1. Introduction
[1.1] The sitcom Upstart Crow begins in Shakespeare's home with his teenage daughter Sue reading aloud Juliet's famous line: "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" In contemporary popular culture, these words are among the most cherished and canonical of English poetry, but Sue delivers them begrudgingly and belligerently. Her recitation ends when she quizzes her father about the character of Juliet, before acerbically denouncing her as unrealistic. Dismissing Juliet as a "sad weirdo," Sue flops into her seat, seemingly giving up on her father's work (1.1 "Star Crossed Lovers"). In being "variously bothered, insulted or otherwise assaulted" by a fan object—here the celebrated author Shakespeare and his work—Sue is identifiable as an antifan (Gray 2003, 70). While the meaning of antifan has been shifting online in recent years, I use the term as in Jonathan Gray's seminal study to refer to "those who strongly dislike a given text or genre [or other fan object], considering it inane, stupid, morally bankrupt and/or aesthetic drivel" (2003, 70). I examine how the antifan is a pivotal figure in two Shakespeare biofictions written by Ben Elton: Upstart Crow (BBC, 2016–18) and All Is True (dir. Kenneth Branagh, 2018). Upstart Crow is a popular sitcom about Shakespeare's early years as a writer in London and Stratford, while All Is True is a somber biopic about Shakespeare's retirement to his family home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Although Elton's texts differ in form, genre, and scope, they both foreground the views of Shakespeare's female antifans and use the antifan to probe Shakespeare's meaning to the contemporary viewer. I also briefly consider Shakespeare antifandom in a third text: teen adventure comedy St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold (dir. Oliver Parker and Barnaby Thompson, 2009). St. Trinian's 2 merits discussion because, while its plot hinges on Shakespeare and his antifans, it offers a different spin on both and "solves" the problems that remain unsettled in Elton's biofictions.
[1.2] The prominence of antifans in Elton's works may seem incongruous given that Shakespeare is their raison d'être. After all, Upstart Crow was part of the BBC's Shakespeare Festival in 2016, itself part of year-long global commemorations marking the quatercentenary of Shakespeare's death, and was successful enough to run for three seasons. All Is True came about when Kenneth Branagh, who cameoed in Upstart Crow's 2018 Christmas special, proposed the project to Elton (Elton 2018a). Branagh is Britain's preeminent Shakespearean actor-director and "has done more than anyone on the face of the planet to popularize Shakespeare" (White 2005, 280). Branagh's lifelong attachment to Shakespeare finds its apogee in his conception, direction, and starring role as Shakespeare in All Is True (note 1). In short, the creation and the content of Upstart Crow and All Is True could not be more embedded in the Shakespeare establishment; what, then, is the Shakespeare antifan doing in these texts?
[1.3] Both of Elton's works explore who William Shakespeare was and how "Shakespeare™" measures up to modern values and norms (Lanier 2007). To delve into these questions, Upstart Crow and All Is True use the antifan to broach the contemporary concern of gender equality. As Emma Smith (2012) observes, "Shakespeare's role in modern culture" means it is not easy to dismiss sexism or prejudice in his works because "we burden his works with the requirement that they can somehow anticipate our later [modern] concerns and ways of thinking. Put more simply, a misogynistic Shakespeare would be a very uncomfortable Man of the Millennium" (note 2). Popular portraits of Shakespeare "typically locate the meaning of [his] works firmly with the man himself, in his personal life or his individual genius rather than, say, in the source texts which he imitated" (Lanier 2002, 114). By putting the historic Shakespeare in direct contact with antifans who are part of his personal life, Upstart Crow and All Is True validate and compel the audience to engage with antifans' opposition. The antifans expose Shakespeare's failure to live up to selected "moral [and] societal expectations, values and norms" (Claessens and Van den Bulck 2014, 63), destabilizing his much-vaunted universality. Specifically, Elton's texts present Shakespeare as a sexist invested in upholding the patriarchal status quo. Moreover, I propose that the antifans' pillorying is productive (Gray 2005), enacting for the audience a form of cathartic and consolatory "talking back" to Shakespeare.
[1.4] Despite the depth of the antifans' antipathy, there are times in Upstart Crow and All Is True where antifandom emerges as ambivalent. Elsewhere, I suggest that "even when biofictions have an iconoclastic approach to Shakespeare, Bardolatry always seeps in; perhaps it is innate to the form" (Semple 2023c, 12). Elton certainly depicts Shakespeare as flawed, but the great man's failings are often presented as excusable or are mitigated by his benevolence. By prioritizing feminist approaches and female characters, biofictions can "creatively reverse historical exclusions, push for inclusivity, deconstruct and question Shakespeare's legacy and feed conversations about cultural authority and authorship into contemporary movements, such as #MeToo" (Semple 2023c, 11). For the female antifans in Elton's texts, though, their patriarchal culture often makes some degree of Shakespeare fandom inescapable. Thus, Elton's literary hero is the target of antifan dislike and fan admiration, sometimes from the same person.
