Where Eloquence and Wit Abound:

Shakespeare in Love
By Richard Campbell

There are only a few films each year that one might want to attend twice, and “Shakespeare in Love” is one of them. It isn’t simply because the film is tastefully produced, or that it glides effortlessly away from the modern world to Elizabethan England. It isn’t because the director of photography, the costume and set designers conspire to dazzle your eyes with what is most beautiful about the act of putting on a play, or falling in love. It is because all of this fluff and wonder is wrapped in the smartest script written in ages, by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. Directed with great zeal by John Madden, this is a movie about the intensity of life and love in the theatre for all ages.

Stoppard and Norman don’t make the mistake of trying to create this super human man, whom we all imagine to be Shakespeare, the godhead of western literature; but instead they create a amiable playwright in a rough situation. In short, they write Shakespeare as a contemporary person-not a wooden icon of the distant past. In Joseph Fiennes we find a Shakespeare who is waiting out a serious bout of writer’s block. He has mastered an enigmatic look that we would expect from the Bard, accompanied by emotional depth in his lightning quick reactions. As the film opens Shakespeare’s indebted producer Phillip Henslowe, (played with spectacular comic timing by Geoffrey Rush), is having his feet fried by a money lender who wants a piece of his theatre The Rose. Richard Burbridge’s Company at The Curtain theatre has won favor of Queen Elizabeth. If the world of Elizabethan theatre seems desperately cutthroat, there is honesty about the demands made upon Shakespeare: theatre owners weren’t looking for “great” drama, they were looking for a hit to pay the bills.

There is no question Shakespeare’s patchy idea for a script called “Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter” is stuck in his head until Viola de Lesseps, played by Gwenyth Paltrow, becomes his new muse when she appears to audition disguised as the boy actor who would play Romeo. She exits as quickly as she came after Shakespeare demands she take off her hat, thus revealing she is a woman and not a young boy- a complication since no women were allowed on stage at the time. As she tries to escape from him on a boat down the Thames to her mansion, he gives her chase. The steersman of the boat, like modern day taxi drivers in New York, is writing his own script, which he hopes to pawn off on Shakespeare.

The chase scenes in this movie are wonderful, giving the full illusion of Elizabethan England. After it is discovered at a party that Shakespeare’s potential Romeo is a beautiful woman, Viola de Lesseps, betrothed to the rather obnoxious, conceited Lord Wessex, the story begins to roll. Colin Firth as Wessex is the perfect blend of overbearing ego and nasty insensitivity to make the whole audience empathize with Shakespeare. When Shakespeare’s balcony scene is heavily parodied at the estate, there is a pleasing overlap between the fiction here created and the original “Romeo and Juliet”.

The movie abounds in clever modern day references as well as Elizabethan ones. That Christopher Marlowe is seen giving Shakespeare the title for “Romeo and Juliet,” and inventing Mercutio and the stories of the warring families non-chalantly over a drink, is as clever as the references made to other Shakespeare plays. The secondary roles glimmer in this movie- especially Ben Affleck as the head of the acting company, and Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth. Her portrayal: a blend of caustic wit and motherly concern we’d expect from Elizabeth, packed in a ironic face, with curling smirk and piercing eyes, has Oscar nomination written all over it. His portrayal: the swaggering poise and polish of a newfound star.

The rehearsals of the play interspersed with love scenes between Shakespeare and Viola not only include some of the sweetest kissing ever done on screen, but also bubbly bedroom comedy involving the Viola’s nurse. The intrigue invented between the Master of the Revels, and Richard Burbage in arranging periodic theatre closings is just the beginning of clever plotting. Shakespeare uses Marlowe’s name when Wessex confronts him and wants to know the identity of this common player, who is so bold to have affair with his wife. Screenwriter’s Stoppard and Norman turn this deception into a wonderful plot device as Marlowe is killed in a pub brawl, (historically accurate) and Wessex later thinks he sees Marlowe’s ghost when Shakespeare appears in the background to attend Marlowe’s funeral.

Sandwiched into the clever plot, and articulate characterizations is a mass of humorous one-liners, sight gags, and comic parodies. What is most wonderful about this movie is the way the theatre scenes are filmed to give you a genuine feeling of being on an Elizabethan stage. The rehearsal scenes swirl showcasing marvelously the interactions onstage and off. The costumes are something out of another world, and the lighting verges on glistening perfection of cold spring natural daylight and candle lit scenes indoors. With a budget of $42 million dollars, “Shakespeare in Love” broke Miramax’s all time record high, but not a penny was wasted. For sheer intelligence and beauty, modern cinema is rarely so well served.