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“One of the smartest things is that it doesn’t just tell a fantasy story about the origins of Romeo and Juliet, the film is dramatically structured like Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet,” says Hooks. All were real contemporaries of Shakespeare, as of course was Queen Elizabeth. Among those helping, or hindering, the young Shakespeare in his onscreen quest for a hit new play include famous actors-of-the-age Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes) and Ned Alleyn ( Ben Affleck), theater entrepreneur Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and a teenage version of playwright John Webster (Joe Roberts). Like the era in which it is set, the male characters dictate much of what occurs in the film, and it is amongst the supporting roles where real tops reel. READ MORE: Did William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I Ever Meet? Unlike the movie, women were not allowed to play female rolesįor Hooks, the most implausible part of the film comes at the conclusion, when an actual woman performs a female role onstage (only men were allowed to be actors of the era) and Queen Elizabeth I rises up having been a hidden spectator in the public theater (plays and players made the journey to appear before the Queen at her location, she would not travel to a public playhouse). Onscreen, much credit for the inspiration is given to Shakespeare’s growing love for the fictional Viola (Paltrow), a woman of means striving to find her place in a world governed by men.
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Adam Hooks, Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Iowa and author of Selling Shakespeare: Biography, Bibliography and the Book Trade, remembers seeing the movie when it was first released: “The reason why scholars generally seem to enjoy the film is that it is very clear, very self-conscious and very self-aware about playing around with all these biographical fantasies that have been attached to Shakespeare over the years.”ĭirected by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, Shakespeare in Love is set in 1593 (part of a period of years in which much is historically unknown about the playwright’s life) and speculates about where the young Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), who is short on cash and ideas, finds inspiration for one of his best-known works, Romeo and Juliet.