[1.5] Screen depictions of Shakespeare's life are typically male-dominated; male characters noticeably outnumber female characters, and Will's relationships are largely homosocial. Will's erotic and literary exploits often bring him into conflict with powerful men, further heightening narrative tension and increasing dramatic action. For instance, Will runs up against the schemes and authority of privileged figures like Robert Greene, the Master of the Revels in Upstart Crow, and Sir Thomas Lucy in All Is True, but he emerges humanized and heroized and, ultimately, triumphant (at the very least, he wins the moral victory). The enmity of these elite men, who often appear as stock villains, arises from their class prejudice and personal ambition rather than familiarity with Shakespeare as a person or judgment of his work's quality. For more informed insight into Will's personal and professional principles, we must turn to the women in his life.
2. Upstart Crow's Sue and Kate
[2.1] Compared to Shakespeare in Love (1998)—the twentieth century's foundational Shakespeare biopic—it is noticeable that Upstart Crow includes a greater range of female subjects who engage in diverse activities in varied spaces. Most prominent in the sitcom are Shakespeare's wife Anne, daughters Sue and Judith, mother Mary, and the fictional Kate, his London landlady's daughter. Although these women are limited by their sitcom character type, and some are "bound both by their historical background and their role vis-à-vis the playwright" (Petrina 2020, 121), it is these "female characters…[who] often assert ideological or feminist critiques" (Blackwell 2021, 134). Across the show's three seasons, Sue and Kate—both associated with Katherine, the eponymous heroine of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew—are both fans and antifans of the author and his work. Greene may be Will's nemesis, but it is this pair who share a history with Will; these young women live with him and are knowledgeable of, engage with, and influence his literary output. Listening to his plans, discussing his actions, inspiring or reading his play scripts, Sue and Kate offer Will praise and advice. However, when he fails to live up to their expectations—which always lie behind the antifan's dislike, as Gray (2003) notes—they vociferously express their disapproval and critique his personal and creative choices.
[2.2] Upstart Crow finds ample opportunity for mockery and moral lessons in Shakespeare's writing style, originality, and subject matter. Although Will is convinced that his works' wordiness and obscure jokes will secure his fame, those in his social circle try to stem his prolixity. As Peter Holland remarks, "This Shakespeare is comic because, well, he is Shakespeare, the icon of high culture whose work, it is popularly assumed, nobody understands and nobody enjoys" (2019, 19). As I suggest in the introduction, Sue is a prominent antifan, speaking the first words of Upstart Crow's first episode and attacking her father's work. Sue voices the imagined complaints of modern students and critiques Shakespeare's florid language; Juliet, she says, sounds like "a complete turnip!…Dad, nobody talks like this!" (1.1 "Star Crossed Lovers"). Shakespeare may be an icon of high culture, but to his teenage daughter, his dramatic efforts are pathetically "try-hard" (1.2 "The Play's the Thing"). Will's writing conspicuously upsets Sue when, inspired by Shrew, he sets out to make her conform to his patriarchal ideals of femininity. Not only does "the taming of the Sue" fail, but the scheme makes Will look foolish and insensitive, while Sue feels betrayed: "I know everyone else thinks I'm a gobby bitchington, but I thought at least you respected me, and now you're calling me a shrew? I hate you, I hate you, don't ever talk to me ever again!" (2.5 "Beware My Sting!"). By the end of the episode, Will repairs this father–daughter relationship by finishing his tragic teen romance just for Sue.
[2.3] While Sue evaluates her father from the position of a young teenager, Kate's antifan role is grounded in her intellectual prowess, liberal views, and experiences as an adult woman. Well-read and informed on social issues, Kate is crucial to deflating Will's ego and unseating the audience's assumption of his genius. Kate is what Gray (2003) would term a close reader. Attending carefully to the quality of Will's work, she is especially critical of his (unacknowledged) borrowings from other sources. For instance, Shakespeare did not coin the phrase "manners maketh man" but, as Kate informs us, plagiarized it from the Middle English poem Piers Plowman (2.1 "The Green-Eyed Monster"). Will's revisions to his sources are the subject of an uncomfortable debate with his family, along with Kate, servant Bottom, and friend Kit Marlowe. Ventriloquizing the play's modern audiences, Mary remarks that Juliet's extreme youth "always bothered" her, and Anne repeatedly calls it "a bit weird" (3.4 "Sigh No More"). As the central antifan in the scene, Kate divulges how Will lifted his tale of teen romance from a 1562 narrative poem and—to the disapproval of the group—deliberately made Juliet three years younger. In response, Will only offers poor excuses and squirms at the insinuation of unseemliness.
