Believing as I do that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Shakespeare, I went to see this film with a slight bias. But I was prepared to be convinced.

The film recounts a tale of deception, dramatic and political, as Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, attempts to have “his” plays performed under Ben Johnson’s name. Bitter about this affront to his capability, Johnson inadvertently gives a charlatan Shakespeare (seemingly acted as Russell Brand’s distant ancestor) the opportunity to sweep in and take the credit at the end of Henry V’s first night. Ben Johnson spends the rest of the film angry at the rise to fame of an incompetent buffoon. That’s the gist of it anyway.

But this is also muddied by politics: Elizabeth’s reign is ending, and much of the film is a build up to seeing Richard III as Oxford’s attempt to rouse a mob to support the Exeter uprising. The remainder obsesses with the fact that everyone is everyone else’s mother and lover. Told through flashbacks, apparently narrated by Derek Jacobi in his own London play, the plot was occasionally unfathomable. Temporal shifts and poor characterisation meant I spent most of the film feeling sorry for the villain, Cecil, because the hero, de Vere, knocked his chess game over when he was a kid... Perhaps the film was protecting itself: layers of unreliability are a good defence against historians.

However the film has good points. Even for an historical costume drama, the clothes were excellent –James I’s shoes in close up produced appreciative “ooh”s – and the cinematography is spectacular. Even the acting is pretty good. Vanessa Redgrave’s not-so-virgin Queen is simultaneously sexy, fragile and powerful. Rhys Ifan manages restrained!

In fact, as a pseudo-documentary, satire on the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship, this film would do well. The multiple, pointless and bizarre sex scenes might serve as mockery of previous “classics”: Shakespeare in Love, and all those Queen Elizabeth I films. When de Vere declares that he writes plays because of the “voices” in his head, the audience’s laughter erupted. Such bad scripting must be deliberate? Perhaps this film is a hoax? A clever, ironic comment on Shakespeare’s writing? This conspiracy theory would definitely work; Emmerich’s does not...