Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 romantic comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard.
The film purports to portray playwright William Shakespeare's involvement in a love affair at the time that he was writing the play Romeo and Juliet. The story is fiction, though several of the characters are based on real people. In addition, many of the characters, lines, and plot devices are references to Shakespeare's plays.
Shakespeare in Love won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow), and Best Supporting Actress (for Judi Dench). It was the first comedy film to win the Best Picture award since Annie Hall (1977).
Plot
William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is a poor playwright for Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of The Rose Theatre, in 1593 London. After learning that his love was cheating on him with his patron, Shakespeare burns his new comedy, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter, rewriting it as the tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Suffering from writer's block, he is unable to complete the play, but begins auditions for Romeo. A young man named Thomas Kent is cast in the role after impressing Shakespeare with his performance and his love of Shakespeare's previous work. Kent is actually Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant who desires to act, but women are banned from the stage and she must disguise herself.
After Shakespeare discovers his star's true identity, he and de Lesseps begin a passionate secret affair. Inspired by her, Shakespeare writes quickly, and benefits from the advice of playwright and friendly rival Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe (Rupert Everett). Shakespeare and de Lesseps know, however, that their romance is doomed. He is married, albeit long separated from his wife, while de Lesseps' parents have arranged her betrothal to Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), an aristocrat who needs money. When de Lesseps is summoned to the court of Queen Elizabeth I (Judi Dench), Shakespeare dons a woman's disguise to accompany her as her cousin. At court, he persuades Wessex to bet £50 that a play cannot capture the nature of true love. If Romeo and Juliet is a success, Shakespeare as playwright will win the money. The Queen, who enjoys Shakespeare's plays, agrees to witness the wager.
Edmund Tilney (Simon Callow), the Master of the Revels, the Queen's official in charge of the theatres, learns that there is a woman in the theatre company at The Rose playhouse, and orders the theatre closed for violating morality and the law. Left without a stage or lead actor, it seems that Romeo and Juliet must close before it even opens, until Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes), the owner of a competing theatre, the Curtain, offers his stage to Shakespeare. Shakespeare assumes the lead role of Romeo, with a boy actor playing Juliet. De Lesseps learns that the play will be performed on her wedding day, and after the ceremony secretly travels to the theatre. Shortly before the play begins, the boy playing Juliet starts experiencing the voice change of puberty. De Lesseps replace him and plays Juliet to Shakespeare's Romeo. Their passionate portrayal of two lovers inspires the entire audience.
Tilney arrives at the theatre with Wessex, who has deduced his new bride's location. Tilney plans to arrest the audience and cast for indecency, but the Queen is in attendance. Although she recognizes de Lesseps the Queen does not unmask her, instead declaring that the role of Juliet is being performed by Thomas Kent. However, even a queen is powerless to end a lawful marriage, so she orders "Kent" to fetch de Lesseps so that she may sail with Wessex to the Colony of Virginia. The Queen also states that Romeo and Juliet has accurately portrayed true love so Wessex must pay Shakespeare £50, the exact amount Shakespeare requires to buy a share in the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The Queen then directs "Kent" to tell Shakespeare to write something "a little more cheerful next time, for Twelfth Night".
De Lesseps and Shakespeare part, resigned to their fates. Her ship sinks; only de Lesseps survives, and lands on a beach. The film closes with her on the beach, with a voice over by Shakespeare discussing his plans to write Twelfth Night, Or What You Will and musing of its main character, "For she will be my heroine for all time, and her name will be...Viola", a strong young woman castaway who disguises herself as a young man.
[edit] Cast
* Joseph Fiennes as William Shakespeare.
* Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps. The original Viola was Julia Roberts in 1991. She withdrew six weeks before filming. Kate Winslet turned down the role to star in Holy Smoke!. Paltrow won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Viola.
* Colin Firth as Lord Wessex
* Ben Affleck as Ned Alleyn. Affleck joined to be close to then-girlfriend Paltrow.
* Geoffrey Rush as Philip Henslowe. Rush was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Philip, but lost to James Coburn.
* Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I. Dench won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth. This is the second-shortest performance to win the Supporting Actress Oscar, with only six minutes of screen time. The shortest was Beatrice Straight in Network, with only five minutes and two seconds.[citation needed] In the same year, Cate Blanchett was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in the same role in Elizabeth but lost to Gwyneth Paltrow [see above].
