Greer Gilman's Blog, page 84

Cut thread and thrum

"I don't believe great art comes just from pure imagination — it also comes from life experience and a lot of pain."
                                                        --Roland Emmerich


My life, through ling'ring long, is lodg'd in lair of loathsome ways,My death delay'd to keep from life the harm of hapless days.My sprites, my heart, my wit and force in deep distress are drown'd;The only loss of my good name is of these griefs the ground.

[...]Help gods, help saints, help sprites and powers that in the heaven do dwell!Help ye that are to wail ay wont, ye howling hounds of hell!Help man, help beasts, help birds and worms that on the earth doth toil!Help fish, help fowl that flocks and feed upon the salt sea soil!Help echo that in air doth flee, shrill voices to resound,To wail this loss of my good name, as of these griefs the ground.                            --Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford

This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.

Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade
He bravely broach’d his boiling bloody breast

                                --William Shakespeare



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A huge bombard of sack

sovay has asked for a roundup of all the scattered Anonymous reviews, like daggletailed sheep to the dip.

Here they are, a fanfaronade for Oxenford:

"We all, at one point or another, indulge fantasies that make the world
seem more dangerous, more glamorous and, simultaneously, much more
simple than it actually is. But then most of us grow up. Or put down the
bong."

From this coming Sunday's Times.

*****
And for dessert, Shapiro's latest jibe:  "I have no problem if Roland Emmerich wants to drink the Kool-Aid, but I do have a problem when it's doled out in small cups to school kids."

*****
"...overwrought and cretinous..."

*****

"the sheer bloody Englishness of the whole thing"
"Who really wrote Shakespeare?"

*****

Splat! on RT
"Roland Emmerich’s act of cultural vandalism; the defenestration of one of England’s greatest dramatists by one of Germany’s poorest."

*****
Much Ado About Very Little, says the Village Voice headline.  "The Shakespeare exposé no one has been waiting for."  Nick Pinkerton provides a garland of garlicky pull quotes interwoven with some shrewd brief analysis:

"Shakespeare/de Vere pronounces that 'all art is political, otherwise it is just decoration.' In terms of the film, this means that the corpus attributed to Shakespeare is merely pretext for political cartooning . . . ."

"It is the particular idiocy of our time that the past is apparently only marketable via Da Vinci Code conspiratorial jabbering, here degrading the canon to the level of the potboiler."

But oh! how I'd love to see this poster:

"A self-serious faux exposé  . . . Sporadically enjoyable trash . . .  This is high camp, nothing more."

*****

And from I Heart the Talkies, reviewing at the London Film Festival:

"Roland Emmerich’s hymn to ludicrousness is a camp fiasco."

*****

This beauty was written back in June, merely on the strength of the trailer:

"Anonymous could prove to be an own goal for the anti-Stratfordian camp.

"Could it be that Emmerich’s desire for blockbuster success via the most controversial and bizarre plot possible has overridden the anti-Stratfordian desire to maintain an image of legitimacy? Anonymous runs a serious risk of exposing them to ridicule.

"In fact, the choice of such a bizarre theory seems so poorly considered that an intriguing, and just as unlikely, conspiracy of its own could be considered. What if Roland Emmerich is in fact a Shakespeare supporter, is deep undercover in the enemy camp, and has gone to the trouble of shooting a multi-million dollar film that contends that Shakespeare did not write his plays, but with the most preposterous storyline possible – all as some kind of cunning ‘false flag’ operation to discredit the anti-Stratfordians. But, like the conspiracies themselves, this is an unreasonable theory based on zero evidence."

*****
Did you see Salon?

" . . . swans around wearing a fixed half-smile of campy soulfulness, exactly as Vincent Price might have played Jesus."

*****
EW:

"Anonymous might just as well also declare that Elizabethans lived in yurts and invented the game of Sudoku, for all the pompous foolishness masquerading as intellectual provocation in this thumpingly silly yet self-serious period-piece what-if ... [A] tale told by an idio...syncratic moviemaker up to little more than mischief."

