Mainstream conspiracy theory?

Just in time for our read­ing of the Son­nets (and their adja­cent mys­tery of the ded­ic­a­tion, and Mr. W.H., and was Shakespeare gay or not, or maybe not Shakespeare at all?) Roland Emmerich has pub­lished the trail­er for his upcom­ing spec­tacle bon­anza, Anonym­ous. Though one act­or involved pre­dicts, rather self-servingly, that “the ortho­dox Strat­ford­i­ans” will have an apo­plect­ic fit at the movie, he omits to men­tion that this fit will be brought on by too much laughter. Watch­ing de Vere have sex with his own ille­git­im­ate moth­er, Queen Eliza­beth I, to fath­er Henry Wrio­thes­ley, the 3rd Earl of Southamp­ton (Shakespeare’s pat­ron & prob­ably the Mr. W.H. of the son­nets’ ded­ic­a­tion), and hav­ing the res­ult­ing cabal sold as the most likely explan­a­tion why “Shakespeare” should be clev­er and edu­cated though “only” a com­mon­er is utterly pathet­ic. Enjoy! by all means — but oh, the irony… *wipes_tears_of_laughter* “Bohemia lies by the sea”, indeed.

Poor Earl of Southamp­ton: Unwit­ting inces­tu­ous bastard?

BTW, is any­one else struck by just how Vic­tori­an this con­spir­acy the­ory and its related class think­ing is? All hail the nobil­ity? Begone, foul peas­ant muck to the Strat­ford sty that spawned you?

On a very dif­fer­ent note: I have no idea why the under­lin­ing of my links is some­times trans­formed to a line right through the words. It does­n’t show up in my pre­views but only if I open the final pub­lished pages. Apologies!