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No, Mr Fiennes, you do not look drop-dead-gorgeous. Just rather thick.
This piece is adapted from work originally submitted as part of the assessment for English 774: Theatre on Screen, Semester 2 2014.
The film is rated M for coarse Elizabethan language (pretty similar to coarse modern language) and for a couple of scenes with a significant lack of clothing.
Laughter, colour and wit are the hallmarks of Shakespeare in Love (1998). The film’s director, John Madden, brings to riotous life Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s deservedly renowned screenplay. The script is tight, yet dense, rich and endlessly entertaining; the two hour running time feels much less. Walking rough-shod over the all-too common image of Shakespeare as dry, stuffy and inaccessible, the film delights viewers with its energy and liveliness and leaves them still giggling helplessly long after the closing credits.
The film opens with a young, jobbing Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) suffering from a bad bout of writer’s block, regretting the loss of his “muse.” No one regrets it more, however, than Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), who has commissioned Shakespeare to write a crowd-pleasing comedy - Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter - for his Rose theatre. Henslowe’s creditors are uncomfortably close; he is relying on the play being a commercial success to keep them off his back. Shakespeare, unmoved by Henslowe’s increasing agitations, indulges in languid idleness and introspection - much to the annoyance of Henslowe (and this reviewer).
Meanwhile a young stagestruck noblewoman, Lady Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), hatches a plot to infiltrate the Rose’s acting company. Shakespeare - his words, his poetry, and the man himself - is her idol. She attends an audition at the Rose theatre, disguised rather unconvincingly as a boy: Master Thomas Kent. She takes fright, however, at Will’s intense questioning (the first sign of life he shows), and bolts for home. Will, intrigued, tracks ‘him’ to the de Lesseps mansion, where a party is in full swing. Lady Viola’s parents are negotiating her betrothal to the foppish Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), a match of convenience in which Viola is simply a pawn. Will catches sight of Viola, now correctly attired again, and is promptly and predictably smitten - greatly to the ire of Wessex.
Will casts ‘Thomas Kent’ as Romeo without realising who ‘he’ really is. It is not long, however, before he discovers that ‘Kent’ is in fact the woman with whom he is so besotted. Viola is equally enamoured; from then on, the two spend a fair amount of time in her bed. The awareness that Viola must soon marry Wessex only adds to the urgency of their passion. As they make love, Will’s creative muse is re-awakened: their intense and soon to be thwarted desire results in the unwritten comedy Romeo and Ethel morphing into the great tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
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Awww... how (sickeningly) sweet...
Viola manages to keep up her alias as Thomas Kent among the other Rose actors rather longer than is credible. But ultimately, inevitably, she is unmasked - much to the horror of all concerned. No one, however, is more horrified than Lord Wessex, whose wedding day turns out to be much more exciting than he had bargained for.
The film has an all-star cast, which (mostly) is superb. Unfortunately, however, the two lead actors do not quite measure up to the high standard set by the rest of the cast. Gwyneth Paltrow is a rather bland and insipid Viola; Joseph Fiennes relies on furrowed brow, exceptionally long eyelashes and a half unbuttoned shirt rather than any great acting talent. The two of them seem at their most animated when in bed, or fervently kissing backstage. Unlike the rest of the characters, their roles hover rather uneasily between the comic and the serious, and the difficulty in negotiating these conflicting demands may account in part for their underwhelming performances. Their comic scenes (such as Viola’s aborted audition) raise a mild titter, but not much more; their more serious moments come across as self-consciously cloying.
The rest of the casting, however, is so strong that it more than makes up for the disappointing performances of Paltrow and Fiennes. The many secondary characters are joyously played for maximum comic effect. Colin Firth, sporting curled forelock, delicate moustache and swinging pearl earring, is glorious as the odious, mercenary fop that is Lord Wessex. His performance here will break the heart of the many Jane Austen lovers for whom he is the one and only Mr. Darcy (perhaps this was why he took the role.) Playing an ageing, crabbed Queen Elizabeth, Judi Dench is superb - but then, she always is. Imelda Staunton, as Viola’s nurse, does what she does best, perfectly portraying a bustling, rustling busy-body who nevertheless has a heart of gold.
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O Mr Darcy, where art thou?
The characters involved in the theatre world are also very well played. They tend to split into two groups - those associated with the Curtain theatre and those belonging to the Rose. Due to the fast pace of the film, it is occasionally hard to keep track of the different factions. But by the time the two companies end up engaging in a fierce melée (“A writer’s quarrel. Quite normal,” according to Will) on the stage of the Rose, amid a snowstorm of feathers, it hardly matters.
As Henslowe, Geoffrey Rush is a stock lovable rogue, his character anticipating that of Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. All craggy features, rolling eyes, and curling wig, Rush is a hoot. Ben Affleck and Martin Clunes give solid performances as ‘Ned’ Alleyn and Richard Burbage respectively. Joe Robert’s role as the sadistic youth John Webster is a minor one, but he manages to make it rather uncomfortably convincing. Another minor character, Hugh Fennyman, is milked for all its comic worth by Tom Wilkinson. Simon Callow, as a seedy Master of the Revels, rounds out the cast of colourful core characters.
