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All Is True ★★1/2

by
ABR Arts 06 May 2019

All Is True ★★1/2

by
ABR Arts 06 May 2019

There is a scene in Kenneth Branagh’s British film, All is True, where the earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen) tells William Shakespeare (Branagh) that The Bard has lived ‘a small life’. As the Southampton points out snidely, there have been no scandals in Shakespeare’s backstory, no drunken gallivanting on the Continent or tempers flaring in taverns over misconstrued sonnets. Yet, as uncontroversial as Shakespeare’s life may have been – first as a hard-working actor, playwright, and theatre proprietor in London and later as a retiree in Stratford-upon-Avon – his life after death has been positively eventful. Under Branagh’s direction, Shakespeare’s rather unremarkable domestic set-up – a dutiful wife and two daughters – has been freighted with dramatic tension and subjected to great embellishment on screen.

From the New Issue

Comments (2)

  • Thanks, Caroline. Incredibly, these things happen. ABR
    Posted by Peter Rose
    09 May 2019
  • It is a pity that Johanna Leggatt doesn't seem to know the difference between incredulous and incredible. Sorry to be a pedant, but if arts journalists can't write proper English - and, tragically, in a piece about Shakespeare - what chance the rest of us?
    Posted by Caroline Lurie
    09 May 2019

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