Shakespeare in Love directed by John Madden

© 2006 John Murphy

Bard-love received an unexpected shot-in-the-arm with the 1998 release of this buoyant, multi-Academy Award-winning imagining of the “making-of” Romeo and Juliet. The smart script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard smoothly mixes Bard biography/mythology, Romeo and Juliet, and some Shax-worthy comedic high-jinks: mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and flights of verbal fancy, courtesy of the incomparable Stoppard’s characteristically zippy one-liners. Shakespeare in Love is a witty, high-spirited film that does bardolators a great service by making Shax seem sexy. (We knew that already, of course, but some skeptics take a bit more convincing). Joseph Fiennes, younger brother to Ralph, smolders convincingly as young Will Shakespeare — his long eyelashes and enviable bone structure reminding us that the Fiennes family has an unfair monopoly on the choicest spots of the gene pool.

Shakespeare in Love finds young Will an ambitious playwright on-the-make in the treacherous world of Elizabethan London. Even if theater was considered entertainment on equal terms with bear-baiting in those days, it is apparent even to easily-bored Queen Elizabeth that Shakespeare is a talented newcomer. But the shadow of Christopher Marlowe, author of the omnipresent Dr. Faustus, looms large in English theater, and Will’s new play (which he has yet to begin writing) is far from promising: Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter.

Writing a pirate comedy for cash can be a soulless business. What Shakespeare needs is a Muse. Rosalind, mistress of the famous actor Richard Burbage, proves a bust. Who will the fan the flames of the Will’s genius?

It just so happens that Shax has an unexpected champion in Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a young noblewoman who reveres his writing and secretly longs for a spot in the footlights. She tells her Nurse, “I would stay asleep my whole life, if I could dream myself into a company of players.” Her dream soon comes true when she auditions, in the guise of a man, for Shakespeare’s new play and the author himself spots talent when he sees it.

Paltrow is beguiling and confident in the role that won her the coveted Best Actress Academy Award, as comfortable with broad comedy as she is with the more Oscar-baiting emotional scenes. She acquits herself admirably with the language of Ye Olde England and doesn’t look half bad sporting a trim little moustache and goatee, either — she’s definitely the type of luminescent lovely to inspire a sonnet or two. And so she does (Sonnet XVIII, by this movie’s reckoning), and more. Before long, she and Will start a steamy love-affair that proves the inspiration for what many consider the greatest love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet.

With a script co-written by Tom Stoppard, whose Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a postmodern classic of literary coattail-riding, there is a generous amount of inside jokes for the pleasure of the tried-and-true Bard lover. If names like Richard Burbage or John Webster or Kit Marlow mean something to you then your delight in this film will increase manifold.

If not, then no worries: the script is inventive, quick-witted, and generous enough for anyone to enjoy able to appreciate a bit of bite with their comedy. The dialogue has the kind of quick-witted, literary intelligence so rare in the mostly pedestrian romantic comedies Hollywood releases these days. Credit Stoppard for that, I’m sure – his fingerprints all over the snappy style of comedy on display, both high and low. Consider Viola’s snippy exchange with her would-be husband, a slimy Colin Firth, who says to her, “I have spoken with your father.” Viola answers, “So, my lord? I speak with him everyday.” I also love the moment when Will, chasing a disguised Viola, hops into a ferry taxi and commands, “Follow that boat!” Or when, in a moment of stricken panic, the producer of the play (a deliriously brilliant, snaggle-toothed Geoffrey Rush) stutters, “The show must…must…” and Will prompts, “Go on!” Certain visual puns are blink-and-you’ll miss ’em quick such as the mug on Shakespeare’s desk with the label: “A gift from Stratford-upon-Avon.”

Appropriately enough, the movie’s bursting with the bright lights of British stage, film, and television acting: Tom Wilkinson, Simon Callow, Colin Firth, Antony Sher, Imelda Staunton, and Dame Judi Dench (who inexplicably won an Oscar for a performance she could have phoned in from her dressing room), to name a few. It’s a veritable Who’s Who of contemporary British acting. The movie also features a show- stopping cameo by Rupert Everett as Kit Marlowe, whose sage advice sends Shax down the path of greatness.

The fact that so little is known about Shakespeare’s biography is a blank check for Stoppard and co. (I might mention here the deft direction by the usually ponderous John Madden). In many ways he is as we might imagine him: brilliant, impulsive, compulsively talkative, and married to little writing rituals (spinning once and spitting on the ground before seating himself in front of the blank page). He is also, naturally, well-attuned to good lines – he makes a mental note when a neighborhood preacher cries “A plague on both your houses!”

Yes, he is as we might hope to see him, with a few reservations. A movie this bursting with Bard to the Bone zest and zippiness carries the audience along with its propulsive energy and sharp-edged wit, but its characterization of young Shakespeare seems at times a shade askew. Fiennes as Will does a lot of running and a lot of fighting and a lot of….what’s the polite word? Lovemaking. I’m wondering if Shakespeare would have been such an inveterate man of action. I’m not convinced. As evidenced by his plays, Will could have talked a dog off a meat truck, but I’m not so sure he’d have been the first to draw a sword in a fight. I’d like to have seen Will engage in a bit more verbal sparring – an arena in which he could undoubtedly have disarmed all comers – and spent less time aping the action-hero business.

Here’s another quibble, and one that that may seem surprising from a red-blooded male in his early-twenties. I’m no prude, but was all the nudity really necessary? Paltrow’s bare flesh single-handedly bumps the film from a safe PG-13 up to an R, thus making it more difficult, if not impossible, for high-school teachers to show the movie to their students. In my humble opinion (and I don’t profess to be an expert), Paltrow’s paltry boobs and Fiennes’ pasty bare bum are not worth the price of admission, much less the price of having to cut the movie from an educational curriculum.

And I’m enough of a card-carrying Bard buff to think about those things. Shakespeare in Love would make a delightful introduction to the world of Elizabethan English theater, especially since most high school curriculums position R and J for freshman year reading. I remember studying Romeo and Juliet my own freshman year, and a movie like this would have been a nice entry to the themes of the play, the atmosphere of Elizabethan England, the mechanics of historical theater production, and an altogether effective way of illustrating that the balding Bard in a stiff collar that we all know (and some passionately love) was also once a young, up-and-coming playwright with a healthy libido and a wicked way with words; a poet in the shadow of Christopher Marlowe who could inspire the masses to swoon, to cry, to hold their breaths, to laugh, and to rapturously applaud. The first audience for Romeo and Juliet would no doubt have given the play a standing ovation, were it not for the fact the groundlings were already standing.

All told, I think Shakespeare would approve of the high-spirited energy and razor-sharp wit his imaginatively rendered life has given rise to in Shakespeare in Love. At least he wouldn’t mind the casting of Joseph Fiennes as his younger self. For the rest of us, this is a delightful confection; a must-see for Bard-lovers and movie-buffs alike.