Anonymous

Directed by Roland Emmerich. Starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, David Thewlis, Edward Hogg, Joely Richardson 12A cert, general release, 130 min

SO ROLAND Emmerich, director of The Day After Tomorrow, 2012and 10,000 BC, has made a film attacking Shakespeare. What's the punchline, you ask? There isn't one apparently. The 14th-highest grossing director of all time is genuinely gunning for the Bard.

Emmerich's Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), a minor footnote in a central dumbass conspiracy theory, is not the enterprising actor who built the Globe Theatre but a failed Steve Coogan sketch. The real author of the plays, Anonymousargues, is Edward de Vere, an old squeeze of Queen Liz's and the 17th Earl of Oxford, here essayed most earnestly by Rhys Ifans.

Sigh. Even if we chose to forget that nobody even questioned Shakespeare’s authorship while the playwright was alive, or indeed, for centuries afterwards, Emmerich’s hypothesis smacks of 19th-century middle class prejudices. How could this commoner (from Birmingham no less) invent the language that shaped the very consciousness of the Anglophone world?

It’s no accident that such academic queries only arose after the industrial revolution and the advent of detective fiction, or that those who doubt the authenticity of Shakespeare the playwright are generally as credible and popular as hollow earth theorists and young world creationists.

But Anonymousdoesn't stop there. Shakespeare was a dimwit and a murderer, the film rages. And as for that Marlowe dude, he was likely Shakespeare's first kill. As for the Virgin Queen? Well, she couldn't keep her knickers on for five royal minutes.

Let's suppose it's true. Let's suppose our entire canon of literature is a fraudulent legacy. Is that any excuse for this slipshod am-dram pantomime presentation of Shakespeare in Love? We love a good conspiracy yarn as much as the next person, but not when it involves the kind of script wherein every character is introduced with a short CV and every plot development seems more ridiculous than the last. Look behind you! It's Shakespeare!

It's truly troubling to think that children or students might first encounter William Shakespeare in this hideous, slanderous guise. Let's hope Anonymousstays that way.