  "It's probably the best cast I've ever had."  The cast is headed by Rhys Ifans as Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, and includes Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, Edward Hogg, Jamie Campbell Bower, and Derek Jacobi.
Rhys Ifans leads the cast as Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford.  "Rhys did an incredible job," says Emmerich.  "He would come to work as Rhys Ifans, but as soon as he came out of hair and makeup and put his costume on, he behaved differently - he transformed himself into Edward De Vere."Read more


Shooting the film
To re-create Elizabethan England on the screen, Emmerich assembled a top collection of artists behind the scenes, including production designer Sebastian Krawinkel, costume designer Lisy Christl, and VFX experts Volker Engel and Marc Weigert.  Emmerich's director of photography is Anna J. Foerster, who first collaborated with Emmerich as a Camera Assistant on his first movie, Moon 44, and has since re-teamed with the director in various roles on several projects. 
By using new technology capable of filming in very low light, Foerster helped give the film a very real and atmospheric tone. "With the new developments in digital cinematography, we could really take advantage of candlelight and firelight," says Foerster.  "For a period piece, using available light - candles, fireplaces, whatever comes in from outside - makes it real." Read more

The director and screenwriter
Anonymous is a passion project for director Roland Emmerich - and once you get past the surface, he says, one that is not so surprising.  "I thought it was a really exciting subject for a film," he says.  "I like making movies about something people can argue about.  A movie like The Day After Tomorrow - of course I hope it's entertaining, but also thought-provoking and a hot topic.  When you look at it that way, I'm not sure it's such a surprise that this movie would interest me."
Emmerich says that his hope for the film is that "the younger generation will discover William Shakespeare.  In essence, it doesn't matter who wrote the works, as long as it's appreciated how amazing the writing is.  We should all feel lucky enough to be able to pass them on to generation after generation."
Rhys Ifans says that Emmerich was uniquely suited to make this film, which required not only an incredible attention to detail, but also the ability to move large crowds like a well-oiled machine.  "I've worked with directors who have loving attention to detail, but faced with a crowd they fall apart.  I've also worked with directors who can only shout at a crowd and have no clue how to speak to an actor.  Roland can do both," he says.  "It's such an incredible talent and an incredible world of information to have to retain as a person.  Never is a note shouted across the floor, they're always whispered or discussed in a corner.  I just find that absolutely spellbinding and thrilling."
Rafe Spall adds, "Roland will come and give you a golden nugget of a note that will tune your performance.  Every single note he gave me made me feel better - he understands acting, which I don't think a lot of directors do."

Emmericj began his career in his native Germany. He studied film at the Munich's Film School and his student project The Noah's Ark Principle went on to be shown in competition at the 1984 Berlin Film Festival. The debut feature was sold in more than 20 countries around the world and earned the director his initial credit. Subsequently, he established his own production company, Centropolis Film Productions and under its banner has both produced and directed a number of projects.In 1992 his film-making platform moved to the States with the hits such as Universal Soldier, Stargate, and Godzilla and Emmerich made box office history in 1996 with Independence Day, which grossed over $800,000,000 worldwide. A few years later he directed and executive produced The Patriot, which starred Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger, and more recently the box office smash hits The Day After Tomorrow with Jake Gyllenhaal and co-wrote, directed, and executive produced 2012 with John Cusack and Thandie Newton.Among his producing credits is Trade. Directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner the gripping drama portrayed the trauma of human trafficking across the Mexican border into the US.

Roland Emmerich talks about Anonymous  Read more

The screenwriter
John Orloff (Written by / Executive Producer) first became aware of the Authorship Question surrounding the works of Shakespeare during his film education at UCLA.  His passionate interest led to twenty years of research and writing before the film went into production. In 2002, Orloff was nominated for an Emmy Award for his writing on HBO's "Band of Brothers," the acclaimed World War II miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.  In 2008 he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his screenplay for A Mighty Heart, the Michael Winterbottom-directed film starring Angelina Jolie about the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.  His most recently work includes adapting the screenplay for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, an animated film directed by Zack Snyder starring the voices of Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush and Helen Mirren.  Orloff is currently writing Truckers for Dreamworks Animation, and another project for filmmaker Lu Chuan.

Excerpted from "Is Shakespeare Dead?" by Mark Twain
For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those details of Shakespeare's history which are FACTS--verified facts, established facts, undisputed facts.

FACTS
He was born on the 23d of April, 1564.
Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names.
At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in attesting important documents, because they could not write their names.
Of the first eighteen years of his life NOTHING is known. They are a blank.
On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Whateley.
Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a reluctantly-granted dispensation there was but one publication of the banns.
Within six months the first child was born.
About two (blank) years followed, during which period NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED TO SHAKESPEARE, so far as anybody knows.
Then came twins--1585. February.
Two blank years follow.
Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family behind.
Five blank years follow. During this period NOTHING HAPPENED TO HIM, as far as anybody actually knows.
Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor.
Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players.
Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her reign. And remained obscure.
Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and manager.
Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the same.
Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest. Then--1610-11--he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed.
He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages with his name.
A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the world--houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its furniture.
It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of his family, overlooking no individual of it. Not even his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare's will.
He left her that "second-best bed."
And NOT ANOTHER THING; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood with.
It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's.
It mentioned NOT A SINGLE BOOK.
Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he gave it a high place in his will.
The will mentioned NOT A PLAY, NOT A POEM, NOT AN UNFINISHED LITERARY WORK, NOT A SCRAP OF MANUSCRIPT OF ANY KIND.
Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died THIS poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a book. Maybe two.
If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we need not go into that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in it. I wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business way.
He signed the will in three places.
In earlier years he signed two other official documents.
These five signatures still exist.
There are NO OTHER SPECIMENS OF HIS PENMANSHIP IN EXISTENCE. Not a line.
Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no provision for her education although he was rich, and in her mature womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else's--she thought it was Shakespeare's.
When Shakespeare died in Stratford IT WAS NOT AN EVENT. It made no more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theatre-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh and the other distinguished literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he lifted his.
SO FAR AS ANYBODY ACTUALLY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.
SO FAR AS ANYBODY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, he never wrote a letter to anybody in his life.
SO FAR AS ANY ONE KNOWS, HE RECEIVED ONLY ONE LETTER DURING HIS LIFE.
So far as any one KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this day. This is it:

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.

In the list as above set down, will be found EVERY POSITIVELY KNOWN fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meagre as the invoice is. Beyond these details we know NOT A THING about him. All the rest of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures - an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts.
Isn't it odd, when you think of it: that you may list all the celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the first Tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and you can go to the histories, biographies and cyclopedias and learn the particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of them all--Shakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians, comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, naturalists, Claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists, philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the life-histories of all of them but ONE. Just one--the most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all--Shakespeare!
You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have listed 1500 celebrities, and you can trace the authentic life-histories of the whole of them. Save one--far and away the most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--Shakespeare! About him you can find out NOTHING. Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly common-place person--a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go to the records and find out the life-history of every renowned RACE-HORSE of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself--HE HADN'T ANY HISTORY TO RECORD. There is no way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting around its formidable significance.
Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do not use the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived, and none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the world did not find it out. He ought to have explained that he was the author, and not merely a nom de plume for another man to hide behind. If he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his good name, and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will moulder away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the last sun goes down.

Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Clemens, an American humorist, satirist, lecturer, writer, and riverboat pilot.  He is best known for the classic American novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Is Shakespeare Dead? was first published in April 1909.

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