[2.4] Upstart Crow frequently attends to gender inequalities in Shakespeare's work and his world. In response to Will's periodic sexism, Kate embraces the role of the antifan, deeming the great author's speech, decision, or artistic effort "inane, stupid, morally bankrupt and/or aesthetic drivel" (Gray 2003, 70). As a "strong woman, who is both strong and a woman," Kate anachronistically champions feminism, and this retrospective addition of "feminist characters into Shakespeare's social circle allows him to remain relevant today" (Merchant 2021, ¶ 15). In the sitcom world of Upstart Crow, Kate satisfyingly rebalances inequalities and scores points against the patriarchal Bard. However, having Kate voice modern feminist ideals is not without its problems, as it means the sitcom, to draw on Hailey Bachrach's analysis of the play Emilia, ends up "insist[ing] upon the timeless universality of female experience and ambition" (2022, 168).
[2.5] Throughout the three seasons of Upstart Crow, Kate enacts her antifandom by drawing the viewers' attention to the disparity between male privilege and the daily disadvantages women face. For instance, when Greene invites Kit to his all-male literary salon, Kate sardonically laments, in Latin, the exclusion of women. Will struggles to understand, so she translates at his request:
[2.6] Kate: It's Latin for "how sad that women are too stupid to discuss Roman philosophy."
Will: Well, yes it is a shame, but there you go.
Kit: No point crying about it. Birds are thick, can't change nature.
Bottom: Get over it. (3.2 "Wild Laughter in the Throat of Death")
[2.7] For all their genius, Kit and Will fail to see the irony while Kate demonstrates her worth, skills, and knowledge for the umpteenth time—she is an autodidact, fluent in Latin, Italian, and Greek, and conversant in the classics—only to be dismissed. With an implicit nod to the recuperative work of feminist literary history, the show suggests that there were likely many Kates in the Renaissance. In a patriarchal world, as Kit informs Kate, a woman's value lies in her attractiveness and marriageability: "Clever girl's an ugly girl Kate!" (1.2 "The Play's the Thing"). Will even cautions Kate about her intellectual gifts, implicitly emphasizing the sexual double standard: "Kate, have a care. As you're well aware, clever gobby birds, like you, who remain unmarried, be thought witches" (3.1 "Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!"). Kate's wit and cleverness are invaluable to her role as antifan, however, as she uses humor to express how she is "variously bothered, insulted or otherwise assaulted" by Will's behavior and attitudes (Gray 2003, 70). When Will outlines the "appalling story" of The Taming of the Shrew, Kate "invent[s] a new phrase," labeling him in a riddle a "male-show-Venice-star-soul" (2.5 "Beware My Sting!"). Jokes like these simultaneously show up Will and show off Kate's intelligence, learnedness, and wit. The modern audience gets the punch line, but the great poet is left mystified, further puncturing Shakespeare's iconic status.
[2.8] Kate's aspirations to be an actor are a running joke in the sitcom, and although she eventually gets to fulfil her dream, her male friends consistently remind her of her position. "Women, eh, they're second-class citizens; get over it," says the laddish Kit (1.2 "The Play's the Thing"), while Will proclaims, "Lady acting is illegal. Besides which, girls can't act" (1.1 "Star Crossed Lovers"), and Bottom declares that acting "takes a bloke. Women aren't clever enough" (1.2 "The Play's the Thing"). Will even mansplains the inequalities of their world:
[2.9] Will: Kate, be realistic. The law states that a woman may not attend university, take a profession, hold public office or own property.
Kit: Men are better than women—by law. (1.4 "Love Is Not Love")
[2.10] Kit's thoughtless sexism is deployed to ameliorate Will's participation in the patriarchal status quo and his failure to alleviate women's exclusion from systems of power (see, for example, 3.5 "The Most Unkindest Cut of All"). Will is privileged, then, but at least he is tactful and kind to Kate. As the antifan's mockery reveals, he is flawed, but the sitcom takes pains to make him likable by showing his genuine affection for Kate and his errors as benign and an understandable part of the character of the great man.
[2.11] In other episodes, Upstart Crow tries to redeem Shakespeare by reminding the viewer of the constraints imposed by his era. As Kate refuses to be silent on "her women's emancipation stuff," as Bottom calls it (1.6 "The Quality of Mercy"), she is especially infuriated by Shrew. However, after Will has staged the offending play, upset Kate, and alienated Sue by attempting to "tame" her, Kate nonetheless comforts the downcast poet. Will fears he has lost the good opinion of both women, but Kate reassures him that she still respects him: "You are a creature of your times, and in truth, even now your misogyny be less offensive than most. At least you take trouble to write your women some fine verse" (2.5 "Beware My Sting!") (note 3). Now in the role of Shakespeare fan, Kate models a forgiving attitude for the audience, excusing Will by espousing the view that Shrew could have been even more misogynistic. The sitcom implies we must make allowances for Will, who is both genius and flawed human, a product of the patriarchal ideologies and socioeconomic forces of his day. Thus, although Will writes a strong female protagonist for Shrew, his ambition trumps any other concerns; he will "crush, abuse, and humiliate [his heroine…] because while women love the theatre, 'tis men who pay for entry" (2.5 "Beware My Sting!").
