An exciting, nimble, funny story, written for modern audiences

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By Gary Thompson
Philadelphia Daily News
Published: 12/23/98


   ``Shakespeare in Love'' is an entertaining reminder that Shakespeare
was not writing for anthologies, or with regard to how he would one day
be taught at schools and universities.

   He wrote to pay the bills. He wrote on deadline. He cranked it out.
Some of his greatest lines were hurriedly scrawled and handed, ink
still wet, to impatient actors waiting to rehearse.

   In some ways, he was like all other writers. He struggled with
confidence. He wrote great passages, then sat panicked before blank
pages, wondering if he could write another good sentence. And maybe,
``Shakespeare in Love'' supposes, he desperately recycled shreds of his
own star-crossed love affairs in a desperate bid to breathe passionate
life into his stories.

   ``Shakespeare in Love'' stars Joseph Fiennes as young Will, a
struggling and not-yet-established playwright in Elizeabethan London.
Though known to a few theater buffs, he is overshadowed by a more
popular writer, Christopher Marlowe, whose plays are preferred by the
city's most famous actors.

   Shakespeare, by contrast, works and writes for the disreputable and
bankrupt theater operated by Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), a man of
base theatrical tastes who wants Will to write an action-adventure
story about a pirate.

   Will's heart is not in it, but since he is broke, he agrees, and
begins to audition actors - there were no actresses in those days. He
is quite taken with one effeminate young man, who, as it turns out, is
so effeminate he is actually female - Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth
Paltrow), a wealthy young woman who loves the stage. She auditions in
drag hoping to win a part.

   Shakespeare falls hard for the plucky Viola, even though he knows
almost from the start that she has promised to marry someone else - a
coarse nobleman (Colin Firth) who needs her money to finance his New
World plantation.

   They plunge headlong into a relationship marked by deception. They
deceive the theater company - Viola lands a part in Will's new play,
violating Elizabethan laws that bar women from the stage. Will deceives
Henslowe, telling him he's writing a pirate adventure when in fact he
is writing one of his great tragedies, ``Romeo and Juliet.'' Viola
deceives her fiancee and Will and Viola both deceive each other,
falling more deeply in love, knowing that one day soon they will be
separated.

   ``Shakespeare in Love'' weaves all of these strands into an
exciting, nimble, funny story that moves at a breakneck pace - a story
that is instantly understandable because the language has been
contemporized to make it easy on modern ears.

   Even so, ``Shakespeare in Love'' will delight Shakespeare buffs.
Though it plays fast and loose with the biographical facts, it shows a
comprehensive understanding of the writer's work, and weaves references
to several plays into its breathless narrative (the screenplay was co-
written by Tom Stoppard, who also wrote the spoof ``Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead.'')

   The movie will also please casual fans, or anyone who likes good
movies. There are also rich jokes at the expense of modern Hollywood
(the comparisons to the commercial, populist theater of 1600s are
amusing) and there are affectionate nods to the hectic chaos of live
theater.

   ``Shakespeare in Love'' is deftly directed by John Madden, who gets
first-rate work from a good cast. Fiennes is much livelier and
energetic that he was in ``Elizabeth.'' Ben Affleck has a memorable
supporting role as a likeably vain actor who demands the lead in
Shakespeare's new ``pirate'' story, and is hoodwinked into playing the
doomed Mercutio.

   The toughest role falls to Paltrow, whose Viola is forever being
described in the most exalted Shakespearean terms. That's harder than
it sounds, because Paltrow must live up to the billing.

   She doesn't, not quite, but Stoppard is smart enough to deal with
that problem in the screenplay, and provides Paltrow with a clever way
to turn it to her advantage.

   It is one of the many wry touches in this winning picture, which,
at its best, exhibits the spirit and energy of a Shakespeare comedy.