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Shakespeare
in Love:
a delightful alternative to a night at the theatre: watching,
re-watching a movie about the very act of playwriting that's also
a love story and brilliant fun. Only Sir Tom Stoppard could
so audaciously take on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage to
create a film so thoroughly voluptuous, intellectually
intoxicating, and rapturously funny (he completely rewrote and
added his glittering lines to something that had been begun by
Marc Norman who shares screenwriting credit; the two never met
until Stoppard had completed the script).
In
this 1998 film the dramatic license taken with Shakespeare's life
is always respectful, there's homage in the humor. Will
Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is suffering from writer's
block as he attempts to complete his new play -- Romeo and
Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter -- later to be known to the world
as Romeo
and Juliet.
Shakespeare falls in love with Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth
Paltrow) who defying the laws of the time, wishes to test her
considerable thespian talents on stage as a man and auditions for
the play disguised as one Thomas Kent. Theirs is a forbidden
love: they can never wed, for Shakespeare is a commoner and de
Lesseps's hand has been promised to the rather stuffy and pompous
Lord Wessex, played here by Colin Firth. Their fiery love
affair plays out against an intriguing backdrop of theatrical
connivances and double-dealings. It's a movie about showbiz
and theatre, chock-full of in-jokes, but as Stoppard said,
"not so 'in' to put off those not in the business."
Dame
Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth asserts her authority in inimitable
style. Wonderfully directed by John Madden, Shakespeare
in Love
garnered 7 Academy Awards.
Such
fun then: the countless double entendres, clever repartee,
drollery, the knowing allusions to Shakespearean texts, and the
very fabulosity of language. It's the wit, the quicksilver
lines, that make the film sparkle, the actors are mere players --
the light in this film belongs completely to Tom Stoppard.
When referring to Shakespeare's rival Christopher Marlowe, Fiennes
quips: ''Lovely waistcoat. Shame about the poetry.''
And there's love, unabashed love, territory where Stoppard usually
treads with much trepidation. Here Viola de Lesseps says: "I
will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And
love. Love above all. No... not the artful postures of
love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of
an evening, but love that... over-throws life. Unbiddable,
ungovernable - like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done,
come ruin or rapture. Love - like there has never been in a
play…."
Interestingly,
Stoppard, who wields the English language so brilliantly, was born
in Czechoslovakia and went to school in Darjeeling before his
family moved to England. He has tackled Shakespeare before
in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and he is the author of
the astoundingly clever Arcadia
and
the lovely Indian
Ink.
See:
Shakespeare
in Love Read:
Arcadia,
Tom Stoppard
Read:
Indian
Ink, Tom Stoppard
Read:
Romeo
and Juliet, William Shakespeare
Tags:
theatre
broadway
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