Friday, August 13, 1999
By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburg Post-Gazette Staff Writer

I could write about how luminous Gwyneth Paltrow, she of the swan neck and talented parents, looks in this movie. Or how Joseph Fiennes, who only played Shakespeare and made the whole thing work, was snubbed at awards time. Or how "Shakespeare" won seven Academy Awards, keeping Steven Spielberg in his seat for the final moments of that endless Oscar ceremony.

But let's yada-yada that, since it's all been done before. How about a little background on how this erudite, entertaining gem came about?

William Shakespeare's inspiration for "Romeo and Juliet" may be somewhat in doubt, but Marc Norman's inspiration for this movie is not. Credit his son, Zachary, who was studying Elizabethan drama at Boston University.

In 1989, Zachary called his dad with an idea for a movie: a young Shakespeare in the Elizabethan theater. Two years later, the elder Norman added the idea of Shakespeare struggling with writer's block while working on "Romeo and Juliet." He also wondered, the movie's production notes tell us, what had inspired the Bard to write such a tragic love story.

Norman took the concept to his neighbor, director Edward Zwick, and it traveled up the film food chain. Eventually, Tom Stoppard, author of the definitive Shakespeare spin-off called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," added his witty, knowing touch to Norman's story. They ended up sharing writing credit, while John Madden directed.

Paltrow has said the script was so rich in language that it was intoxicating. The costumes, dancing and romancing are dizzying, too.

If you have somehow managed to avoid all this until now, the movie is set in London in the summer of 1593 when Shakespeare is suffering from writer's block. He's working on "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter."

His muse arrives in the form of Lady Viola (Paltrow), who loves the theater but is barred from the stage because she's a woman. She disguises herself as a man and wins the lead in the play -- even as she falls in love with Shakespeare. The only problem is, Shakespeare's married, and Lady Viola is promised to another.

Judi Dench does an abbreviated but Oscar-winning turn as Queen Elizabeth I. Other characters based on real people: actor Edward "Ned" Alleyn (Ben Affleck); theatrical producer Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush); poet-dramatist Christopher Marlowe (Rupert Everett); actor Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes); Sir Edmund Tilney, the queen's Master of the Revels (Simon Callow); John Webster (Joe Roberts), a teen-ager at this time with a fondness for gore and violence who would later write plays; and comic actor-clown William Kempe (Patrick Barlow).

Viola was the invention of Norman and Stoppard, along with: Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), not to be confused with the Earl of Essex; moneylender Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson); youthful Sam Gosse (Daniel Brocklebank), a "boy-player" cast in female roles until his voice broke; and the stuttering Wabash (Mark Williams).

Enjoy.