Shakespeare in Love is romantic, touching, funny, and enlightening.
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I seriously doubt that its filmmakers thought when they were fashioning "Shakespeare in Love" that it was going to be the world beater it became. I mean, Shakespeare hasn't always fared well on the big screen, not even in the capable hands of Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, or Mel Gibson. But this new film certainly deserved its Oscar nomination for Best Picture of 1998, if possibly not its win, plus its six other Oscars and all the credit it got from critics and public alike.
Of course, the writers cheated. The film is not really a Shakespeare play nor is it a biography of the playwright. It is a work of imaginative, speculative fiction based on the life of a famous historical figure. As such, it works wonderfully, giving audiences that wouldn't normally sit through an Elizabethan play the chance to understand and be amused by something fairly close. "Shakespeare in Love" is superb entertainment.
The plot of the film concerns the young, struggling writer (played by Joseph Fiennes) falling in love with a woman of high degree, Lady Viola (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). For a man like Will, making his living in the theater, a love affair with a person above his station was frowned upon, especially as Viola has just been sold in marriage to an arrogant nobleman, Lord Wessex. The play Will is writing at the time is "Romeo and Juliet," the story of star-crossed lovers; and according to the film, the dilemma of the lovers in the play is inspired by the dilemma of the lovers in real life. The premise for this possibility is perhaps not so farfetched. Very little is known about Shakespeare's personal life, so a lot can be made up without fear of contradiction.
It's not like people knew at the time that Shakespeare was going to become the world's greatest author and had biographers hanging all about him. In the movie his love affair is justified by the suggestion that his wife is much older than he and doesn't really love him. The latter may or may not be true, but it is a fact that his wife, the former Anne Hathaway, was about eight years older than he was, and that they probably had to get married because she was pregnant with their first child. It is also probable that Anne lived at home in Stratford while Will stayed mostly in London, about a hundred miles away, during the twenty-plus years he was writing his plays. How often they saw each other during this time and what their relationship was like are matters of conjecture. But they give the scriptwriters for "Shakespeare in Love," Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, plenty of material for not only this movie but possible sequels.
The story is appropriately bawdy, like one of Shakespeare's own comedies. A degree of silliness, role reversal, nudity, and sex play integral parts in the plot, as does some very witty dialogue. The two stars are a pleasure, to be sure, Paltrow winning the Best Actress award and at one point in the story having the distinction of playing a woman playing a man playing a woman! But of equal importance is the supporting cast: Geoffrey Rush as Philip Henslowe, the poor owner of the Rose Theater; Martin Clunes as Richard Burbage, owner of the prosperous Curtain Theater; Rupert Everett in an unbilled part as Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's friend and rival; Ben Affleck as Ned Alleyn, a fellow actor; Simon Callow as Mr. Tilney, Master of Revels; Colin Firth as Lord Wessex; and, most especially, Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth. Dench has about five minutes of screen time total and practically steals the show.
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