A Republican Dream? — Americans Question Shakespeare

Authors

  • Kim C. Sturgess University of Qatar

Keywords:

Film Studies, 19th Century, Authorship

Abstract

In late 2011, Anonymous, a large-budget movie from filmmaker Roland Emmerich — the producer of such films as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Patriot — was promoted on posters and in TV commercials by posing the question "Was Shakespeare a Fraud?" While contemporary media executives chose the advertising "tag line" for this film, the roots of their exploitative question go back to 1856 and the lead article, by American Delia Bacon, in Putnam's Monthly, A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art. For the first time in the public press, a scholar argued that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon did not write the plays and poems that bore his name. Important to this re-mythologizing was Bacon's thesis that the plays promoted a republican political philosophy that ultimately led to the creation of the United States of America. This article startled some in nineteenth-century society and, via a tangled web, more recently has resulted in the script and publicity campaign for the movie Anonymous. The origins of this speculation about Shakespearean authorship, together with related commercial sensationalism, can be linked to the appropriation of Shakespeare's plays to support American republican ideology.

Author Biography

Kim C. Sturgess, University of Qatar

Kim Sturgess grew up in the UK but has spent periods living in the USA and Qatar. His first book, Shakespeare and the American Nation, was published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press. A second book, This Precious Isle, was published by Troubador in June 2011. Recently he was Co-Director of The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged, a community drama project staged at the Qatar National Theatre, February 2013. Kim is Assistant Professor of English and American Literature at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.

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Published

2013-09-01

Issue

Section

Articles