Friday, January 15, 2010

Hogg calls and New Year's news


2010 looks like it's going to be a big year for Shakespeare authorship news. Kurt Kreiler's new book continues to make waves in Germany (one of the largest newspapers in Germany, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, earlier this month wrote up a big, favorable review of Kreiler's work); James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? appears in April; Charles Beauclerk's Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom also appears in April.

And, good or bad or otherwise, it appears that the first big movie about Edward de Vere as Shakespeare is going to be helmed by Hollywood blockbuster director Roland Emmerich.

News arrives today of the first bit of casting for Emmerich's Anonymous -- which is now reportedly working with a $30 million budget and begins shooting in Berlin in March. According to the movie website Collider.com, Emmerich has cast the young British actor Edward Hogg as one of his marquee talents.

Looking over Hogg's resume he certainly doesn't lack for film/television or stage experience. Hogg is best known on screen for his lead role in last year's White Lightnin'. Hogg has also been in productions of Measure for Measure and The Tempest at Shakespeare's Globe as well as a turn as the fool in King Lear at the RSC.

Expect a raft of Hogg puns (as in this post's title), especially if Hogg is cast as Edward de Vere -- the blue boar himself.

2 comments:

John in Berkeley said...

Hi Mark: I assume you've heard by now that Edward Hogg will play Robert Cecil... In other news, Hanno Wember from shake-speare-today.de was kind enough to send me a copy of Kreiler's book. I've gotten about 80 pages into it, and it's very interesting. Much weight is placed on the Harvey-Nashe pamphlet war, of course, but also on the novella "The Adventures of Master F.I." in "A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres," which Kreiler confidently attributes to De Vere.

Mark said...

Hi, John. I'd seen some mention the R Cecil role going to Hogg. Thank you for updating the thread!

I haven't yet received a copy of Kreiler's book. He and I have arranged a book swap, and I just sent my copy of SBAN to him. (On the other hand, I don't read German, so I'd have to hand it off to someone who could tell me what's going on!)

Lots of interesting potential in the works of Gascoigne -- but something of a briar patch too. I held off from doing much with the Gascoigne cannon in SBAN, in part, because there was so much promising material in so many parts of de Vere's life. I hoped that other scholars might be able to make better sense of it. And it looks like Krelier's doing some of that great good work.