*****

"...the tone of a Hallmark Channel holiday special gone bat-shit crazy..."

Austin Chronicle

*****
"Rhys Ifans plays him here as a humorless snoot (the perfect hero for the anti-Stratfordian crowd, in other words) ... It’s as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who’ve spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him."

The A.V. Club

*****

First and last time I agree with the {shudder} Daily Mail:

"Pretentious, preposterous - ANONYMOUS is a Tudor turkey! ... A grotesque travesty ... ludicrously reductionist ... grotesquely offensive ..."

... a pinup of Joely Richardson in a strapless evening gown.

I clicked so you don't have to!

*****

Dear gods.

"Anonymous fetishizes Jamie Campbell Bower as young Edward; he's the most coltish of the movie's lippy male ingenues, but also a stand-and-pose aristo who appears to be in search of a runway instead of his muse. De Vere recites from Twelfth Night's 'present laughter' song as cougar Queen Bess (Joely Richardson) goes down on him, a perfect illustration that the movie's worst instincts are nearly its only entertaining ones."

Slant Magazine

*****

Oh Roger Ebert, no!

*****

Have Jonathan Jones, being trenchant: "Jonson, who knew Shakespeare in the flesh, testifies that the face printed in the First Folio, that of Will Shakespeare, is that of the plays' author. Except he doesn't 'testify' because he sees nothing to 'testify' about—there was no mystery to Shakespeare's contemporaries about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays."

Though you may prefer the Flick Filosopher, being snarky: "Listen: Anonymous is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is a fusty nut with no kernel. It speaks an infinite deal of nothing. Just give me a random Shakespearean insult generator, and I can do this all day."

*****

"A vulgar prank on the English literary tradition, a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it’s not bad."

A.O. Scott in the New York Times

*****

"...an airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory...a dispiriting dropping of a boo-bird."

Philadelphia Inquirer

*****
"...it feels like the work of a sleazy lawyer throwing the book at a corpse ... [the RSC cast is] incongruous, like putting filet mignon in a Quarter Pounder With Cheese...Emmerich is a camp artist, someone who doesn’t know his work is ridiculous, which, at times, is a backhanded hoot for us."

Boston Globe

*****
"About the time I realized a character I had been thinking was named Edward was really named Robert, I realized something else: I no longer cared about any of these pantalooned drips."

St. Paul Pioneer Press

*****

"...spittle-flecked..."

Chicago Tribune

But Michael Phillips adds gracefully, "A week after seeing it, what I remember of it most vividly has nothing to do either with de Vere or with Shakespeare: It's the way Redgrave gazes out a window, her reign near the end, her eyes full of regret but also of fiery defiance of the balderdash lapping at her feet."

*****
...muddled beyond belief, a prestigious-looking debacle ... [the] film is cobbled so amateurishly together that one can barely follow what's going on, and why, and to whom ..."

Dustin Putman

*****

"...looney-tunes..."

Minneapolis Star Tribune

*****

"...some crazy shit..."

Rolling Stone

*****

"...rings false at every turn..."

Wall Street Journal

*****

"Emmerich’s big mistake was to approach the material as tragedy rather than comedy ... as a third-rate ripoff of Hamlet, when it could have been a second-rate ripoff of Twelfth Night."

Slate

*****

Ron Rosenbaum on "10 Things I Hate About Anonymous":

"No, let’s give it its due: a high point in stupidity in Western culture."

*****

Shakespeare Bites Back by Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson & Prof. Stanley Wells, CBE.  A free e-book!

As of early Friday morning, 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and a surprising 52 on Metacritic.


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After the Schadenfreude

Ron Rosenbaum on "10 Things I Hate About Anonymous":

"No, let’s give it its due: a high point in stupidity in Western culture."

