| Shakespeare in Love | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| 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 Colin Firth Ben Affleck Geoffrey Rush Judi Dench Tom Wilkinson Rupert Everett Imelda Staunton |
| Music by | Stephen Warbeck |
| Cinematography | Richard Greatrex |
| Editing by | David Gamble |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films (US) Alliance Atlantis (CAN) Universal Studios (non-USA/CAN) |
| Release date(s) | December 3, 1998 (US) January 29, 1999 (UK) |
| Running time | 123 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| Box office | $289,317,794 |
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard.
The film portrays 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).
Contents |
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 Viola 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 Viola know, however, that their romance is doomed. He is married, albeit long separated from his wife, while Viola's parents have arranged her betrothal to Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), an aristocrat who needs money. When Viola 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. Viola 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. Viola replaces 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 Viola, 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 Viola 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".
Viola and Shakespeare part, resigned to their fates. The film closes as Shakespeare begins to write Twelfth Night, Or What You Will imagining his love washed ashore in a strange land after a shipwreck and musing, "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.
The original idea for Shakespeare in Love came to screenwriter Marc Norman in the late 1980s. He pitched a draft screenplay to director Edward 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]
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:
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.
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]
The writers of Shakespeare in Love were sued in 1999 by Faye Kellerman, author of the book The Quality of Mercy. 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 Films derided the claim of similarity as an "absurd...publicity stunt".[6][7]
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,[8] but that the basic plot of the film had been independently developed by Marc Norman, who was unaware of the earlier work.
The film's plot also bears a resemblance to Alexandre Duval's "Shakespeare amoureux ou la Piece a l'Etude" (1804), in which Shakespeare falls in love with an actress who is playing Richard III.
American Film Institute recognition:
In October 2011 the show-business paper Variety reported that Disney Theatrical Productions, linked to Miramax through former owners Disney Corporation, intend to mount a stage version of the movie in London. Co-producer will be Sonia Friedmann Productions. The writer will again be Stoppard and he will be joined by director Jack O'Brien and designer Bob Crowley, who worked with Stoppard on his Coast of Utopia trilogy and The Invention of Love.[12]
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