The Muse of Shakespeare Imagined as a Blonde
N.Y. Newsday, 12/11/98
A film by any other name wouldn't be as sweet By Jack Mathews, Staff Writer MOVIE REVIEW: "Shakespeare in Love." **** (R)
The year's best and most original comedy -- throw in the best love story, too -- stars Joseph Fiennes as a frustrated young William Shakespeare and Gwyneth Paltrow as the woman who inspires him to write "Romeo and Juliet." With Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Judi Dench. Directed by John Madden. 2:02 (sexuality, nudity). At Sony Lincoln Square, Broadway at 68th Street, Manhattan.

A THEATER IMPRESARIO with debts in arrears is having his feet held to the fire -- literally, dunked in glowing coals -- when he blurts out a teaser for a new play he might be willing to share with his debtor, who runs 1593 London's Rose Theatre. It's a crowd-tickler, the hot foot says, mistaken identities, shipwreck, pirate king, a bit with a dog and love triumphant. What's it called? "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter." Hmmm. Good title.

Thus begins John Madden's "Shakespeare in Love," one of the strangest, funniest, most enchanting, most romantic and -- fittingly -- best-written tales ever spun from the vast legend of William Shakespeare. It's the story of the creation of "Romeo and Juliet," a play that a slumping Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is inspired to write by debt, panic, sexual dysfunction and a woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) in male drag who becomes his muse. Don't ask a scholar to explain.

Co-written by playwright Tom Stoppard, in what must have been a frenzy of whimsy, and heretofore undistinguished Hollywood veteran Marc Norman ("Cutthroat Island"), "Shakespeare in Love" tells the story of how young Will, under pressure from competing theaters and being enormously jealous of his better-known rival Christopher Marline, caught fire in the burning sheets of his new lover's bed and turned "Romeo and Ethel" into the greatest romantic tragedy ever produced. "Shakespeare in Love" is a picture of perfection, from every angle.

The dialogue is hilarious, even when you're not sure whether you're missing a Shakespearean reference (and there are many). The characters, who seem to have one foot in the late 16th Century and one in the late 20th, are totally convincing, even when their tongues are in their cheeks. And it looks as ripe as an Old Globe production come to life, even though the Old Globe is not to be seen. Best of all are the performances, which are across-the-cast superb, with special mentions due Geoffrey Rush, as Will's befuddled patron, Ben Affleck, as the traveling thespian who portrays Mercutio ("He dies?"), and Judi Dench, a sensation in her three scenes as the proto-feminist Queen Elizabeth.

But the best work is center stage, with Fiennes and Paltrow. Fiennes, who can also be seen wearing tights in the same historical vicinity in "Elizabeth," plays the lovestruck Bard with a starmaking combination of passion, humor, matinee idol posturing, cockiness and humility. Will knows he's a hell of a writer, especially of romance ("For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery," he brags to his hourglass-watching analyst), but he's nothing without a muse, and lately, none of his old girlfriends amuses him. That changes, in a flash, when he meets Viola, at first disguised as the androgynous actor Thomas Kent, during auditions for the role of Romeo in the unfinished play.

Viola is the daughter of a nobleman and the arranged fiancee of a New World-bound Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), but what she wants -- other than to be suffocated by the love of a poet -- is to break the glass ceiling at the theater, where tradition dictates that all roles be filled by males. Whether Viola, even with the help of Will and the other cast members, can pull this off is just one of many points of comic tension in the film.

Stoppard and Norman have taken the themes of "Romeo and Juliet" and placed them before the horse, as it were. Will and Viola's balcony scene becomes the balcony scene of Romeo and his renamed lover Juliet. The feud between the Rose and Curtain theaters, from opposite sides of the Thames, feed the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. Madden, who directed last year's potent "Mrs. Brown," manages the rare feat of blending farce and genuine emotion, and of turning out a sophisticated comedy that will work for everyone.