* Tom Wilkinson as Hugh Fennyman
* Antony Sher as Dr. Moth
* Imelda Staunton as Nurse
* Rupert Everett as Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe
* Martin Clunes as Richard Burbage
* Simon Callow as Edmund Tilney
* Jim Carter as Ralph Bashford
* Jill Baker as Lady de Lesseps
* Patrick Barlow as Will Kemp
* Mark Williams as Wabash
* Simon Day as First Boatsman
* Joe Roberts as John Webster
Production
The original idea for Shakespeare in Love came to screenwriter Marc Norman in the late 1980s. He pitched a draft screenplay to director Ed Zwick. The screenplay attracted Julia Roberts who agreed to play Viola. However, Zwick disliked Norman's screenplay and hired the playwright Tom Stoppard to improve it (Stoppard's first major success had been with the Shakespeare-influenced play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead).[1]
The film went into production in 1991 at Universal Pictures, with Zwick as director, but although sets and costumes were in construction, Shakespeare had not yet been cast, because Julia Roberts insisted that only Daniel Day-Lewis could play the role. Day-Lewis was uninterested, and when Roberts failed to persuade him, she withdrew from the film, six weeks before shooting was due to begin. The production went into turnaround, and Zwick was unable to persuade other studios to take up the screenplay.[2]
Eventually, Zwick interested Miramax in the screenplay, but Miramax was not keen on him as director, and froze him out of the project, choosing John Madden instead. Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein acted as producer, and successfully persuaded Ben Affleck to take a small role as Ned Alleyn.[3]
The film was considerably reworked after the first test screenings. The scene with Shakespeare and Viola in the punt was re-shot, to make it more emotional, and some lines were re-recorded to clarify the reasons why Viola had to marry Wessex. The ending was reshot several times, until Stoppard eventually came up with the idea of Viola suggesting to Shakespeare that their parting could inspire his next play.[4]
[edit] References to Shakespeare's work
The main source for much of the action in the film is Romeo and Juliet. Will and Viola play out the famous balcony and bedroom scenes; like Juliet, Viola has a witty nurse, and is separated from Will by a gulf of duty (although not the family enmity of the play: the "two households" of Romeo and Juliet are supposedly inspired by the two rival playhouses). In addition, the two lovers are equally "star-crossed" — they are not ultimately destined to be together (since Viola is of rich and socially ambitious merchant stock and is promised to marry Lord Wessex, while Shakespeare himself is poor and already married). There is also a Rosaline, with whom Will is in love at the beginning of the film.
Many other plot devices used in the film are common in various Shakespearean comedies and in the works of the other playwrights of the Elizabethan era: the Queen disguised as a commoner, the cross-dressing disguises, mistaken identities, the sword fight, the suspicion of adultery (or, at least, cheating), the appearance of a "ghost" (cf. Macbeth), and the "play within a play".
The film also has sequences in which Shakespeare and the other characters utter words that will later appear in his plays:
* On the street, Shakespeare hears a Puritan preaching against the two London stages: "The Rose smells thusly rank, by any name! I say, a plague on both their houses!" Two references in one, both to Romeo and Juliet; first, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" (Act II, scene ii, lines 1 and 2); second, "a plague on both your houses" (Act III, scene I, line 94).
* Backstage of a performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare sees William Kempe in full make-up, silently contemplating a skull, a reference to Hamlet.
* Shakespeare utters the lines "Doubt thou the stars are fire, / Doubt that the sun doth move" (from Hamlet) to Philip Henslowe.
* As Shakespeare's writer's block is introduced, he is seen crumpling balls of paper and throwing them around his room. They land near props which represent scenes in his several plays: a skull (Hamlet), and an open chest (The Merchant of Venice).
* Viola, as well as being Paltrow's name in the film, is the lead character in Twelfth Night who dresses as a man after the supposed death of her brother.
* At the end of the film, Shakespeare imagines a shipwreck overtaking Viola on her way to America, inspiring the second scene of his next play, Twelfth Night, and perhaps also The Tempest.
* Shakespeare writes a sonnet to Viola which begins: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (from Sonnet 18).
* Shakespeare tells Henslowe that he still owes him for "one gentleman of Verona", a reference to Two Gentlemen of Verona, part of which we also see being acted before the Queen later in the film.
* In the boat, when Shakespeare tells Viola, disguised as Thomas Kent, of his lady’s beauty and charms, she dismisses his praise, as no real woman could live up to the ideal. This is a set up for Sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”.
Christopher Marlowe appears in the film as the master playwright whom the characters within the film consider the greatest English dramatist of that time — this is accurate, yet also humorous, since everyone in the film's audience knows what will eventually happen to Shakespeare. Marlowe gives Shakespeare a plot for his next play, "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter" ("Romeo is Italian...always in and out of love...until he meets...Ethel. The daughter of his enemy! His best friend is killed in a duel by Ethel's brother or something. His name is Mercutio.") Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is quoted repeatedly: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/ And burned the topless towers of Ilium?"
The child John Webster who plays with mice is a reference to the leading figure in the Jacobean generation of playwrights. His plays (The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil) are known for their blood and gore, which is why he says that he enjoys Titus Andronicus, and why he says of Romeo and Juliet when asked by the Queen "I liked it when she stabbed herself."
When the clown Will Kempe (Patrick Barlow) says to Shakespeare that he would like to play in a drama, he is told that "they would laugh at Seneca if you played it," a reference to the Roman tragedian renowned for his sombre and bloody plot lines which were a major influence on the development of English tragedy.
Will is shown signing a paper repeatedly, with many relatively illegible signatures visible. This is a reference to the fact that several versions of Shakespeare's signature exist, and in each one he spelled his name differently.
[edit] Impact on the British Royal Family
It has been reported by The Sunday Telegraph that the film had an impact on the British Royal Family in prompting the revival of the title of Earl of Wessex, which had been extinct since the 11th century. Prince Edward was originally to have been titled Duke of Cambridge following his marriage to Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999, the year after the film's release. However, after watching Shakespeare in Love, he reportedly became attracted to the title of the character played by Colin Firth, and asked Queen Elizabeth II to be given the title of Earl of Wessex instead.[5]
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