Shakespeare in Love

I can only add my voice to thundering flood of praise that has washed over this film from critics and audiences far and wide. "Shakespeare in Love" is a wonderful movie and worth every step of whatever trek you must make and line you must stand in to behold this heavenly concoction of comedy, whimsy and romantic passion.

The plot herewith: a young Elizabethan playwright, name of Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), employed by the Rose Theatre, suffers from writers' block. His play, "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter" is not only not going anywhere, not a jot of it has been put to paper. To add to the woe, the Rose Theatre, as run by the perpetually anxious Phillip Henslove (Geoffrey Rush) is sinking into bankruptcy and Henslove himself toward certain pyropedallic torture at the hands of moneylender Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson), unless Will comes up with a surefire hit to keep the Rose afloat.

Enter Lady Viola de Lessups (Gwyneth Paltrow) a lovely member of the court of Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench). After seeing the Rose players, accompanied by Will, give a presentation at Court, Viola is bitten by the acting bug. Outraged that females are forbidden from taking the stage, she, in the manner of "As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night," dons the male disguise, auditions for the show and wins the part of Romeo.

Meanwhile, Will has become smitten with Viola during his visit at court. He becomes aware that the new actor, who calls himself Thomas Kent, lives at Viola's palace and seeks to use Master Kent as a go-between. Meanwhile, Viola is promised in marriage to the vile Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), while she simultaneously entertains the love-addled (and socially inappropriate) young playwright who climbs up her balcony night after starry night. Before long young Will Shakespeare finds his passion taking "Romeo and Ethyl the Pirate's Daughter" in directions no one, not even the soulful young genius, can foresee.

This energetic, joyous film makes no bones about its eagerness to please in the best Shakespearean manner. It likely has as much to do with the real Shakespeare as Shakespeare's History plays have to do with real history (little is known about the playwright's life). It is much ado about the experience of Shakespeare and the theatre itself. And how love is central to artistic creation.

Co-written by Marc Norman and the great English playwright Tom Stoppard, the film is ornately studded with jokes, anachronisms and wild plot twists that the Bard himself might relish. Much of the dialogue and action both mirror and simultaneously inspire the transformation of "Romeo" and the creation of other Shakespeare classics to come. This is no musty academic's Shakespeare, but one for the audiences, from the ground pit to the highest balcony, like it used to be.

On another level it shows how Shakespeare's language and poetic soul opens up the experience of love to make it real and universal in a way that has stymied every other writer since. Shakespeare believed in love, but in a way that allowed him to see the danger, chaos and tragedy that lie at its core. He didn't believe in Hollywood's happy endings (though he wrote a few), but he knew this wild and perilous emotion was too essential to be cast out of human consciousness. It lies forever within, beyond our control and immune to logic. We can only ride its wings wherever it takes us.

Whatever "Shakespeare in Love"'s light hearted contrivances, it is more than likely that love was the fire that sparked the creation of "Romeo & Juliet," though we will never know the factual origins of its author's passion. But Shakespeare knew whereof he spoke. His suffering led him through love's every bright twist and dark turn. That "Romeo and Juliet"'s anguished tragedy still speaks to us four hundred years later, is a miracle endlessly worth celebrating. There is no doubt civilization will take its greatest writer in English into the next millennium.

That this film is both so funny and so emotional is another kind of miracle. This is also about love for the Bard and the theatre he helped create, a love that blows the dust off years of academic encrustation. Director John Madden ("Mrs. Brown") along with his perfect cast and crew don't miss a chance in conveying their passion with every gesture, every line and every frame. Making this film must have been an act of rapture. It was pure rapture to see it.

POSTHOC RATING: 8-)

[Thomas Burchfield can be reached at TBDeluxe@aol.com and appears regularly in Swing Time magazine.]

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