All a'bard

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By Chris Hewitt
Saint Paul Pioneer Press
Published: Dec. 25, 1998


What light through yonder window breaks? It is "Shakespeare in Love,''
a sunny, smart romantic comedy come to perk up the December gloom.

The more familiar you are with "Romeo and Juliet,'' the more you'll love
"Shakespeare in Love,'' which purports to tell the story of how William
Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes, batting brown eyes that Bambi would kill
for) came to write his most famous play. It's great fun to see the
pieces come together: Fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe offers a
plot, which Will promptly swipes. A guy on a street corner yells, "A
plague on both your houses,'' and the I'm-gonna-steal-that look that
Fiennes gives him is priceless. A beautiful woman, Viola (Gwyneth
Paltrow), falls for Shakespeare, but she is promised to another and --
buddabing, buddabang -- Will has an ending for his play.

"Shakespeare in Love'' is stuffed with smart-alecky dialogue (Two
Elizabethans are talking about Shakespeare's new play. First guy:
"What's it called?'' Other guy: "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's
Daughter.'' First guy: "Great title!''). It's delivered with aplomb by a
cast so classy and sparkling (Geoffrey Rush, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson,
Anthony Sher, Simon Callow, Colin Firth and an uncredited Rupert
Everett) that if someone had dropped a bomb on the "Shakespeare'' wrap
party, they'd never to be able to shoot a "Masterpiece Theatre'' again.

The details of Will and Viola's romance show up in "Romeo and Juliet,''
but the movie's effervescent wit contrasts with the foreboding
romanticism of the play. Writers Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman make
liberal use of puns, anachronisms (Shakespeare's agent is a greedy
bottom-liner, who keeps begging him to put a dog in "Romeo and Juliet''
because audiences love dogs) and stabs at theatrical egocentricity (the
actor who plays Juliet's nurse is asked what the "Romeo and Juliet'' is
about and he replies, ''Well, there's this nurse . . .'').

If anything, there's too much boisterous good humor here. There are an
awful lot of characters -- I haven't even mentioned Ben Affleck, who's
a stitch as an actor who agrees to play Mercutio only when Will tells
him the play is called "Mercutio'' -- and they tend to crowd out the
central romance.

But, even if the movie veers off course occasionally, everything comes
together for the finale, in which Shakespeare gets the opening night all
playwrights hope for. It is the opening of "Romeo and Juliet'' and it
makes us feel what it might have been like to go to the theater in the
summer of 1593. It's all fictional, of course, but this graceful, witty
movie makes you wish it were true.