Shakespeare did not write the plays ascribed to him. The Earl of Oxford did. And he was the bastard son of Elizabeth I, wrongly dubbed the Virgin Queen. Oxford asked Ben Johnson to pretend to be the author of his plays and, when he refused, gave the authorship to Shakespeare, a semi-literate jobbing actor at the Globe.
These are not the only surprising historical discoveries in Roland Emmerich's first essay into period drama after such films as Independence Day and Godzilla. It is a lavish piece, fleshed out by numerous computer-generated bird's-eye-views of Elizabethan London.
The whole thing is splendidly decked out and dramatised with swirling panache. One half expects Godzilla to come roaring around a corner. The trouble is that there are so many cluttered plot points to digest while the argument, put to us in the opening sequence by Derek Jacobi, plunders a great deal of probability merely for the sake of intrigue.
You can't complain about the acting. The Queen (Vanessa Redgrave when older, Joely Richardson when young) twinkles merrily and certainly suggests someone to whom virginity would be a trial. Rhys Ifans is unexpectedly convincing as Oxford, while David Thewlis as the scheming William Cecil, Rafe Spall as Shakespeare, Trystan Gravelle as Kit Marlowe and Sebastian Armesto as Ben Johnson play up. It is achieved with commendable zeal - even if, by the end, you wish Emmerich had left Will well alone.
Anonymous
Cert: 12A