Shakespeare Bites Back by Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson & Prof. Stanley Wells, CBE.  A free e-book!

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Camp Fiasco

Woke up with this running through my soi-disant brain:  a song for Anonymous.  Do add verses if you like.  The game's for as many as will.

Hullo darling—love the masque O
Here I am at Camp Fiasco
Camp is truly devastating
And we think you’ll love our film if you stop hating

You remember Kit the shepherd?
He gets eaten by a leopard.
You remember Ben the brickie?
Now he’s swollen up with gangrene from a hickey.

All the Cecils hate the traitors
The Globe is full of instigators—
Damn that yokel, Will the poet
‘Cause his place is with a broom and he don’t know it!

Darling Queenie, she’s my mother
Wriothesley is my son and brother
Complications—we three got ‘em!
And we have a lot of fights for who plays Bottom.

I’m her Neddy, she’s my Virgie
We invented dramaturgy
I play Julie—I love dying—
And I’ll get this ten-foot thing if I keep trying.

Over to you...?

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Snarkfall

It's coming down thick and fast now.  I'm out here in my old galoshes, making angels in the snow.

Much Ado About Very Little, says the Village Voice headline.  "The Shakespeare exposé no one has been waiting for."  Nick Pinkerton provides a garland of garlicky pull quotes interwoven with some shrewd brief analysis:

"Shakespeare/de Vere pronounces that 'all art is political, otherwise it is just decoration.' In terms of the film, this means that the corpus attributed to Shakespeare is merely pretext for political cartooning . . . ."

"It is the particular idiocy of our time that the past is apparently only marketable via Da Vinci Code conspiratorial jabbering, here degrading the canon to the level of the potboiler."

But oh! how I'd love to see this poster:

"A self-serious faux exposé  . . . Sporadically enjoyable trash . . .  This is high camp, nothing more."

And from I Heart the Talkies, reviewing at the London Film Festival:

"Roland Emmerich’s hymn to ludicrousness is a camp fiasco."

After that, I started Googling Emmerich + Anonymous + camp.

This beauty was written back in June, merely on the strength of the trailer:

"Anonymous could prove to be an own goal for the anti-Stratfordian camp.

"Could it be that Emmerich’s desire for blockbuster success via the most controversial and bizarre plot possible has overridden the anti-Stratfordian desire to maintain an image of legitimacy? Anonymous runs a serious risk of exposing them to ridicule.

"In fact, the choice of such a bizarre theory seems so poorly considered that an intriguing, and just as unlikely, conspiracy of its own could be considered. What if Roland Emmerich is in fact a Shakespeare supporter, is deep undercover in the enemy camp, and has gone to the trouble of shooting a multi-million dollar film that contends that Shakespeare did not write his plays, but with the most preposterous storyline possible – all as some kind of cunning ‘false flag’ operation to discredit the anti-Stratfordians. But, like the conspiracies themselves, this is an unreasonable theory based on zero evidence."

Dancing in the snow, I'm dancing in the snow . . . .

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Hither and yon

"The bread didn’t have a flashcard. It was just bread."    

Gods, this is worthy of a pomo Satyricon.  "Euterpes is the name for the foie gras with white chocolate..."  What, no atomized dormice?

With many thanks to sovay .

Oh Rhys Ifans, no!

"Just to see the kind of decay and increasing isolation and loneliness that
this man who was the creator of these huge universes populated by these
extraordinary characters - it was like a sense of what a huge weight on
one man's shoulders," Ifans says. "I found it extraordinary that one man
could've produced such an immense body of work. Just the weight of that
and all of his kind of virility and optimism and how the Elizabethan
court and society gradually quashed that. And really the pain."

[...]

"The theater was essentially the Internet," he says. "That's why these
places were burned, razed to the ground time and time again. They were
dangerous. They were rabble-rousing, mob-gathering mouthpieces, and I
think that's what the film does well. It reminds us of the power of the
stage at that time."

