Anonymous (2011)

In modern-day New York, Derek Jacobi arrives at a theatre where he delivers a monologue questioning the lack of manuscript writings of William Shakespeare, despite the undeniable fact that he is the most performed playwright of all time. Ben Jonson is preparing to enter the stage. The narrator offers to take the viewers into a different story behind the origin of Shakespeare's plays: "one of quills and swords, of power and betrayal, of a stage conquered and a throne lost."

Jumping to Elizabethan London, Ben Jonson is running through the streets carrying a parcel and being pursued by soldiers. He enters the theatre called The Rose and hides the manuscripts he carries as the soldiers set fire to the theatre. Ben is detained at the Tower of London to face the questioning of puritanical Robert Cecil. The writings by Edward de Vere that Robert Cecil thought Ben had are not found on him.

In a flashback of five years, an adult Edward lives, disgraced and banished from court, in the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The queen is old and in failing health, but, as she has remained unmarried, lacks an heir. The elderly Lord William Cecil, the Queen's primary adviser, and his son Robert manage the kingdom's affairs. A growing group of malcontent nobles gather at court, led by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, who is widely believed to be Elizabeth's bastard son. The Cecils have secretly been planning to solve the succession crisis by offering the crown to Elizabeth's cousin, King James VI of Scotland; the idea of a foreign king inheriting the crown of the Tudors angers enough nobles that they begin to muster support for Essex to claim the throne when Elizabeth dies. Edward's young friend, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, is pledged to support Essex but Edward warns him against any rash action and that any move they make has to be managed carefully to avoid civil war.

When Edward and Henry visit a public theatre to see a play written by Ben Jonson, Edward witnesses how a play can sway people, and thinks that it can be used to thwart the influence of the Cecils, who as devout Puritans reject theatre as the 'worship of false idols', with Queen Elizabeth concerning her successor. After the Cecils declare Ben's play illegal and arrest him, Edward arranges for his release and instructs him to stage a play he wrote and act as the author. The play, Henry V, galvanizes the people and even Ben, who had contemptuously dismissed Edward's skill as a writer as the passing fancy of a bored nobleman, is impressed. At curtain call, however, William Shakespeare, an actor and "drunken oaf", steps forward to be recognized as the author of the play.

Elizabeth accepts a gift that evokes a memory from forty years before, when the boy, Edward, performed in his own play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, as Puck. After the elder Earl of Oxford's death, the teenage Edward is entrusted as a ward to William Cecil and must write his plays secretly to avoid his guardian's ire. During this time, Edward kills a spying servant who had discovered his plays. William Cecil covers up the incident but forces Edward into a marriage with his daughter, Anne. However, Edward is infatuated with the queen and, after a brief time living on the continent, he begins an affair with Elizabeth. When the queen discovers she is pregnant with Edward's child, she tells William of her intention to marry him but he dissuades her and arranges for the child to be fostered into a noble family, as they had done in the past with Elizabeth's other bastards. Elizabeth ends her affair with Edward without telling him why. Angered, he has an affair with a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth and learns from her that he had fathered a child with the Queen. When Elizabeth learns of the affair, Edward is banished from court but not before learning the name of his illegitimate child: Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

Back in the adult Edward's time, despite Shakespeare's claim to his plays, Edward continues to provide Ben with plays which quickly become the thrill of London. Despite their unhappiness at the plays' popularity, the Cecils do not outlaw them because they fear the mob which might occur if they do. Ben becomes increasingly frustrated with his role as Edward's messenger and his own inability to match the brilliance of his plays. Later on, Shakespeare discovers that Edward is the real author and extorts him for money. He orders the construction of the Globe Theatre, where he bans Jonson's works from being performed, and claims Edward's plays as his own. Christopher Marlowe discovers Shakespeare's deal, and is later found with his throat slit. Jonson confronts Shakespeare and accuses him of murder. Edward and Essex, seeking to reduce Cecil's influence and to secure Essex's claim to succession, decide to force their way into the palace, against Cecil's wishes. Edward writes the play Richard III in order to incite hatred against Cecil and to summon a mob of Essex's supporters. Simultaneously, he would gain access to Elizabeth by sending her Venus and Adonis.

The plan is set to fail when a bitter Ben, angered by what he perceives as his own inadequacy as a writer and Shakespeare's unearned success, betrays the plan to Robert Cecil by informing him that Richard III will be played as a hunchback, a reference to Robert Cecil's own deformity. The mob is stopped at the Bridge, and Robert Devereux and Henry surrender in the palace courtyard when the soldiers fire on them from the parapet. Robert Cecil tells Edward that Elizabeth has had other illegitimate children, the first of whom was born during the reign of Bloody Mary when she was only sixteen and a virtual prisoner of her sister. William Cecil, already close to the future queen, hid the child and passed him off as the son of the Earl of Oxford, revealing Edward's parentage to him: he is the first of Elizabeth's bastard children. Horrified by the failure of his plan for the succession, the expected execution of his son and the knowledge that he committed incest with his own mother, Edward nevertheless visits the Queen in a private audience to beg her to spare Henry. Elizabeth agrees to spare Henry, but insists that Edward remain anonymous as the true author of "Shakespeare's" works. Henry is released while Essex is executed for his treason.

After Elizabeth's death, James of Scotland succeeds as James I of England and retains Robert Cecil as his primary adviser. On his deathbed, Edward entrusts a parcel full of his writings to Ben to keep them away from the royal family. Ben at first refuses the task and confesses to Edward that he betrayed him to the Cecils. In an unexpected heart-to-heart between the two playwrights, Edward admits that, whenever he had heard the applause for his plays, he had always known they were celebrating another man but that he had always wanted to gain Ben's approval, as he had been the only one to know that he had been the author of the plays. Ben admits that he considers Edward to be the 'Soul of the Age' and promises to protect the plays and publish them when the time is right.

After Edward's death, Ben's interrogation ends when he tells Robert Cecil hears that the Rose has been destroyed by fire and he had hidden the plays inside. As he is released, Robert instructs Ben to better Edward and wipe his memory from the world. Ben tells him that he would if he could but that it was impossible to do. Miraculously, Ben finds the manuscripts where he hid them in the ruins of the Rose. At a performance of a "Shakespeare" play performed at court, James I remarks to a visibly unhappy Robert that he is an avid theatre goer.

Returning to the present day theatre, the narrator concludes the story by revealing the characters' fates: Robert Cecil remained the King's most trusted advisor, but never succeeded in banishing Edward's plays. Shakespeare did not remain in London, but returned to his hometown of Stratford upon Avon where he spent his last remaining years as a businessman. Ben would achieve his dream and became the first Poet Laureate, and would later write the introduction to the collected works purported to be authored by William Shakespeare. Although the story ends with the fate of its characters, the narrator proclaims that the poet who wrote these works, whether it be Shakespeare or another, had not seen the end of their story, and that "his monument is ever-living, made not of stone but of verse, and it shall be remembered ... as long as words are made of breath and breath of life."