Shakespeare in Love: Movie & DVD Review (1998)

(Originally published 1998)

John Madden's Shakespeare in Love," is a wonderfully witty, nuanced film that imagines the Shakespeare of 1593 as a man whose new comedy, “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter,” is suffering terribly in the absence of a muse.

As played deftly by Joseph Fiennes, the man who deflowered Elizabeth in “Elizabeth,” this Shakespeare is a man on the make, hustling women into bed with the simple hope of finding someone--anyone--who will inspire him to literary greatness, someone who will breathe new life and passion into his soul and, by extension, his work.

He finds his muse in Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow, in her best, most affecting performance to date), who is so perfect for Will, so alive and beautiful and enthusiastic about the playwright’s work, she really does seem worthy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, those words that eventually would come to be the heart of a retitled work, “Romeo and Juliet.”

All of this, of course, is historical hogwash--Shakespeare was actually inspired to write “Romeo and Juliet” after coming upon Arthur Brooke’s 1562 poem, “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.” But as wildly imaginative entertainment (the film’s genius is how it plays off Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and “Romeo and Juliet” in form and in content), it works beautifully.

It also rings true. Very little historical record exists on Shakespeare, whose work has been attacked over the years by bands of threatened academic elitists, all stating that the soaring poetry of “Othello,” “King Lear” and “Romeo and Juliet,” for instance, couldn’t possibly have come from a man of Shakespeare’s social class and educational background.

But to see the young playwright brought to life by Fiennes, to see him so passionately in love with his Viola, and her so obviously in love with him, is to know the full extent and power of romantic inspiration--and to know how that inspiration, coupled with great talent, will always supersede class and education, and translate, quite smashingly, into art.

Grade: A-