Shakespeare in Love

Shakespeare in Love
Directed by John Madden
Produced by David Parfitt
Donna Gigliotti
Harvey Weinstein
Edward Zwick
Marc Norman
Written by Marc Norman
Tom Stoppard
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow
Joseph Fiennes
Geoffrey Rush
Colin Firth
Ben Affleck
Judi Dench
Tom Wilkinson
Imelda Staunton
Rupert Everett
Martin Clunes
Cinematography Richard Greatrex
Editing by David Gamble
Distributed by Miramax Films (USA)
Alliance Atlantis (Canada)
Universal Pictures (non-USA/Canada)
Release date(s) Flag of the United States December 3, 1998 (premiere)
Flag of the United States 11 December 1998 (New York City; Los Angeles)
Flag of Canada 25 December 1998
Flag of the United States (nation wide) 8 January 1999
Flag of the United Kingdom 29 January 1999
Flag of Australia 11 February 1999
Flag of New Zealand 25 February 1999
Running time 123 min.
Language English
Budget $25,000,000
Gross revenue $289,317,794 (worldwide)

Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 romantic comedy/drama film. The film was directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard. Stoppard's first major success was with the Shakespeare-influenced play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

The film is largely fictional, although 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 a number of Academy Awards in 1999, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow) and Best Supporting Actress (for Judi Dench). It was the first comedy to win the Best Picture award since Annie Hall (1977) and as of 2008, no comedy has won the award since.

Contents

Synopsis

The film centres around the forbidden love of William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) and a noble woman, Viola de Lesseps.

As the film begins, Shakepeare's patron Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) finds himself in debt to loan shark Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson). Henslowe offers Fennyman a partnership in the upcoming production of Shakespeare's newest comedy, Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate's Daughter promising that it will be a hit. This play will later be renamed Romeo and Juliet and be reworked into a tragedy (but with some comical undertones with a few characters, like the Nurse).

Will Shakespeare is suffering from writer's block and has not completed the play, but begins auditions for Romeo. A boy named Thomas Kent is cast in the role after impressing Shakespeare with his performance and his love of Shakespeare's previous work. Unknown to Shakespeare and the rest of the theatre company, Kent is young noblewoman Viola de Lesseps whose dream is to act, but as women were barred from the stage, she must disguise herself as a young man in order to fulfil her dream.

After Shakespeare discovers his star's true identity, he and Viola begin a passionate secret affair. There are strong parallels between the pair's romance and the romance in Romeo and Juliet, including the ballroom scene from act 2 and the balcony scene immediately following it. The element of forbidden love forms the basis of Shakespeare's inspiration, and many of their conversations later show up as some of the most famous quotes in the play.

Inspired by Viola, Shakespeare begins writing feverishly. His work in progress also benefits from the off-hand advice of playwright and friendly rival Christopher Marlowe (Rupert Everett). Yet Shakespeare and de Lesseps know that their romance is doomed. Shakespeare is married, albeit long separated from his wife, and Viola is a noblewoman whose parents would never permit her to marry a commoner such as Shakespeare. In fact, Viola's father has privately arranged a betrothal for her to Lord Wessex (Colin Firth).

Viola is called to the court of Queen Elizabeth I (Judi Dench), and Shakespeare dons a woman's disguise to accompany her. At court, Shakespeare manages to goad Wessex into betting fifty pounds 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 be a witness to the wager. The true purpose of the meeting is revealed when Wessex announces his intent to marry Viola.

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. He orders the theatre closed for this violation of morality and the law. Left without a stage or lead actor, it seems that Romeo and Juliet must close before it even opened. Shakespeare is offered one last chance by the owner of a competing theatre, the Curtain, who offers his theatre to Shakespeare. Shakespeare will take the role of Romeo himself, with a boy actor playing Juliet.

Viola learns that the play will be performed on the day of her wedding. After the ceremony, Viola's loyal nurse (Imelda Staunton) helps her slip away to the theatre. In a final twist, shortly before the play begins, the boy playing Juliet starts experiencing the voice change of puberty. Viola takes the stage to replace him and plays Juliet to Shakespeare's Romeo. Their passionate portrayal of two lovers inspires the entire audience.

Mr. Tylney, the Master of the Revels, arrives at the theatre with Wessex, who has deduced his new bride's whereabouts. Tylney invokes the name of the Queen to arrest all there for indecency. Suddenly, Elizabeth I's voice rings out from the back of the theatre: "Have a care with my name - you will wear it out!" The Queen had decided to attend the play, and says that she will handle this matter herself. Although she recognizes Viola in her guise as Thomas Kent, the Queen does not unmask Viola, instead declaring that the role of Juliet is being performed by the boy Thomas Kent.