The film’s greatest strength is that it does not take itself too seriously. Determinedly witty, yet effortlessly lighthearted, it sweeps viewers along in its boundless enthusiasm. Really it is a very silly film in almost every way - certainly in plot and characterisation - but it refuses to pause long enough to allow the viewer to be aware of this. The pace is as fast and urgent as Viola and Will’s star-crossed love affair.
References to Shakespeare’s words and works are peppered throughout the film, ranging from the blatantly obvious (Will and Viola’s ‘balcony scene’) to the much more subtle (Will’s sigh of “words, words, words” when stretched out upon Dr Moth’s couch). The intertextual references, however, are never forced. Apart from the obvious use of the plays and sonnets, much of the word play and the humour arising from this will be picked up only by an alert viewer who knows the Elizabethan theatre scene reasonably well. Examples of this include the rivalry between Shakespeare and Marlowe, author of the hugely popular Dr Faustus. Apart from Viola-as-Kent, all the auditioning hopefuls quote from Marlowe’s play, much to Shakespeare’s fury. John Webster’s sick habit of feeding live mice to stray cats is a reference to the reputation he gained as being one of the most blood-thirsty Jacobean playwrights, producing macabre works such as The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil.
As a whole, the plot of the film also incorporates many elements of Shakespearean drama: ill-fated lovers, disguise and mistaken identity, challenges and duels. The jokes and wordplay add hugely to the humour of the film, yet they are not essential to it. The film can hold its own both with Shakespeare aficionados and Shakespeare ignorami. It challenges the former but does not patronise the latter; the film’s merriness, colour and vibrancy ensures that it can be enjoyed on many levels and by a wide-ranging audience.
The film’s continual blending of the historical with the fictional can be slightly disconcerting, especially for those accustomed to treat Shakespeare with more reverence than the director and writers do. The mix of true historical figures (most of the named actors and playwrights in the film have historical counterparts) with the invented (Lady Viola, Lord Wessex) is mildly confusing but works well within the plot and structure of the film. For the Shakespeare purists, however, there is plenty of nit-picking to be done. Among other howlers, the film’s opening sets the year as 1593, but during most of this year the playhouses were closed due to the plague. In 1593 the Chamberlain’s Men did not exist; the company was not founded until the following year. Marlowe is depicted as a couple of decades or more older than Shakespeare; in reality, they were the same age. The date and location for the first staging of Romeo and Juliet is uncertain, but what is certain is that it was not at the Rose theatre. Virginia, where Lord Wessex supposedly has his tobacco plantations, was not colonised by the British until 1607. And, most glaringly, Shakespeare’s fling with Lady Viola de Lesseps, around which the entire plot turns, is completely imagined.
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Queen Elizabeth in all her glory
But to focus too much on these historical inaccuracies is to lose the point of the film. It is a self-styled romantic comedy; it does not set out to provide an historical documentation of Shakespeare’s life. Part of the playwright’s fascination (or frustration) for so many people is the fact that we know so very little about his life. People try to fill in the gaps, fleshing out the few scanty details we do have. The makers of Shakespeare in Love are by no means the first to do this and they certainly will not be the last. They are, however, probably unique in that they have managed to do it with an outrageous irreverence that nonetheless comes off.
Some of the anachronisms - Dr. Moth’s psychoanalysis couch, the ugly little souvenir mug marked “A present from Stratford-Upon-Avon” - are so ridiculous that one can only laugh and let them pass. But, these aside, the film actually offers a good sense of sixteenth century London and its theatre. The sets for the Rose and Curtain theatres, in which so much of the critical action takes place, are true to what we know London playhouses of the time to have looked like (even though this is admittedly largely conjecture and guesswork, subjected to much squabbling by eminent historians and Shakespearean scholars). There is a nice (if that is the word) feel for London lowlife, and the predominance of bars, pubs and brothels, along with the implied suggestion that members of the theatrical world spent a fair amount of time drowning their sorrows in such haunts.
The costumes help the atmosphere of the film, too, especially the sumptuous, colourful outfits of the more aristocratic characters such as Lord Wessex and Lady Viola (when she does appear as Viola. Her silly little moustache which she sports as Thomas Kent is peculiarly but unrelentingly irritating). Judi Dench’s Queen Elizabeth attire, however, trumps them all. Scowling, powdered face, receding hairline at the front, masses of heavy red hair piled up at the back, huge skirts and massive peacock-feathered collar - Dench is the uncanny epitome of the ageing Queen.
That moustache. 'Nuff said.
One cannot help but wonder what Shakespeare himself would make of this film. Would he approve? Would he recoil? Of course we can never know. Ultimately, however, it does not really matter. The film embraces human life, with all its idiosyncrasies, fears and joys, ups and downs, frustrations and triumphs. And that is precisely what Shakespeare’s works do. For all its parody, the film stands testimony to the Bard’s enduring power and appeal.
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