Shakespeare may not have been a noble, but that doesn't mean he couldn't write about nobility
Sony Pictures
In the New York Times, the Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, author of a standard book on the authorship controversy, deplores the attempts of Sony Pictures to seek legitimacy for the new film Anonymous's more bizarre leaps of imagination, rightly noting "So much for, 'Hey, it's just a movie.'"
I don't blame the partisans of the Earl of Oxford for their skepticism that a poet and playwright so revered would have left so few documents and only a single surviving letter. Even Sigmund Freud and the Supreme Court have shown sympathy. In fact I think that skepticism has done Shakespeare scholarship a favor by forcing it to confront loose ends and open questions. And I must agree with critics of Stephen Greenblatt's otherwise marvelous Will in the World that there is slim evidence for imaginative attempts to fill in the biographical gaps. (Of course this is true of Oxfordian speculation as well.) The biggest open question, and opportunity for revisionists, is why somebody who was concerned enough about reputation and social status to sponsor his father's application for a coat of arms would have chosen the still-disreputable career of acting in the first place. Perhaps he recognized it as a rising occupation, or he may just have had supreme confidence in his own ability to elevate it.