Bill `Shakespeare in Love' as inspired romantic comedy
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By Lawrence Toppman
The Charlotte Observer
Published: December 25, 1998
A superb film script, like a great athlete, makes everyone on a team
play at the top of his game.
A director of modest gifts shows fresh insight into his craft. A once-
bland hero commands the screen, while a once-dull leading lady glows
like marble by moonlight.
All this happens in ``Shakespeare in Love,'' an exhilarating romantic
comedy that brings the Elizabethan era to bawdy, bustling life and
turns the world's most venerated writer into a very human being. It
also exalts the power of theater -- still the world's most potent art
when written and performed by masters -- to change our minds, hearts,
even our lives.
Marc Norman (who wrote the initial draft) and dazzling playwright Tom
Stoppard (who rewrote it years later) are the engineers behind this
remarkable machine. Like their title character, they can cram almost
every type of emotion into two hours' traffic on screen yet dovetail
them neatly.
The time is 1593. The 29-year-old bard (Joseph Fiennes) has writer's
block, and for good reason: Seedy impresario Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey
Rush) demands a comedy called ``Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's
Daughter.'' Shakespeare wants to write a play as solemn as Christopher
Marlowe's ``Doctor Faustus,'' but he satisfies his producer instead of
his muse.
At auditions for ``Romeo,'' he's drawn to actor ``Thomas Kent'' --
really Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a theater-struck lass who,
like all women then, is prohibited from appearing on stage.
``Kent,'' fearful of discovery, runs home; Shakespeare follows and
learns her identity. Soon he earns Viola's love and the enmity of Lord
Wessex (Colin Firth), the unwanted groom-to-be assigned by her social-
climbing father.
Since Shakespeare has a wife, and Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench)
sanctions the Wessex-de Lesseps union, the playwright knows he and
Viola share a hopeless passion. It seeps into his writing, elevating
``Romeo'' to tragic grandeur.
Norman and Stoppard, aided by intelligent direction from John Madden,
riff away from the central plot like virtuosic jazz musicians.
They use a huge supporting cast, from egomaniacal actor Ned Alleyn
(Ben Affleck in a bravura performance) to Hugh Fennyman (Tom
Wilkinson), a sadistic moneylender who develops a tender side as he
falls in love with theater.
In-jokes flow like ale in a dockside tavern. Shakespeare keeps
overhearing phrases and encountering people who'll find their way into
his work for years. Marlowe (Rupert Everett) takes pity on him,
suggesting not only a new title for ``Romeo and Ethel'' but a change
of scene to Italy, where the heroine might have a brother or cousin who
disapproves of her lover.. . .
My favorite gag is the street urchin who cavorts with rats and goes to
plays only for bloody bits: He likes ``Titus Andronicus,'' where
Shakespeare has a villain tear out a rape victim's tongue. The kid is
John Webster, who grew up to redefine English theater with gory dramas
such as ``The Duchess of Malfi.''
The writers occasionally try sleight-of-hand they can't pull off. I
never believed Shakespeare could dance with Viola, then meet her again
as ``Kent'' without recognizing her. (And how did Viola's two feet of
strawberry blond hair fit under a close-fitting brown wig?)
While truth can be stretched in so noble an effort, Shakespeare was
hardly obscure at the time of ``R&J''; he'd written about a dozen
plays, many of them hits. He pens ``Twelfth Night'' in a burst of
creativity after Viola leaves, but it wasn't really written for another
four years. And how could Wessex have tobacco plantations in Virginia?
The first British settlers didn't land there until 1607!
Only a churl would let this interrupt his pleasure, especially when the
facts get lost in a swirl of sharp swordplay and sharper acting. I
especially liked Fiennes' intemperate Shakespeare and Dench's
imperious, clever, spiteful Elizabeth.
The revelation was Paltrow, who has approached this level of commitment
only in ``Emma.'' Maybe, like Laurence Olivier, she needs a whalebone
corset, assumed accent and glued-on mustache to find the heart of a
character, changing her interior by changing her exterior first. She
has never been less like herself or more appealing.