[2.12] When Will makes up with Sue, his limitations are again comically evident. Having badly hurt his daughter, Will offers the teen the final script of Romeo and Juliet by way of apology. Now a fan of the play, an awed Sue asks whether she really inspired the tragic heroine Juliet. Will's reply is the punchline to a joke that is on him: "You're a girl and Juliet's a girl, a direct lift really" (2.5 "Beware My Sting!"). Although Sue is a fan by the episode's end, Will's response—his poor parenting, unabashed sexism, and limited imagination (all girls are the same)—helps deflate and disturb ideas of Shakespeare as a "progressive liberal" literary deity (Keller and Stratyner 2004, 1). Like the filtering of Shakespeare through the persona of the actor David Mitchell, which Anna Blackwell explores in detail, the antifan helps Upstart Crow "sustain contradictory values" (2021, 136). Upstart Crow's Will is at once a great and an ordinary man, both timeless and limited by his time, and so he can represent both humanity's "greatest aspirations and our worst fears about ourselves" (Franssen 2016, 9).
3. All Is True's Judith and Anne
[3.1] In a rather different key from Upstart Crow is All Is True (2018), an elegiac Shakespeare biopic directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. The film imagines Shakespeare's final years when, having spent his life in London and just watched the Globe Theatre burn down, he returns to Stratford to a frosty reception from his family. Will has been an absentee father and husband, and his wife Anne and daughter Judith are resentful at his return and grieving for Hamnet (his only son who died aged eleven, some seventeen years previous). Anne's biographical afterlife has always been "fluid, flexible, and adaptable" (Scheil 2018, 103), and All Is True initially draws on a long tradition of imagining Anne as a shrew, with Judith a younger, angrier version of her mother. The biopic also presents the audience with versions of the author common in biography and biofiction: "Poor Shakespeare," trapped in a cold marriage, and "Bad Shakespeare (treating his dependent family cruelly)" (Maguire and Smith 2013, 68). Broadly, though, this Will is sympathetic: he is triply bereaved, having lost theater, career, and son, all while in unfamiliar surroundings and beleaguered by hostile companions.
[3.2] These hostile antifans, as Melissa Click proposes, can "reveal [much] about a text's construction, appeal, and reception" (2019, 2). Taking Shakespeare as the text on this occasion, antifans Judith and Anne reveal that his gender politics are so problematic for a modern audience that they demand explanation. All Is True goes to some lengths to justify Will's sexism as a kind of misguided favoritism based on a deep love of his son as a fellow poet, and grief at his loss. This narrative mitigates, if not exculpates, Will's sexism; after all, who could blame the genius for grieving his son? The film, therefore, airs the antifans' dislike and shows their views to have good cause, but the women's antipathy is gradually tamed. Like the Shakespearean romances that influence All Is True, it enables contrary readings: on the one hand, family strife gives way to redemption and reconciliation; on the other, this harmony comes at the expense of women's agency (note 4). By the close of the film, antifans Anne and Judith concede to and reconcile with the Bard's benevolent patriarchy.
[3.3] Soon after arriving home, Will decides to create a memorial garden for Hamnet. Such horticultural ambition may strike the audience as innocuous, but to Anne it is yet another sign of Will's selfishness. "It's not Hamnet you mourn, it's yourself," she declares. Will's delayed grief and new obsession rankle, but his return opens up other old wounds, too. When Will giddily announces the imminent arrival of the Earl of Southampton, Anne recalls that he is the object of desire in many of her husband's sonnets. She implies that this fact made her a laughingstock in the town: "All these years Will, worried about your reputation. Have you even once considered mine?" As Isaac Butler (2018) remarks, the film sets out how Shakespeare's "family has protected the Great Man from seeing the consequences of his actions for most of his adult life. They have done this because he is Great, but they have also done this because he is a Man, and they are women." Following a serious argument, Anne delivers a wistful monologue that highlights Will's male privilege. Looking back over their married life and implicitly censuring her husband's neglect of family and prioritizing of work, Anne reveals the source of her resentment:
[3.4] Judith tried to teach herself to write you know, after Hamnet's death, but she never had the patience, not like Susanna. I should have liked to have been able to write a few letters of the alphabet, particularly married to you. Remember our wedding day? Me, older, pregnant, and you a strange clever lad of eighteen. I know what people thought. I couldn't even sign the register, just made a stupid mark, I felt so foolish. Then you went to London and became this great writer, with a wife at home, who couldn't read a word. [Sigh.] I often wondered if it bothered you. But why should it, you were hardly here.