Let's see:  there was that tragicomic Foley malfunction at the Globe in 1613, and ... and ... 

Even in the Essex Rebellion, when the conspirators booked what they hoped would be a rabble-rousing performance of Richard II, it fizzled.  Augustine Phillips of the Chamberlain's Men was brought before the Privy Council and questioned; he just told the inquisitors that the company did an old play for the money:  40 extra shillings.  No consequences.

Bridgekeeper:  Right.  Off you go then.

"Virility and optimism"?  Please.

Here's what Gabriel Harvey (who elsewhere praised Shakespeare) had to say about that preening malcontent, his patron Oxford:

Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy [physiognomy] smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man.

And on a lighter note:

Dude.

I'm in TV Tropes under Badass Longcoat.

I may never see that castle-in-Spain review in the TLS, but my legend is assured.

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Words, words, words

Here's a fascinating piece by Holger Symes on Shakespeare's language.  I knew from reading David Crystal that Will's wordhoard (maybe 20,000 words) is not the dazzling thing imagined by bardolaters:  no linguistic supernova but a splendid star amid bright stars.  But until now, I'd never seen his lexicon compared with that of his playwright peers.  Daniel Craig has done just that, and found that Shakespeare's store of words is not remarkable.  It's what he does with them that is astounding.

Symes gives "his table of playwrights ranked by how many different words they use on average [in a play]":

                            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 [all this is Symes]:

                           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..."

So much (yet again) for the anti-Stratfordian obsession with birth and breeding.  (Not that Oxford's education didn't fizzle out at thirteen, when his tutor quit:  "I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required.")

And for dessert, Shapiro's latest jibe:  "I have no problem if Roland Emmerich wants to drink the Kool-Aid, but I do have a problem when it's doled out in small cups to school kids."

Nine

"Wouldn't It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare?"

"We all, at one point or another, indulge fantasies that make the world
seem more dangerous, more glamorous and, simultaneously, much more
simple than it actually is. But then most of us grow up. Or put down the
bong."

From this coming Sunday's Times.

Nine

"...unfettered clacking bollocks..."

I think I just ran into the audience for
At the counter there were two guys talking.  By their conversation (picking out what movie to write papers by), college age.  Dudes.  Call them Dunning and Kruger.  They looked past me at the People magazine beside the register, and said, I don't get what all the fuss is about.  I mean, I never heard of this guy Jobs.  Yeah, so he's something to do with Apple.  They only have 9% of the market.

That's just the planet stupid part.

A minute or two later, they passed me on the stairs, and Kruger was saying, No, I didn't get a flu shot.  And I'll never get a flu shot.  I'm not an  alarmist, but there's this extreme right-wing conspiracy to vaccinate everyone...

I said sharply, "Vaccines save lives.  And I'm a lefty."  Bet he thinks I'm a crazy old harpy.

Credulous buffoon.

And that's what infuriates me:  that self-crowned pseudo-revolutionary skepticism that is nothing more than won't.  Can't make me.

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By the pricking of my thumbs...

The hurlyburly's just beginning.

Last night, ron_drummond heard Richard Thompson (of all people!) ask, "Does anyone here think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare?"

And today I read that the vile Emmerich crew has been scatter-bombing propaganda in the schools:

Already heading into classrooms from the film's producers is a slick
6-page color brochure, "Anonymous -- Was Shakespeare a Fraud?" Its "Dear
Educator" advice declares its "Target Audience… is students in English
literature, theater, and British history classes," with "Program
Objectives… to encourage critical thinking by challenging students to
examine theories about the authorship of Shakespeare's works."

If I were a teacher, I'd start by reading my class Aubrey's story from Brief Lives: 

THIS Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen
Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and
ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen
welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.

And I'd allow them three seconds of illustrative jeering every time the bugger's name was mentioned.

It's gone viral.

I am cheered by this incomparable snark from Alan Nelson (thank you, angevin2 ).

Nine