Pop Culture

Shakespeare's Tale Still in The Running

The Canberra Times, 17 March 1999

It might seem a foregone conclusion that Saving Private Ryan, already regarded as director Steven Spielberg's masterpiece, will soon win the Oscar for best picture. Oddsmakers have decided that, like Titanic last year, Ryan is virtually unbeatable.

Perhaps, but I still wait to be convinced. Shakespeare in Love, its greatest challenger, has a few things in its favour.

Firstly, it has more nominations that anything else, including Ryan. This usually guarantees the best film Oscar, at the very least. Secondly, Saving Private Ryan is competing with another World War II battle film, The Thin Red Line. That esoteric film has no chance of winning, but it might take some votes away from the similarly themed Ryan.

But the main reason why Shakespeare in Love has such promise is because it's a Hollywood studio story, set in Shakespearean times. The Oscar winners are chosen, of course, by people within the industry. Watching this film, they can identify with the great writers, actors and producers of Shakespeare's time.

As the film suggests, Shakespeare, like any screenwriter today, probably suffered from writers' block. Philip Henslowe, one of the shrewdest theatre producers of his time, could also have been a bumbling oaf. It is also pleasing to think that Richard Burbage, the great thespian, could have had so much in common with many Hollywood stars. This is not proven, of course, but the voters would certainly enjoy the idea.

The film adds relish to the few facts we already know. Though Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes) was a gifted poet and dramatist, little is known about him, apart from his basic records and the fact that nearly every pub in his birthplace, the cosy village of Stratford-upon-Avon, has a sign saying "Shakespeare drank here." (Presumably he spent his spare time like many other great writers.)

We also know that he took many of his plots directly from other sources. Even Hamlet was a rewrite of an earlier work by another playwright. According to this film, the plot for Romeo and Juliet was kindly given to him by his greatest rival, Christopher Marlowe (Rupert Everett) and his lover Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow) gave him the basis of Twelfth Night.

If it seems strange to suggest that England's greatest writer "stole" so many ideas, remember that many scholars believe that his plays were written by someone else entirely: Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon - even Queen Elizabeth I, though God knows how she would find the time. (In the film, Her Majesty is played by Dame Judi Dench as wise and all-knowing, but no doubt wondering why Shakespeare looks so similar to her lover when she was younger and played by Cate Blanchett.)

Like the Hollywood of today, the West End of London boasted the era's most famous actors. Shakespeare in Love introduces us to a few, notably actor-manager Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes) and his great rival, Edward "Ned" Alleyn (Ben Affleck). A contemporary source described them as "two great actors as no age must ever look to see the like".

There was no Who Weekly in Elizabethan times, so we can't be sure how accurately the film captures their personalities. Burbage's chief claim to immortality was building the Globe Theatre, the "studio" for most of Shakespeare's plays, though many movie actors would also identify with his proven talent for getting into fights.

Alleyn, however, was louder and more ebullient, as Affleck's performance indicates. According to legend, the devil himself once appeared onstage while Alleyn was performing, frightening him into retirement. How many Hollywood biographies have a story to rival that one?

One of the best in-jokes of the film occurs when the financier Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson) looks at Shakespeare and asks "Who's that?" "Nobody, sir," replies Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush). "He's the author." Co-writer Sir Tom Stoppard, who made his name on the English stage, knows that London does not hold dramatists in such low regard, and probably never did. The line was a stab at Hollywood, where they have usually been considered "nothing" compared to, say, directors. Hamlet is "a William Shakespeare play", but Shakespeare in Love will always be "a John Madden film".

Despite Rush's cartoonish performance, Philip Henslowe actually existed, recording his business transactions for posterity. He was perhaps not as laughable as the film would have us believe, cleverly "buying" most of England's actors by placing them in his debt. The great Hollywood tycoons (Meyer, Goldwyn and the rest) would have been envious.

The film's major fictitious character is Viola, who disguises herself as a man to appear in the theatre, becoming the role model for Viola in Twelfth Night and presumably, Shakespeare's other cross-dressing heroines. There is no record of Viola's existence, though there were probably a few such women before the 17th century, when women were finally allowed on the English stage.

As one might predict, Gwyneth Paltrow makes a very unconvincing man. So she should! The most recent filmed version of Twelfth Night (1996) featured the sweet-faced Imogen Stubbs as Viola. Viola has also been played on stage by the likes of Jacqueline McKenzie, Helen Hunt and Alison Whyte. Not exactly the most mannish bunch, because like Shakespeare in Love, it's a comedy. We can accept the idea that every character is too myopic to see through the ludicrously thin disguise.

Literary, clever, funny and romantic as it is, Shakespeare in Love is not guaranteed the best picture vote. The Academy doesn't usually take comedies seriously. As Rain Man and Forrest Gump passed for dramas, no comedy has won since Annie Hall in 1979, and only a handful of comedies have taken the main award in the Oscars' 71-year history.

Moreover, Saving Private Ryan has already won a bundle of awards, and however jealous Steven Spielberg's colleagues might be, they can't deny his talent. For all that, in another year, Shakespeare would be hard to beat.