Reviews

This pseudo documentary is utter rubbish.

I will spend a little time debunking, which some might consider a spoiler, so be warned.

This is a concoction of utter nonsense from a director who patently knows almost nothing of Shakespeare's life, times, education, inspiration and sources of his plays.

On the one hand, they refer to Shakespeare's father as being 'just a glove maker,' and how could the son of 'just a glove maker' have achieved so much?

Then, in the next breath, we are told that his father was mayor of Stratford, a successful businessman, money-lender and clearly wealthy.

So, how is it possible that Shakespeare could have written his plays? Perhaps being educated in a classical tradition would help? After all, he did attend school, and learned Latin, some Greek, and studied history.

We are told that there is no evidence that he owned any books. Books? Really?

Close study of his plays, in particular the history plays, will reveal that he had access to a good number of books. In point of fact, it is even possible to identify what some of these were, from the oblique references in the plays themselves.

Giles Milton, a purported historian, expounds the theory that it was Marlowe who wrote Shakespeare's plays. Or at least, it was somebody else, anybody else, than Shakespeare himself. Of course, Marlowe was dead by then, which makes it a tad awkward, as theories go. But not to worry. Giles believes that evidence will one day show up that Marlowe, the most famous writer of this time, simply faked his death, fled England and continued writing in Italy. Or France. Or, well, somewhere.

This is not supported by any evidence. Other than, 'Shakespeare couldn't have done it.'

Hmm...

Contemporaries of Shakespeare did not hold such a suspicion. Another of the luminaries of that time was Ben Jonson. He went to great lengths to collect Shakespeare's work, and he published the first folio. Was he duped? A man that knew Shakespeare personally? Or perhaps he was part of the conspiracy to enable the publication of Marlowe's work under another man's name. Or somebody else's. Anybody else....

No. Clearly not.

It is sensationalist nonsense which seeks to expose a conspiracy, yet somehow manages to avoid providing any shred of evidence that one even exists.

If the writer's, and their tame 'historian' knew anything of Shakespeare's time, his work, and the sources of his plays, then it would be a quite different story.

Shakespeare was a wordsmith. He had a wonderful turn of phrase. But were they all his own phrases? Nope. He copied quite a few. Just go and read Romeo and Juliet, then compare it to the translation of the Italian Poem that was the inspiration for his play.

Here is what the Royal Shakespeare Society have to say on the subject.

In 1562 Arthur Brooke published The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, the first English version of the story of Romeo and Juliet. His long poem was very popular among Elizabethan readers, enjoying several reprints.

Brooke's was the latest telling of a well-known story that had long been enjoyed in French and Italian literature. Italian versions, written in the 1530s by Luigi da Porta and in the 1550s by Matteo Bandello, told the story of Romeo and Giuletta and the feuding families of Montecchi and Capelletti, with the details of the secret wooing and marriage, the helpful Nurse, Romeo's escape from the punishment of murder, the Friar's potion, the lost message and the suicides in the tomb.

The French version, written in 1559 by Boaistuau, added more exciting details. Interestingly, Boaistuau changed the manner of the lovers' deaths from his Italian predecessors, where the lovers have a short time together in the tomb before they die. Boaistuau chooses to have his Romeo die before Juliet wakes, as Shakespeare will do in his later version. Brooke's poem is a faithful translation from the French and Brooke is the immediate source for Shakespeare's play. Shakespeare, of course, makes his own changes, not least the change from a leisurely period of several months, throughout which the lovers enjoy their relationship, to the desperate haste and headlong energy of his action, crammed into a few days.

Stories of the separation of lovers, unkind parents and useful sleeping potions can be traced back to classical times. For example, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, the thwarted lovers who die tragically, is one of the stories told in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Shakespeare would have read this in the original Latin as a boy at school and an English translation was published by Arthur Golding in 1567. Shakespeare uses this story to wonderful comic effect in his A Midsummer Night's Dream, written at the same time as Romeo and Juliet. The influence of Chaucer's great poem, Troilus and Criseyde, (1385) can also be felt in Shakespeare's creation of a tender, passionate intimacy between two secret lovers struggling to exist in a hostile world.