"Shakespeare in Love" was most certainly the best film of 1998. Brilliantly acted, beautifully photographed, refreshingly free of trendy special effects for the sake of special effects, and conveying genuine human emotion, it is what the best movies have always been about.
Written, Directed, Produced and performed with obvious care if not love, this film addresses the intellect and the emotions as did the bard himself. Shakespeare would have approved of this paean to love and literature.
It is incredibly accurate historically with one important exception. Christopher Marlowe was not killed in a mere tavern brawl. Indeed, the "official" story of Marlowe's death alleges that one Ingram Frizer killed Marlowe in self-defense as the two men argued over the "bill" or the "reckoning" as it was called at the time. But there is more to the story than that. It was not a tavern but a government "safe house" owned by Eleanor Bull who had connections to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's master spy. Marlowe himself was known to have been in Walsingham's employ and had been since his Cambridge days. Marlowe was a spy.
A number of scholars have raised compelling questions about the suspicious nature of Marlowe's death and have raised the possibility that he was murdered that night in Deptford. Shakespeare, himself, seemed to have been less than happy with the official coroner's report: "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." --William Shakespeare, "As You Like It".
Clearly, this is a reference to Marlowe, his verses, and his death "...in a little room" in Deptford in 1593.
"Shakespeare in Love" is wittily rich in fact and allusion. Discerning audiences will appreciate it.
Written, Directed, Produced and performed with obvious care if not love, this film addresses the intellect and the emotions as did the bard himself. Shakespeare would have approved of this paean to love and literature.
It is incredibly accurate historically with one important exception. Christopher Marlowe was not killed in a mere tavern brawl. Indeed, the "official" story of Marlowe's death alleges that one Ingram Frizer killed Marlowe in self-defense as the two men argued over the "bill" or the "reckoning" as it was called at the time. But there is more to the story than that. It was not a tavern but a government "safe house" owned by Eleanor Bull who had connections to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's master spy. Marlowe himself was known to have been in Walsingham's employ and had been since his Cambridge days. Marlowe was a spy.
A number of scholars have raised compelling questions about the suspicious nature of Marlowe's death and have raised the possibility that he was murdered that night in Deptford. Shakespeare, himself, seemed to have been less than happy with the official coroner's report: "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." --William Shakespeare, "As You Like It".
Clearly, this is a reference to Marlowe, his verses, and his death "...in a little room" in Deptford in 1593.
"Shakespeare in Love" is wittily rich in fact and allusion. Discerning audiences will appreciate it.
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