Anonymous, the new film by Roland Emmerich, which claims our celebrated playwright, Shakespeare, was barely literate and that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote all the plays has undoubtedly got Shakespearean die-hard fans in a tizzy.
When the premier hit the red carpet, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust launched a PR campaign in a bid to show what it would be like without our greatest literary writer. They removed Shakespeare’s name from nine road signs in Warwickshire, flung a sheet over the Gower Memorial statue in Stratford, and blacked out his eyes on many pub signs across the county.
It might seem 'much ado about nothing', but this clever and ultimately very simple, low cost campaign got picked up by all the national papers as well as being featured on the BBC. Consequently hundreds of people have got behind the initiative with Shakespeare pubs up and down the country from Brighton to Edinburgh getting involved.
We applaud its ingenuity; it has all the hallmarks of a classic PR stunt. However I think we’d question whether crossing out Shakespeare’s name demonstrates an actual protest against the film, or possibly could it be interpreted as supporting it! What do you think?
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