A Review of
Shakespeare in Love
by David Conner
12/31/98
Director John Madden's engaging
Shakespeare In Love is a depiction of the circumstances which, we are asked to imagine, led William Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet. But one must focus immediately on the word imagine, for the movie has only a superficial connection with Elizabethan England, relying broadly on the historic period and specifically on the dramatic intensity of the original Romeo and Juliet not for their own sake, but merely as a way of obtaining the viewer's interest in the movie's true agendas, which are related not to history but to contemporary comedy and romance—and not coincidentally, to box office success.
In a nutshell, we are to imagine that Shakespeare has encountered an awful case of writer's block which can be cured only by a strong dose of the psychic energy and on-going catharses accompanying a love affair. When he can't write anything, Will's friends advise him to get a lover. The rest of the movie presents Shakespeare's ensuing liaison with the beautiful Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a woman of wealth and talent who tragically has been betrothed by her father to the thoroughly detestable Lord Wessex. (Boo! Hiss!) The rapture and heartbreak shared between Shakespeare and De Lesseps predictably supply the Bard with the plot elements of Romeo and Juliet—which he had at first planned as a comedy.
The most impressive performance is turned in by Paltrow, who plays a confident aristocrat humbled by her awe for the theater and, in particular, by her love for Shakespeare. In the movie, as the production of Romeo and Juliet progresses, Paltrow's character gets to act the part both of Romeo in the rehearsals and Juliet in the actual performance. (To play Romeo she pretends to be a man, since females were not allowed on stage in sixteenth-century England. To play Juliet she has to pretend to be a man playing the part of a woman.) But Paltrow is at her best in her one-on-one love scenes with Fiennes, where her feelings of yearning, passion, and devotion are absolutely palpable.
Geoffrey Rush, a very skillful actor, proves that he can do comedy by playing Philip Henslowe, the hapless producer of plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and others. Colin Firth is delightfully despicable as Lord Wessex, Imelda Staunton is Viola De Lesseps' solicitous nurse, and Tom Wilkinson is impressive as financier-turned-actor Hugh Fennyman. Judi Dench plays a dour but benign Queen Elizabeth who views Romeo and Juliet at the Globe. (Note that in real life the Queen never visited the Globe; any of Shakespeare's plays that she saw were viewed as command performances.)
In comparison with these others it is harder to assess Joseph Fiennes' characterization of Shakespeare. Fiennes, who played Lord Robert Dudley in Elizabeth, is a good actor who ably conveys a wide range of emotion, but in both Elizabeth and Shakespeare In Love there are moments where his face is so expressive that his character seems almost affected, and the result is nearly comic—at moments, unfortunately, where comedy is not what is wanted.
The deeper problem concerning Shakespeare's character, however, is not with Fiennes' acting but with the unclear or even unsound intentions of director Madden and writers Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. What do they want us to do with their main figure? Though much about the life of the real William Shakespeare has eluded close scrutiny, his plays themselves prove that he was not simply a clever wordsmith, but a person of enormous maturity, humor, subtlety, and wisdom — a circumspect and yet sympathetic observer of human nature. In contradiction, the Shakespeare of Madden, Norman, and Stoppard is petulant, anxious, self-absorbed, impatient, and neurotically obsessed with one other individual who haunts his every waking minute. These improbabilities are the fault not of Fiennes, but of the script and the direction.
I am not denying that the real Shakespeare could have had a love affair—he could — nor even that he could have loved with great passion. But it is very hard to imagine that he could have sacrificed his own core values and esthetic convictions in the process. The odd thing is that, assuming, as we must, that Madden, Norman, and Stoppard know this, what is the point? Why depict Shakespeare not as he probably was but as something he almost certainly was not?
So, what are we left with? Simply a very imaginative romantic comedy? For in the end that is what Shakespeare In Love really is — a kind of an Elizabethan-tinted mutation of The Bridges of Madison County. If you happen to be madly in love with someone, this is the sort of movie that will make you want to hold your sweetheart close while you dab a few tears from your eyes. If you are not madly in love, well, at least you can enjoy the comedy, for it really is good comedy, strongly acted and adroitly produced.
But the hidden message is simply that . . . there is no hidden message.
The answer can only be that the historical personage is being used merely as a vehicle, a convenient device to maneuver the audience into an entertaining experience — without regard either for historical accuracy or deeper truth. In Anglo-American culture Shakespeare is associated with powerful drama, and therefore, one supposes, using Shakespeare as one of the lovers in a new movie makes the whole thing a bit more interesting. The hint of a deeper message — which might be something like, "Even Shakespeare needed some absorbing passion to arouse his creative juices" — is not really much of a message, and even if it were, it is not a theme conveyed by Shakespeare In Love with any force or conviction.