Shakespeare’s Life and Suspicion in between Anonymous and All is True

Abstract

Shakespeare’s life, in particular the time he spent in London writing his famous plays, has been highly debated. Discourses on what really happened during the Bard’s life are interspersed with doubts and suspicion. This paper aims at showing how cinema has dealt with the undocumented part of Shakespeare’s life and offers two opposite solutions: the film Anonymous validates the multitude of doubts concerning the actual genius of Shakespeare and on the paternity of his plays; All Is True, conversely, sustains the position that the William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon is also the author of the plays. While All Is True records the last and most documented part of the Bard’s life, the considerations on his disposition and thoughts are guided by suppositions. From its title onwards, this film presents the need to respond to popular doubts about Shakespeare’s life, and the atypical biopic retraces the most essential phases therein largely by means of passing allusions. The presence in the film of famous Shakespearean actors—from theatre and cinema—also demonstrates how reality and truth are often grounded on fictional presuppositions stemming from popular culture. The multiplicity of sources produces a multiplicity of experiences of fruition and the construction of the “all” of the narration depends on the audience’s capacity to decipher the various levels of meaning of the film, as well as its dialogue with previous cinematographic works, including Anonymous. In this sense, what is not said acquires a strong signifying potential in the construction of the film’s message. The paper will thus deal with the way in which cinema has often made use of suspicion regarding Shakespeare’s life in order to create conjecture-based narrations.