[3.5] Although Will's success has provided for the family, Anne and Judith's reputations, happiness, and hopes have been sacrifices on the altar of his genius. To this confession, Will is silent, but the argument is cathartic for the family.
[3.6] With everyone's grievances aired, the family grow more settled. Anne's thawing out is unsubtly signaled by her helping Will in the garden and welcoming him out of the guest room and into their marital bed (the infamous second-best bed). Katherine Scheil remarks that, as Shakespeare biofiction imagines his private life, Anne "offers a particular mode of access, connected to sexual intimacy, reproduction, domesticity, and maternal power" that often "works against [the] sanctioned version of Shakespeare the immortal poet" (2018, xvi–xvii). Will's marital struggles humanize him, and when he and Anne make peace, he appears affectionate and soft-hearted. Their final scene together has the pair fondly quoting A Midsummer Night's Dream to one another, as their daughters look on. Here, Anne and Will are versions of Dream's warring spouses, Titania and Oberon, and similarly reconcile, providing closure to the romantic strife.
[3.7] Drawing on media and cultural studies, Click (2019) observes that gender is an essential identity category for studies of the antifan. This is certainly true in examining antifans in All Is True, where the sudden imposition of a patriarchy on the all-female household causes discontent (note 5). Moreover, it is Will's beliefs about, expectations of, and responses to the sexes that arouses Judith's ire. While Anne is an antifan with a quiet strength, Judith is fierce and explosive. Like Shakespeare's Katherine, she is sharp-tongued; she needles her father, caustically criticizes his focus on Hamnet, and is brutally honest with no regard for propriety.
[3.8] Judith expresses her disgust with her father, and the patriarchy he represents, in a row at the dinner table. She is conscious of the precarious position of unmarried women and fears she will either be destitute when her father dies or, at best, dependent on her brother-in-law (the puritanical John Hall). Judith bitterly remarks that Will will "leave [his estate] to the sainted Susanna, and by law, her property is [her husband's], as is her body, for all the use he makes of it." Judith is unhappy with the gender-based inequalities that shape her life, but Will is surprised at her resentment. In a spot of everyday sexism, he essentially tells her to cheer up:
[3.9] Will: You are grown hard Judith, there was a time when you were such a simple joyful soul.
Judith: Was I father? When was that? Was it before Hamnet died? Is that it? Was it before Hamnet died and I survived?
Anne: Judith.
Judith: Well, it's what he thinks. Every single time he reads one of them bloody poems, which aren't even that good, he thinks, "Why did she survive and not him? You know, the golden boy's gone and you know what? I'm just left with a girl, a useless, pointless girl, oh she was a pretty thing once, that girl, she was a simple joyful soul that girl, but you want to look at her now, she's an angry bitch, still hanging round. Why did the wrong twin die?"
[3.10] While Judith is irritated that her father comments on her character as if he knows her, the root of her annoyance is his partiality for Hamnet. In her study of antifandom, Click insightfully observes that "the expression of disgust involves a desire to differentiate oneself from and position oneself above the disgusting object" (2019, 15). Judith expresses her disgust with her father by positioning herself above an object that he prizes and that represents his patriarchal power and legacy: Hamnet's poems. Judith differentiates herself from the "golden boy," moreover, to expose Will's biases and hurtful neglect. Ventriloquizing Will's unsaid (but implied) thoughts, Judith vents her anger at her father's treatment and reveals the harm caused by his favoritism.
[3.11] This complaint about favoring Hamnet is not a simple case of sibling rivalry; rather, Judith's ventriloquism identifies Will's sexism as the problem. She imagines her father's judgment of her as a "useless, pointless girl," a bitch who isn't even pretty (i.e., docile, agreeable, and marriageable). According to Courtney Lehmann, in postmodern culture when viewed through "a masculinist lens, the bitch is a single, professional, power-hungry female who is often portrayed as either a psychotic sexual predator or as a barren ice queen" (2002, 266). Will certainly seems to view his daughter as the latter variety, as he later expresses concern at her being single: "Why are you still unwed? You are so pretty I think…What of children? All women want children." Judith, rightly or wrongly, sees a subtext to his inquiry and generalization about women: "Do you want me to replace Hamnet for you, father?" Judith confronts Will with the pain of her powerlessness within the patriarchal society, which he implicitly upholds. In the ensuing vicious quarrel, Judith shocks her father with the revelation that she is the author of the poems he thought were Hamnet's (her brother wrote down her words). Will's sexism, the film implies, is love and admiration gone askew; alive, Hamnet monopolized his attention as a kindred spirit, "a genius-in-miniature freighted with all [of Will's] hopes and ambitions" (Semple 2023b).
