Pun Salad

Warning: to properly appreciate this movie, you should probably be better-versed in Elizabethan-era British history than I. Also it would help to care about Elizabethan-era British history more than I.

The notion that Shakespeare did not write the plays and poems credited to him has been bouncing around since the mid-1800s. The genius and scholarship shown in Shakespeare's works seems totally out of whack with his ordinary origins and enigmatic biography. But if not Bill, then who?

This movie builds its plot around the "Earl of Oxford" theory. In order to do that even semi-plausibly, a large and complex conspiracy theory is needed, in which (somehow) Shakespeare is able to take credit while the Earl abides in silence. So we get sordid decade-spanning tales of royal philandering, rebellion, betrayal, and murder. Fun! If you like that sort of thing.

The acting is fine, especially Rhys Ifans as the Earl. In a bit of fun casting, Vanessa Redgrave (the commie) plays Old Queen Elizabeth I, while her daughter Joely Richardson plays Young Queen Elizabeth I. It seems very realistic, in the sense that just about everything is filthy, ramshackle, and dark. (Even the royalty doesn't seem to have had a recent bath.)