Cracking the Shakespeare Code (2017)

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I was poring through the choices of videos to watch while I was stuck at home with bronchitis when I came across Cracking the Shakespeare Code. I thought that this documentary would follow the footsteps of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and somehow link Shakespeare's works with the Knights Templar. Over-reaching but intriguing, nonetheless.

When I started watching, however, I was surprised with the premise: Shakespearean expert Dr. Robert Crumpton was very upset that some obscure organist, Petter Amundsen, was able to get a book about Shakespeare published. After all, academicians are hungry for publications; while this guy, which he viewed as a mere enthusiast, actually could lay claim to the title "author".

These two guys started their "fencing match" by visiting Shakespeare's First Folio, a 1623 compilation of The Bard's plays, grouped into Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. I have had the enjoyable time of reading his works in high school (thanks to Professor Connie Apalin-Gaffud who required my class to read them); my required reading included in the First Folio are Romeo and Juliet (tragedy), Hamlet (tragedy), and Merchant of Venice (comedy). I just realised that we didn't read any of the historical plays!

Anyway, Amundsen encouraged Crumpton and the audience to take a closer look at the script in the First Folio not in the typical literature interpretation way but through the lens of a cryptographer. Each errant symbol (letter or punctuation mark) was a clue towards another clue, towards another clue. At this point, I was getting intrigued... where was this guy taking us and the skeptic scholar? Was Amundsen leading us to the Holy Grail? Was he pointing us to the Virgin Mary's secret descendants?

The first blow came: Amundsen claimed that Shakespeare's plays might not have been authored by Shakespeare but were written by another guy, Sir Francis Bacon... hmm, I've heard this name in Science class before I think. Didn't he develop the scientific method? I forget. So, a scientist actually had the poetic talent to write these masterpieces and the stomach to not be attributed to them? I couldn't believe this supposition. A leading Shakespeare scholar also dismissed such a theory... if Shakespeare signed his work, then Shakespeare wrote it. Of course, Crumpton was also in disbelief but if he kept this up, there wouldn't be a show. So he sucked it up (or got convinced) and followed Amundsen through his line of thinking.

Yes, the show claimed that there was a connection with the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons. By this time, I was already resigned to the possibility that this is a Dan Brown-like Grail quest. 

I was wrong.

The story fast became a treasure hunt where the clues scattered in churches, in the First Folio, in paintings, and in some of the most unexpected areas, apparently lead to the spot where treasures remained hidden for centuries. 

Was it the Holy Grail?

No. Amundsen and Crumpton ended up in Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada... looking to be the raiders for the lost Ark. Now, if only Harrison Ford was with them with his fedora and his whip. The story didn't end there, of course. A Rosicrucian scholar brought them back to Earth by saying that the treasure may actually be more symbolic rather than a literal treasure. 

The movie ends with our two protagonists in Jerusalem. Were they looking for additional clues or was this where their treasure hunt stops? 

It's an interesting show. Another conspiracy theory. But because it didn't follow the typical plot of recent historical conspiracy stories, I found it interesting and fresh. 

Which classical artist will these scholars dissect next?

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