[3.12] In his premature death, Hamnet was canonized by Will as a budding poet tragically lost too soon. Now, though, even as Hamnet is dead and outed as "an ordinary, little boy," Judith still cannot compete. When Will offers to teach her how to write and encourages her to be his "beautiful daughter the poet," she refuses, explaining that her creativity died with her brother. Thus, the film stages a female writer, but one we never see writing. Authorship is depicted as a boys' club, a male pursuit—we see Will and Ben Jonson, and hear of Marlowe, Greene, Kyd, and Nashe—and learn that on every occasion Will wrote, he imagined himself to be Hamnet. As Will confesses later, writing was easy because "I was always in the company of my son." On a few occasions, Will even sees Hamnet's ghost; the boy bids Will farewell only when the truth of his death is divulged by Anne and Judith, near the film's finale. Judith apparently cannot summon her twin's ghost; and so, while Hamnet turns out not to have been a prodigy, genius died with him all the same.
[3.13] After their row, Will reconciles with Judith, and for the remainder of All Is True, she is a reformed antifan. As a Shakespeare fan, Judith excuses her father's grief—"You lost your son, any man would mourn"—and reveals her self-loathing and inculcation of misogynist tenets: "A daughter is nothing, destined only to become the property of another man or fade away…A woman cannot be a poet. A woman is put upon this earth for one reason. I know my duty now. I will make amends for stealing Hamnet from you." Shortly after this scene, Judith approaches Tom Quiney, who has previously tried to court her, and she rapidly beds, marries, and is pregnant by him. On the one hand, Judith's abrupt actions are emancipatory. That is, they can be read as an expression of independence as she chooses to marry. She is delighted at her pregnancy (as are her whole family), and she moves out of her father and brother's shadows into a new home. On the other hand, this marriage is a self-imposed penance that constricts the spirited Judith and lodges her firmly in the patriarchal fold. While costume drama often centers on "the romantic desires and social aspirations of female protagonists against the constraints of convention, sexual repression and economic disadvantage" (Pidduck 2004, 1), All Is True goes against the generic grain in its confinement of Judith. In the face of her father's pressure to marry, she explicitly resigns herself to pleasing him in the only way she can: sacrificing her maidenhood and taking on the sociosexual roles that advantage men. As Anne remarks, "She did it for you, Will, you wanted a grandson."
[3.14] Moreover, Judith's conformity is a form of atonement for what she perceives as her part in Hamnet's death. When the eleven-year-old Judith threatened to reveal that she wrote the verse their father so admired, Hamnet fled to the Greenwood Pond. His mother and twin later find him afloat, a child Ophelia, dead by accident or suicide. Judith blames herself, but the film suggests that Hamnet's death comes about because Shakespeare "had failed to imagine his daughter Judith as a poet" (Hatchuel 2020, 234). Thus, at least in part, Will's guilt over his son's death and his desire for a grandson motivate his support for Judith's sudden entrance into marriage and motherhood (note 6). The grandchild that the chastised Judith bears in expiation "for stealing Hamnet from [him]" is a source of hope for Will.
[3.15] In All Is True's penultimate scene, the Shakespeare family come together to celebrate Will's fifty-second birthday. He is ailing but warmly welcomes the surprise news that Anne and Judith are learning to write, and the latter promises to write a poem. In a mark of patriarchal and artistic approval, Will then gifts Judith her brother's penknife (for sharpening her quill). As Eugenie Theuer recognizes, "biopics mediate not only which historical women matter but also what makes women matter at a given point in a society" (2021, 3). In this Shakespeare biopic, women matter as reproducers, as supports for the great man and, only in a kind of off-screen afterthought, as poets. Following Will's death, Anne, Susanna, and Judith read the "Fear no more" dirge, from Cymbeline, to wish him sweet repose in a "renownèd…grave." The death of the protagonist can be omitted from biopics, George Custen notes, "to spare the viewers a depressing finale," but in fact, "death in the biopic, though rare, is typically uplifting" (1992, 153). This is because biopics often conclude with "a monument or commemorative icon, the token of life after death—at least in terms of fame […and this works as] a reminder of the veneration the hero has earned in the living narrative just seen" (153) (note 7). Through the story of Hamnet and Judith, All Is True raises the possibility of Will's legacy surviving through a creative successor. The audience never sees Judith fulfil her pledge to write a poem, though, so in the end, it is Shakespeare's own literary oeuvre that secures his eternal fame.
[3.16] The three groups of captions that conclude the film strike a mournful tone, informing the audience that:
- [3.17] Anne died nine years later. Will had bequeathed her his second-best bed.
- Judith Quiney had three boys. All died young.
- Elizabeth Hall, Susanna's only child, married twice. She died aged sixty-one, the last of Shakespeare's line.
