Actor Kenneth Branagh moving towards Oxford?
In breaking news this weekend noted Shakespearean actor/director/producer Kenneth Branagh (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labors Lost, Hamlet) has apparently gotten off the fence about the Shakespeare authorship question. In a news report in today's Sunday Express in the UK Branagh is quoted as saying, "There is room for reasonable doubt. De Vere is the latest and the hottest candidate. There is a convincing argument that only a nobleman like him could write of exotic settings and that William Shakespeare was a simple country boy ... I am fascinated by all the speculation." [UPDATE, May 13, 2009: The link to the Sunday Express news story is now dead ... click on it and you get a message that "The article you are looking for does not exist. It may have been deleted." with no further explanation. Word on my Internet grapevine is that the paper was asked to take it down and did. This link to the story on a different site still works. Stay tuned.]
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Sir Derek Jacobi as Claudius (left) and Kenneth Branagh (center) as Hamlet in the 1996 film.
Well, welcome aboard Kenneth! Although we don't know at this point in time what the back story to all this is, there has been speculation for years that Branagh was sympathetic to the authorship debate but was hedging his bets and keeping mum on what he really thought. Perhaps all the recent news (the portrait, Jacobi and Rylance in the news saying they have doubts, the usual birthday hoopla) finally got him to commit. The comments were made during remarks at the US premiere of his BAFTA-winning Swedish detective series, Wallander.
In any event, this is big news and must be unsettling to the powers that be in the Shakespeare Establishment.
It appears that the shift in authorial paradigm is coming from the theatrical establishment, with Jacobi, Rylance, and Branagh convinced of the Oxfordian source for "Shakespeare". Acting has a necessary concern for social and political truth, otherwise psychological understanding is impossible. You can't fake and fudge motivation on the stage like you can behind a typewriter. The primary means of comprehending live personal veracity is knowing the author's own life and thought. At this historical point the major Shakespearean actors don't have a stake in maintaining the sanctification of English political power which required "an unlifted shadow" to fall over Oxford's name all these years. I suppose the powers that be today know better than to tangle with their artists. Academicians won't have that kind of moral freedom until they struggle for it. Then Shakespearean scholarship will include accessible but formerly unacceptable fact. As Edward Hyde put it, "All cultures set their watchful dogs around their eternal cattle."
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I think it's only fair to correct this post in that Branagh came out the next day or two and said he's still a staunch Stratfordian. I wish he'd switch over to Oxford, but I'm sure there are a lot of good financial reasons he doesn't. (Or perhaps he really believes in the Stratford lad.) In respect to Branagh, I'd urge a new post that makes his views clear. At least he's nibbling at the Oxford bait.
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Thanks for interesting article. I will take into consideration.
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