However, even a Queen is powerless to break a lawful marriage. Queen Elizabeth orders "Thomas Kent" to fetch Viola so that she may sail to America. She also states that Romeo and Juliet has accurately portrayed true love and so Wessex is forced to pay Shakespeare the fifty pounds. This is enough to allow Shakespeare become a member of the Chamberlain's Men. The Queen then commissions Shakespeare to write something "a little more cheerful next time". Viola and Shakespeare part, never to meet again: she must accompany Wessex to a colonial settlement in Virginia. Shakespeare immortalizes her by making the main character of his new play, Twelfth Night, a strong young woman named Viola who also disguises herself as a boy.

Historical accuracy

The film makes no pretence at historical accuracy. For example, the basis of Romeo and Juliet was a poem and not one of Shakespeare's romances.

The film features many comic anachronisms: a psychotherapist; a mug marked "A present from Stratford-on-Avon"; Shakespeare leaping into a ferry and saying "Follow that boat!"; Queen Elizabeth I remarking "Have a care with my name or you will wear it out"; and Shakespeare anticipating the phrase "The show must go on!"

The characters of Ralph Bashford, James Hemmings, Edward Pope, Sam Gosse, James Armitage, Viola de Lesseps, Robert de Lesseps (Nicholas Le Prevost), Lady de Lesseps (Jill Baker), Hugh Fennyman, and Lord Wessex did not exist.

The characters of Philip Henslowe, Richard Burbage, Ned Alleyn, Will Kempe, Edmund Tylney, Augustine Philips, John Hemmings (spelled in real life as "John Heminge"), George Bryan, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster did exist, but their actions in the film are fictitious.

There were neither tobacco plantations nor English colonies in America in the 1590s. Moreover, Wessex and Viola would not have gone to Virginia; instead, Wessex would have had a surrogate run his plantations.

Casting

References to Shakespeare's work

The main source for much of the action in the film is Romeo and Juliet, which the events in the film ultimately inspire Will to write. 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 nobility promised to marry Lord Wessex and Shakespeare himself is 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', 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:

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 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.

Controversy

The writers of Shakespeare in Love were sued in 1999 by Faye Kellerman, author of the book The Quality of Mercy. Ms. Kellerman claimed that the story was lifted from her book, a detective novel in which Shakespeare and a cross-dressing Jewish woman attempt to solve a murder. Miramax derided the claim of similarity as "[an] absurd...publicity stunt".[2][3] After the film's release, certain publications, including Private Eye, noted strong similarities between the film and the 1941 novel No Bed for Bacon, by Caryl Brahms and S J Simon, which also features Shakespeare falling in love and finding inspiration for his later plays. In a foreword to a subsequent edition of No Bed for Bacon (which traded on the association by declaring itself "A Story of Shakespeare and Lady Viola in Love") Ned Sherrin, Private Eye insider and former writing partner of Brahms', confirmed that he had lent a copy of the novel to Stoppard after he joined the writing team, but that the basic plot of the film had been independently developed by Marc Norman, who was unaware of the earlier work.

Awards

Wins

Nominations

Cultural influence

Shakespeare in Love has since been used as material in the VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) in Australia.

External links

References

  1. ↑ http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,84065,00.html
  2. ↑ "Novelist sues Shakespeare makers", BBC News (1999-03-23). Retrieved on 2008-06-30. 
  3. ↑ "Writer sues makers of 'Shakespeare in Love'", CNN (1999-03-23). Retrieved on 2008-06-30. 


Awards and achievements
Preceded by
Titanic		 Academy Award for Best Picture
1998		 Succeeded by
American Beauty
Preceded by
As Good as It Gets		 Golden Globe: Best Motion Picture, Musical
or Comedy
1998		 Succeeded by
Toy Story 2
Preceded by
The Full Monty		 BAFTA Award for Best Film
1998		 Succeeded by
American Beauty
Academy Award for Best Picture

Chariots of Fire (1981) · Gandhi (1982) · Terms of Endearment (1983) · Amadeus (1984) · Out of Africa (1985) · Platoon (1986) · The Last Emperor (1987) · Rain Man (1988) · Driving Miss Daisy (1989) · Dances with Wolves (1990) · The Silence of the Lambs (1991) · Unforgiven (1992) · Schindler's List (1993) · Forrest Gump (1994) · Braveheart (1995) · The English Patient (1996) · Titanic (1997) · Shakespeare in Love (1998) · American Beauty (1999) · Gladiator (2000)

Complete List · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001–present)
Films directed by John Madden

Ethan Frome (1993) · Golden Gate (1994) · Mrs. Brown (1997) · Shakespeare in Love (1998) · Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) · Proof (2005) · Killshot (2009)