[3.18] Historically, after the death of their paterfamilias, the Shakespeare women led long interesting lives, but All Is True does not flesh out their biographies (and there is much of interest, as revealed in the 2021 addition of entries on Anne, Susanna, and Judith to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). The concluding captions are short to round off the narrative, simultaneously satisfying audience curiosity and maintaining focus on the film's hero. But the content of these captions also reinforces the film's privileging of male lineage and circumscription of women's value to reproduction (note, for instance, that Judith and Susanna's death dates are omitted, and Elizabeth Hall is mentioned merely as "the last of Shakespeare's line"). The biopic elegizes the end of an era; the family and literary line is extinct. There are no more Shakespeares.
4. Regendering Shakespeare in St. Trinian's 2
[4.1] On the surface, teen adventure comedy St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold (dir. Oliver Parker and Barnaby Thompson, 2009) does not have much to do with Shakespeare or his brand associations: literary quality, high culture, traditionality, intellectuality. St. Trinian's 2 is a humorous romp that sees contemporary schoolgirls defeat a shady cabal and solve a centuries-old mystery to unearth pirate treasure. The cast is primarily composed of unknown girl actors, with established stars in the supporting cast. Several actors known for Shakespearean roles and appearances in Shakespeare biofiction, including David Tennant, Colin Firth, and Rupert Everett, bring their recognizability and cultural heft to the film (note 8). Overall, though, this teen adventure comedy celebrates sisterhood and "[the diversity of] modern-day British 'yoof' culture," albeit in a "dumbed-down" form (Elley 2009). Given that Elton's biofiction and St. Trinian's 2 differ in genre and audience, and are separated by a gap of almost ten years, their focus on gender politics reveals the subject's continuing importance for diverse modern viewers. I close with an exploration of St. Trinian's 2 because, like Elton's sitcom and biopic, it uses Shakespeare antifans to broach the issue of gender equality. Whereas biofiction's need for a measure of historical and biographical accuracy circumscribes its reimagining of Shakespeare, the genre and teen audience of St. Trinian's 2 mean that it can playfully "solve" the problem of sexism in Shakespeare™.
[4.2] In preparation for the big reveal of St. Trinian's 2 and its final act, which takes place in London's Globe Theatre, the film is peppered with Shakespeare references. In the opening scene, in an homage to The Italian Job (1969; 2003), two young girls speed to school in a Mini Cooper; the vertically challenged driver reaches the pedals by standing on Shakespeare's Collected Works. Shakespeare is treated irreverently but is present in and has an enabling effect on the girls' lives (at the least, helping a girl to drive). Later, headmistress Camilla Fritton (Everett) comically revises Malvolio's well-known speech from Twelfth Night to inform her niece Annabelle that she is to be the new head girl: "Some women, Annabelle, are born great. Cleopatra…The Queen…Me. Some become great, like Mother Teresa…or Lady Gaga. Others, have greatness thrust upon them. Like Monica Lewinsky. You were born into the third category." This scene name-checks (in)famous historical and contemporary women for the amusement of the teen audience, but it also illustrates the film's efforts to reclaim and repurpose Shakespeare for this audience. Later, following a setback at the hands of the film's villains, the headmistress delivers a rallying cry to her girl troops that reworks a famously masculine call to arms: the St. Crispin Day's speech from Henry V. Acting as regally as Henry on the battlefield, Camilla, in her nightie, speaks of "a band of sisters," girlhood (while grabbing her breasts in her passion), and "St. Trinian's Day." Collectively, the film's Shakespeare references involve or are spoken by women, to young women (on screen and in the audience), and are wittily adapted to foreground and champion women, their histories, and their ambitions. Such a "transaction between Shakespeare and youth culture allows youth culture to gain cultural credibility, linking youth culture to the synecdoche for the height of western culture" (Hulbert, Wetmore, and York 2006, 4). Along the way, Shakespeare is co-opted to the feminist cause and becomes relevant, engaging, cool, and marketable.
[4.3] These feminist reworkings of Shakespeare are strengthened by the schoolgirls vanquishing the film's villains: the ancient misogynist cabal AD1. Headed by Sir Piers Pomfrey (Tennant), the fraternity works to ensure male mastery and female subjugation. At their congregation, the brotherhood intones their creed: "To preserve the natural order, menfolk as master, women as cattle under yoke and chain. She, under he, for eternity." When the girls infiltrate the group's secret vault, they discover files and pictures of influential women from across history, including Rosa Parks, Indira Gandhi, Sylvia Plath, Janice Joplin, and Marilyn Monroe, with some labeled "terminated" and others "neutralized." In the film's dramatic finale, Shakespeare is placed in this pantheon of heroines. After a series of adventures, the ingenious schoolgirls discover Captain Fritton's pirate treasure beneath the Globe, learn that Fritton was really a woman, and that she retired to write under the nom de plume "Shakespeare." But Pomfrey is anti-woman and thus an antifan of the "real Shakespeare," and so he tries to suppress the truth by stealing the girls' proof: the script for Queen Lear. With this regendering of Shakespeare and renaming of a famous tragedy, St. Trinian's 2 highlights the reach of the villainous AD1 and the impact of the historical and ongoing marginalization of women. The film's dramatic denouement sees the girls save the day by commandeering Francis Drake's ship the Golden Hind (seizing yet another piece of male history), sailing it down the Thames, stealing the script back, sinking Pomfrey's boat, and exposing AD1.
