SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE
Review by Harvey S. Karten, Ph.D.

Miramax Films/Universal Pictures
Director: John Madden
Writer: Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard
Cast: Simon Callow, Martin Clunes, Rupert Everett, Ben Affleck,
      Judi Dench, Joseph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Gwyneth Paltrow,
      Sandra Reinton, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson

If you have a way with words and you want to create a book, a theater
piece or a screenplay, you know the usual advice. Write what you know.
A great deal of the literature and films we see are born from the real-
life experiences of their creators. Even a sci-fi film like Michael
Anderson's"Logan's Run"--which deals with how each citizen's life of
unending pleasure in the twenty-third century must end at age 30 with
extinction--could have been inspired by the scripter's difficulties
finding a job once he had become "overqualified" because of age.

Most moviegoers are probably uninterested in how the lives of the
screenwriters and directors influence their plots. That's for critics
to debate. But in the visually elegant romantic comedy, "Shakespeare
in Love," director John Madden uses Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's
screenplay to involve us in the life of William Shakespeare, posing
the question, "How much of the Bard's own life is reflected in his
works?" If you're a reasonably serious student of the great Renaissance
writer, you know that he depended less on his own nature than on
sources well-known to all from years and centuries past. In the
greatest love story of them all, Shakespeare lifted the theme from
Arthur Brooke's poetic "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet,"
written thirty- three years before the first production of "Romeo and
Juliet." Does this mean that there's nothing in the play that came out
of the writer's own life? Not at all. According to the director
Madden's fanciful film, Shakepeare may have been quite familiar with
the Brooke text. After all, he was trying desperately to get some
pages out of a new work called "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's
Daughter." But he was blocked. He needed inspiration, and that
encouragement would come from a brief affair he would soon fall into.

Now "Romeo and Juliet," first presented to an Elizabethan audience in
1595, is a gender-bender which includes some comedy (such as the scene
in the fourth act dominated by ribald musicians), a considerable
allotment of tragedy, and a very great deal of romance. "Shakespeare
in Love" similarly reflects these genres but is dominated by comedy.
The title character, played by Joseph Fiennes, proves that writer's
block is not a scourge of our own century alone. He is working on
"Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter," but nothing in his own life
can inspire him to dash off even a single page of poetry. His purely
physical needs are met by the promiscuous Rosaline (Sandra Reinton)
but he needs something transcendent if he is to draft the greatest
love story ever told. Neither the pressure of theater owner Philip
Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) nor the insistence of financier Hugh
Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson) can stir his creative juices. When he sets
eyes on the lovely and cultivated Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow),
he is hooked and, fortunately, the feelings are mutual. Viola,
however, has been commanded by Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) to marry
the insistent gold-digger Lord Wessex (Colin Firth) and to follow him
to his plantation in Virginia.

When Lady Viola--who aspires to be an actor at a time that women were
not allowed on the stage--auditions for the role of Romeo disguised as
a man, there follows a series of mistaken identities, free-for-all
brawls, swordfights, and best of all some passionate embraces between
Bard and bedmate that mirror the very themes of the play. The words
now flow liberally from Shakespeare's quill. For dialogue, the author
makes canny use of the everyday expressions he picks up while walking
through London streets, such as one orator's political diatribe "A
plague on both your houses" and another citizen's comment on a theater
building, "A rose by any other name..." If you believe the particulars
of this movie, you'll even see how Will was able to follow up his
great play about love with a lighter-than-air fable,"Twelfth Night,"
finding a lead role for the object of his own great passion, Viola.

The idea behind the film is a clever one indeed, showing how art
follows life, and is in addition a paeon to the power of the theater
(and by extension the cinema) to teach us the real meaning of love.
Clever that the movie may be, it does not come up to the usual
standards of its co-writer, Tom Stoppard, who has imparted to us far
wittier take-offs on Shakespeare such as "Dogg's hamlet," on James
Joyce in "Travesties," and has inundated us with verbal wit and
intellectual games in such plays as "Hapgood" (on double agents and
nuclear physics) and "After Magritte" (about the elements of a
Magritte painting such as umbrellas and bowlers). Much of the comedy
is obvious and flat, as in the slapstick scene involving the comical
torture of Philip Henslowe by Hugh Fennyman and Restoration comedy-
like scenes involving the licentious Rosaline with Tiley (Simon
Callow), who tries to close the theater upon learning that a woman is
on the stage. Nor is Joseph Fiennes a match for the radiant and
highly talented Gwyneth Paltrow. Fiennes has distinguished himself in
the role of Dudley in the generally convoluted film "Elizabeth" but
in a part that demands the corporeal countenance and impassioned
demeanor of a great lover, he comes across as both physically and
temperamentally thin. Not so Dame Judi Dench, who follows up her
distinguished portrayal of Queen Victoria in John Madden's "Mrs.
Brown" with a vibrant portrayal of the Virgin Queen in her current
role.

"Shakespeare in Love" boasts an abundant gallery of British thesps,
including Antony Sher, Rupert Everett and Simon Callow and also
popular American stars such as Ben Affleck and, of course, the L.A.-
born Gwyneth Paltrow. It has a 1990's sensibility, encompassing a
session which Shakespeare has on the couch with verbal intimacies
timed by an hourglass. The picture is stunningly photographed on
location in Britain to reflect a late 16th Century motif.

Not Rated. Running Time: 120 minutes.

c 1998 Harvey S. Karten