William Fakespeare

The movie “Anonymous” has breathed new life into an old controversy.

Questioning Shakespeare’s identity has been around in the academy for some time.

Now many unqualified people are expected to have a position.

My unqualifications are second to none. Well, as the bard said, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Of course, that was a different bard, Alexander Pope, but it’s a line that I’m sure William Shakespeare or Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, would have been proud of.

Saying I’m an Oxfordian sounds classy; people might mistakenly think I went to Oxford. But extensive Wikipedia research has convinced me that Edward de Vere is about as likely to have written those plays as the Duke of Earl. To believe the scenario of “Anonymous,” you have to buy into a conspiracy so complicated that I defy anyone who doesn’t have the Roland Emmerich study guide to explain it.

I should end this week’s entry with an apposite quote from Shakespeare. Even better: a few cartoons that use his words.