Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

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Covering up Shakespeare to expose the truth

Authorship conspiracy is much ado about nothing As box offices await the arrival of the new Hollywood film Anonymous, which portrays William Shakespeare as a fraud, the playwright’s name is disappearing from pub and street signs up and down the country. The blackout is a bid to highlight the potential impact of the film’s attempt to re-write English culture and history.

The great Shakespeare cover-up has been timed to coincide with the London premiere of Anonymous on Tuesday 25 October.   Even the famous Gower Memorial statue in Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon has been covered up to illustrate how different the world would be without William Shakespeare.  Pubs are shrouding their Shakespeare-themed names and in Shakespeare’s county, Warwickshire, road signs bearing his name have been taped over. 

The cover-up is part of a campaign by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to tackle the film’s conspiracy theory that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was a barely literate front man for the Earl of Oxford. 

Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Knowledge and Research at the charity said, “This film flies in the face of a mass of historical fact, but there is a risk that people who have never questioned the authorship of Shakespeare’s works could be hoodwinked.  Shakespeare is at the core of England’s cultural and historical DNA, and he is certainly our most famous export.   Today’s activity barely scratches the surface, but we hope it will remind people of the enormous legacy we owe to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon Avon.  Where better to start a conversation about the true author than in the pubs and streets that bear his name?”

HRH The Prince of Wales, Stephen Fry, Greg Doran, and Dan Snow are among the big names speaking up for Shakespeare on The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s campaign website, 60 Minutes with Shakespeare http://60-minutes.bloggingshakespeare.com. The site includes a soundpost from Anonymous director Roland Emmerich, as well as 60 authors, actors and scholars answering the big questions about Shakespeare in 60 seconds each. 

Next Friday (28 October) Dr Edmondson and Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, will publish a free e-book, Shakespeare Bites Back, (www.shakespearebitesback.com) which sets out the evidence for Shakespeare as the true author of the plays which bear his name.