Shakespeare in Love
| Shakespeare in Love | |
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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 | Joseph Fiennes Gwyneth Paltrow Colin Firth Ben Affleck Geoffrey Rush Judi Dench Tom Wilkinson Imelda Staunton Rupert Everett Martin Clunes Simon Callow Jill Baker |
| Music by | Stephen Warbeck |
| Cinematography | Richard Greatrex |
| Editing by | David Gamble |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films (USA) Alliance Atlantis (CAN) Universal Pictures (non-USA/CAN) |
| Release date(s) | December 3, 1998 (New York City) December 11, 1998 (United States) January 29, 1999 (United Kingdom) |
| Running time | 123 minutes |
| Country | United States United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| Gross revenue | $289,317,794 |
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 romantic comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard.
The film purports to portray playwright William Shakespeare's involvement in a love affair at the time that he was writing the play Romeo and Juliet; it 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 seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow), and Best Supporting Actress (for Judi Dench). It was the first comedy film to win the Best Picture award since Annie Hall (1977).
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[edit] Plot
The film centres around the forbidden love of William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) and Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant.
As the film begins, theatre manager 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. However, after learning that his love was cheating on him with his patron, Shakespeare burns the original play and tries to start anew. 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). Suffering from writer's block, Will Shakespeare 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. Unknown to Shakespeare and the rest of the theatre company, Kent is young Viola de Lesseps, who desires to act, but, as women are barred from the stage, she must disguise herself as a young man to fulfill 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 one 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 'Kit' Marlowe (Rupert Everett), whose own murder is cleverly worked into the plot later on. Yet Shakespeare and de Lesseps know that their romance is doomed. Shakespeare is married, albeit long separated from his wife, while Viola's parents have arranged her betrothal to Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), an aristocrat who has agreed to marry the social-climbing merchant's daughter in view of his own mounting debts and lack of cash. When Viola is summoned to the court of Queen Elizabeth I (Judi Dench), Shakespeare dons a woman's disguise to accompany her as her country cousin. At court, Shakespeare goads 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 witness the wager. The meeting's true purpose is revealed when Wessex announces his intent to marry Viola.
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. He 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 the play will be performed on her wedding day. 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.
Tilney arrives at the theatre with Wessex, who has deduced his new bride's whereabouts. Tilney invokes the Queen's name to arrest all there for indecency. Suddenly, Elizabeth I's voice rings out from the back of the theatre: "Mr. Tilney! Have a care with my name; you will wear it out." The Queen had decided to attend the play in disguise, and says that she will handle this matter herself. Although she recognizes Viola in her disguise as Thomas Kent, the Queen does not unmask Viola, instead declaring that the role of Juliet is being performed by the young man 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 with Wessex to a colonial settlement in Virginia. The queen also states that Romeo and Juliet has accurately portrayed true love and so Wessex is forced to pay Shakespeare the fifty pounds, the exact amount Shakespeare requires to buy a share in the 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. Her ship sinks; only Viola survives, and lands on a beach. The film closes with her on the beach, with a voice over by Shakespeare discussing his plans to write Twelfth Night, Or What You Will and musing of its main character, "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.
[edit] Cast
- Joseph Fiennes as William Shakespeare. Daniel Day-Lewis reportedly was asked by Julia Roberts to star as the role, but he declined. Kenneth Branagh was also considered. Fiennes was eventually cast.
- Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps. The original Viola was Julia Roberts in 1991. She withdrew six weeks before filming. Kate Winslet turned down the role to star in Holy Smoke!. Paltrow won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Viola.
- Colin Firth as Lord Wessex
- Ben Affleck as Ned Alleyn. Affleck joined to be close to then-girlfriend Paltrow.
- Geoffrey Rush as Philip Henslowe. Rush was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Philip, but lost to James Coburn.
- Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I. Dench won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth. This is the second-shortest performance to win the Supporting Actress Oscar, with only eight minutes of screen time. The shortest was Beatrice Straight in Network, with only five minutes and forty seconds.[citation needed] In the same year, Cate Blanchett was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in the same role in Elizabeth but lost to Gwyneth Paltrow [see above].
- Tom Wilkinson as Hugh Fennyman
- Antony Sher as Dr. Moth
- Imelda Staunton as Nurse
- Rupert Everett as Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe
- Martin Clunes as Richard Burbage
- Simon Callow as Edmund Tilney
- Jim Carter as Ralph Bashford
- Jill Baker as Lady de Lesseps
- Patrick Barlow as Will Kemp
- Mark Williams as Wabash
- Simon Day as First Boatsman
- Joe Roberts as John Webster
[edit] Production
The original idea for Shakespeare in Love came to screenwriter Marc Norman in the late 1980s. He pitched a draft screenplay to director Ed 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]
[edit] References to Shakespeare's work
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:
- On the street, Shakespeare hears a Puritan preaching against the two London stages: "The Rose smells thusly rank, by any name! I say, a plague on both their houses!" Two references in one, both to Romeo and Juliet; first, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" (Act II, scene ii, lines 1 and 2); second, "a plague on both your houses" (Act III, scene I, line 94).
- Backstage of a performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare sees William Kempe in full make-up, silently contemplating a skull (a reference to Hamlet).
- Shakespeare utters the lines "Doubt thou the stars are fire, / Doubt that the sun doth move" (from Hamlet) to Philip Henslowe.
- As Shakespeare's writer's block is introduced, he is seen crumpling balls of paper and throwing them around his room. They land near props which represent scenes in his several plays: a skull (Hamlet), and an open chest (The Merchant of Venice).
- Viola, as well as being Paltrow's name in the film, is the lead character in Twelfth Night who dresses as a man after the supposed death of her brother.
- At the end of the film, Shakespeare imagines a shipwreck overtaking Viola on her way to America, inspiring the second scene of his next play, Twelfth Night, and perhaps also The Tempest.
- Shakespeare writes a sonnet to Viola which begins: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (from Sonnet 18).
- Shakespeare tells Henslowe that he still owes him for "one gentleman of Verona", a reference to Two Gentlemen of Verona, part of which we also see being acted before the Queen later in the film.
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.
[edit] Controversy
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 derided the claim of similarity as an "absurd...publicity stunt".[5][6] 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,[7] but that the basic plot of the film had been independently developed by Marc Norman, who was unaware of the earlier work.
[edit] Awards
[edit] Cultural influence
- Shakespeare in Love has since been used as material in the VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) in Australia.
- Shakespeare in Love was spoofed and homaged, along with Star Wars, in the 1999 short film George Lucas in Love.
[edit] References
- ^ Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p.327.
- ^ Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p.327.
- ^ Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p.328-30.
- ^ Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p.330-1.
- ^ "Novelist sues Shakespeare makers". BBC News. 1999-03-23. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/the_oscars_1999/301620.stm. Retrieved 2008-06-30.
- ^ "Writer sues makers of 'Shakespeare in Love'". CNN. 1999-03-23. Archived from the original on 2008-04-04. http://web.archive.org/web/20080404074204/http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9903/23/shakespeare.lawsuit/. Retrieved 2008-06-30.
- ^ Diarist (6 February 1999). "Closed government". The Spectator. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_199902/ai_n8830211/?tag=content;col1. Retrieved 2009-04-13.
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Shakespeare in Love |
- Shakespeare in Love at the Internet Movie Database
- Shakespeare in Love at Allmovie
- Shakespeare in Love at Box Office Mojo
- Shakespeare in Love at Rotten Tomatoes
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
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