The Yale scholar and Shakespeare historian Harold Bloom is charmed by 'Shakespeare in Love' - with a few reservations. In the cozy orange kitchen of an old shingled house in New Haven, Conn., Harold Bloom welcomes a visitor ("Come in, little bear!") and settles into a chair in front of the VCR. The author of the surprise best seller "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" has not yet seen the surprise hit film "Shakespeare in Love." Starting up the tape, the visitor asks Bloom to provide a running commentary. "Oh, Harold always talks his way through movies," says his wife, Jeanne, bringing tea. Bloom laughs. "[Yale] Professor Vincent Scully and I used to get thrown out of movies together because we'd get involved in these tremendous conversations."

From the moment the film flickers on, Bloom interacts with the screen like a kid with a new videogame. When the moneyman threatens to cut off the producer's nose, Bloom claps his hand to his own nose, giggling, then covers his eyes and peeks through his fingers. When Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) explains how Mercutio dies, Bloom exclaims, "He dies beautifully!" and launches into: "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man." And when "Romeo and Juliet's" theater gets shut down, the professor cries, "Surely it can't end badly!"

Watching the film with Bloom Brontosaurus Bardolator (as he calls himself) means you get every Shakespearean allusion instantly unpacked. It turns out that the play Queen Elizabeth is snoring through is "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." And Rosaline - Shakespeare's first love interest in the film - is the name not only of Romeo's first girlfriend but of a major character in "Love's Labour's Lost." Bloom identifies that Rosaline with the "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets ("the love of his life!"), so he's naturally disturbed that the movie Rosaline turns out to be the town slut.

The professor does not fall for Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Viola - "A wonderful actress, but not a beauty, is she?" - though he's quite taken in by Fiennes. "Shakespeare was not particularly good-looking, unlike this fellow," he says. "He had a drab exterior and wasprematurely balding. This is a marvelous gussying-up for him!"

The sequences taken straight from "Romeo and Juliet" delight him. Bloom loves watching Shakespeare speak Juliet's lines - to him, the best in the play. But listening to the lovers proclaim their affection makes him cringe. "The language of 'Romeo and Juliet' is extraordinary, and then this is a terrible falling away. It's common goo! They are not star-crossed lovers; it's just good old-fashioned lust. They are not Romeo and Juliet - but I suppose that's an impossible standard. I suppose [writers] Mr. Stoppard and Mr. Whateverhisnamewas could say, 'Well of course not, Professor Bloom. How could they be?' "

"Oh, Harold, the movie's fine, and it's a nice conceit," says Mrs. Bloom.

"Ye-ah." Bloom ponders. "You know, I mustn't snipe, because this is a charming movie. It does capture 'Romeo and Juliet.' And that I think is the glory of it."