Hey, Professor of the Humanities Stephen Greenblatt:
The movie “Anonymous,” directed by Roland Emmerich, talks about the Shakespeare authorship controversy; what is your opinion of the film and your own assessment of the controversy in general?
"I haven’t seen the film yet; only reviews. The film might be amusing—though I thought Emmerich’s “Independence Day” was unrelieved schlock—but the premise, from a scholar’s perspective, is utterly absurd. The so-called Oxfordian claim to authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is akin to the claim that NASA faked the films of the moon landing using footage from a studio in Hollywood."