[4.4] By uncovering that the "Bard [was] a bird," as one girl puts it, St. Trinian's 2 plays with conspiracy theories of the Shakespeare authorship question. The film "negotiate[s] the gap between man and authorial myth [by] reassign[ing] the identity of the man" (Lanier 2007, 108). Reimaginings of Shakespeare's gender, race, or sexuality suggest that his insights arose "from personal experience" and they "marshal the considerable cultural authority associated with his works to lend legitimacy and dignity to groups historically denigrated" (Lanier 2007, 108–9). St. Trinian's 2 empowers its heroines, historically the victims of gender inequality, to pull off a series of spectacular feats. Repeatedly, the film's women triumph against representatives of patriarchal institutions; in flashback, we see the pirate Fritton's best men on the high seas and the early modern stage, while the modern-day students defeat the aristocrat Pomfrey, privileged Eton-esque schoolboys, the church (represented as a malevolent spirit of a nineteenth-century reverend), and numerous henchmen. The schoolgirls succeed in exposing the baddies to be "male, pale, stale" misogynists who have manipulated Shakespeare's legacy to preserve the patriarchal status quo. Any sexism in Shakespeare's canon, as the newly discovered Queen Lear implies, is attributable to an unlikable, obsolete establishment. Of all their outlandish successes, the St. Trinian's girls' crowning achievement is their claiming of Shakespeare for the sisterhood. Contrary to received history, the great author isn't part of the patriarchal establishment: s/he belongs to women. Shakespeare is their genius, inheritance, and literal ancestor in the case of Headmistress Camilla. By portraying Shakespeare as a protofeminist superwoman, St. Trinian's 2 redeems the iconic author and annexes the cultural might of Shakespeare™ for gender equality, all in one fell swoop.
5. Conclusion
[5.1] Exploring the depiction of antifans in Upstart Crow and All Is True, along with St. Trinian's 2, reveals the ongoing valorization of and resistance to Shakespeare's legacy on twenty-first-century screens. As a female-dominated adventure comedy, St. Trinian's 2 disparages misogyny by mocking antifans of the "real Shakespeare" and easily appropriates the canonical author for feminism. Discovering that Shakespeare was a woman and is their sororal ancestor, the girls of St. Trinian's deliver Shakespeare from censure and lay claim to the premiere icon of Western culture to uphold their morals, values, and norms. By the film's finale, Fritton-Shakespeare, the real Shakespeare, emerges as a heroic feminist champion; she simultaneously brings attention to the long line of women similarly occluded and trampled by patriarchal history and stands as an exemplar for modern women battling sexism. In contrast, Ben Elton's sitcom and film depict, but cannot resolve, the problematic gender politics of both Shakespeare-the-man and Shakespeare-the-works. In Upstart Crow and All Is True, the harshest and most informed criticism of Shakespeare, resistance to his ideas, and hostility to his literary idolization come from Sue and Kate, and Anne and Judith, respectively. Thus, like St. Trinian's 2 and the female-centered biopics that Karen Hollinger examines, Elton's texts do not simply present progressive or conservative gender ideologies, but "mix portraits of female victimhood with affirmation of women's accomplishments and endurance under a patriarchal system" (2020, 4). In the face of opposition, and with the threat of being labeled "shrew," "witch," or "bitch," the female Shakespeare-haters of Upstart Crow and All Is True confront Shakespeare's sexism and work against it. These women hate Will's chauvinism, challenge his status as a progressive liberal icon, and with varying degrees of success puncture his popular image as a literary deity. While some ambivalence remains as antifans like Judith are brought into the bardolatrous fold, the women persist, and the audience bears witness to their struggles. Through their antifandom, these women make space for their stories, reflection on the legacies of "Great Men," and fresh perspectives on gender politics, both historical and contemporary. For this achievement, Kate's assertion of self-esteem, agency, and authority is a phrase applicable to all of these female antifans: "Who the maid? Me the maid!" (3.1 "Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!").
6. Acknowledgments
[6.1] My thanks to Katherine Scheil and Anna Pilz for their insightful comments, and to Kavita Mudan Finn and Johnathan Pope as editors of this special issue.