Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Examiner
Friday, August 13, 1999

Shakespeare struck speechless? It happens near the beginning of the captivating ``Shakespeare in Love,'' when the title character -- Will, to his friends -- changes partners during an Elizabethan dance and finds himself face to face with the luminous Lady Viola.

Words don't fail Will (Joseph Fiennes) for long. Inspired by his passionate romance with Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow), he staves off writer's block, and his half-baked play, for which he can come up with no better title than ``Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter,'' becomes transformed into one of the great love stories.

Of course, Will and Viola have their problems. As Shakespeare himself put it, ``The course of true love never did run smooth.'' Will is already married, though this turns out to be a minor inconvenience. A bigger obstacle is Queen Elizabeth's command that Viola marry Lord Wessex (Colin Firth).

Screenwriters Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman find a way to make the Bard's poetry understandable to movie audiences. Will and Viola end up playing Romeo and Juliet. Through crosscuts between their performance and their romance, the audience can see how the words evolved from Will's deep feelings.

The cast is near perfect. Fiennes brings humanity to Will, and his bedroom scenes with Paltrow are among the most passionate of the year. Judi Dench, who played Queen Victoria in ``Mrs. Brown,'' is just as stately as Elizabeth I. And Geoffrey Rush, as Will's producer, proves adept at comedy.