Shakespeare’s name removed from road signs

To protest the new film which questions whether Bard was ‘a fraud’ :

UK: Shakespeare’s name is being temporarily removed from pub and street signs to support a campaign against a new film which questions whether the Bard was ‘a fraud’ (Pic:PA)

A FILM which says the Bard was a fraud caused a right Tempest in Shakespeare-land yesterday.

As Anonymous premiered at the London Film Festival, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust held a 24-hour Bard blackout to show what life would be like if the “conspiracy theory” was true.

The Stratford-on-Avon based charity taped over Shakespeare’s name on nine road signs in Warwickshire.

A sheet was flung over the Gower Memorial statue in his hometown while his eyes were covered on pub signs across the country.

It might seem much ado about nothing, but the Trust is angry that Anonymous, starring Rhys Ifans, suggests the celebrated playwright was barely literate and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, really wrote his plays. The Trust’s Dr Paul Edmondson said, “This film flies in the face of a mass of historical fact, but there is a risk that people could be hoodwinked.”

He has a point. De Vere died in 1604 - before some plays, including All’s Well That Ends Well, had been penned. Unless they were ghost-written. By Banquo...