None of them would be recognisable by any theatre or drama historians, however, as they are all created as fictional characters to service the fictional plot. We have Queen Elizabeth, Philip Henslowe, Christopher Marlowe, Edward Alleyne, Will Kempe, Richard Burbage, John Webster, and others. Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare in Love leading manĪpart from Viola, almost all the characters bear the names of real historical characters of the time in which the film is set.
It is this level of Shakespeare in Love that is most enjoyable, with scenes from Romeo and Juliet being enacted both on the stage of the Rose and in the lives of the lovers. The play Will is writing is Romeo and Juliet, and its events are inspired by the events resulting from the love affair he is having with Viola. In this case, though, there’s no happy ending for the lovers, as Viola leaves for the colonies with her husband and Will goes on to write his next play.Īs with all good Shakespeare works, the plot has another level. The usual misunderstandings and on and off contacts that one finds in all rom-coms – in fact in all romantic fiction – occur and it’s all resolved in the end. Will is married with a child back in Stratford and Viola is being forced into a marriage with an impoverished nobleman. When in due course he discovers that she is really a she, they begin a secret love affair.
She immediately attracts Will, even though he does not at that stage know she is a woman (a very Shakesperean plot). A young woman, Viola, daughter of a wealthy merchant, disguised as a boy, auditions for a role in the play. He works for businessman and theatre entrepreneur, owner of the Rose Theatre, Philip Henslowe. In this Shakespeare in Love story the young Will is an autonomous, already successful, young playwright, struggling to find a way through with a romantic comedy he’s trying to write. There was no place for women in the Elizabethan theatre. But given his output, Shakespeare must have worked very hard at it, in an entirely male working environment. Despite this, we don’t know anything about his working method, how much was developed by the improvisation of actors, how the writing teams operated, or what hours he worked. These writers Shakespeare learned from were fuelling the highly lucrative theatre industry, furiously trying to meet the demand for plays. The only thing we really know about the historic Shakespeare at work, so to speak, in those early years, is that he acted in plays and that he started writing plays, learning the trade, working with the experienced writers. There’s absolutely nothing of the real Shakespeare here – the young Will Shakespeare is an entirely fictional young writer having a fictional relationship with a fictional heroine. You cannot, however, learn anything about Shakespeare’s life from this film as it’s pure fiction.
Shakespeare in love awards full#
The text is full of Shakespeare’s poetry, carefully inserted to make it relevant to the action… most of the time! And the Shakespeare words used are carefully chosen for their particular beauty. Shakespeare in Love is fast-moving, complicated while easy to follow, and emotionally satisfying. It has a good edge on many other films though, in that the script, which won an Oscar too, was part – penned by top British playwright, Tom Stoppard, author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It is all those things, although many other films are just as good, just as appealing. Is it that it has great ‘Elizabethan’ sets? Could it be that it’s a superior rom-com? That it has a plot that captures and holds the interest of the audience?
Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love star Each Shakespeare’s play name links to a range of resources about each play: Character summaries, plot outlines, example essays and famous quotes, soliloquies and monologues: All’s Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry VIII Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry V Julius Caesar King John King Lear Loves Labour’s Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus & Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter’s Tale This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order. Plays It is believed that Shakespeare wrote 38 plays in total between 15.
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