A Bad Play within a Good One

Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2001)

Spoilers herein.
This film surely hit a mass marketing sweet spot, I suppose because it was competently crafted, had a twee love affair, displayed some quaint costumes and gave the faint impression that in spite of its fun, it held something important. That last quality is the most important to me, especially when Shakespeare is involved, especially when the writer is Stoppard.
Some time back, Stoppard took two minor characters from Hamlet and recreated the play with most of the original themes and many of its metaphors. A key device was the self-referential play within the play. The whole thing (`Rosencrantz and Guildenstern') was brilliant and stands as one of the masterpieces of 20th century drama. Since then his light has mmed.
Here, he takes many of the same clothes and tries to drape them on `Romeo and Juliet' to emulate an ordinary date movie. There are some crafty touches in how the play within is bound to the play without, but they are mostly played as jokes. All the intelligence goes out of the concept because the core concept is broken: R&J is Shakespeare's most poetic work. It overflows with ideas - it overwhelms. Here, you have a double reduction: lace is turned to linen so far as the poetry so Hollywood doesn't turn off the masses; and the play is reduced to a love story, minus the drugs, charms, politics, fate, all the external machinery of the original. So one must completely discount the Shakespeare and Stoppard content and think of this film as a common thing.
But what possibilities they had! At the time this was set (about 1592-3) Shakespeare was duking it out with Marlowe, by far the better writer. Theaters were closed and they were in competition for Southampton's patronage. The poetry jam was stanzas of Marlowe's `Hero and Lysander,' versus Will's `Venus and Adonis.' Will, who has left an illiterate wife back in the country enters into first a homosexual relationship with Southampton, which then becomes a bisexual triangle with a `Dark Lady,' probably (married) occult siren Emelia Lanier. A way cool lady.
This was the time of Raleigh's famous `school of night' which studied the `black arts' and with which Marlowe was associated. (Will parodied it in `Loves' Labors' Lost.') The great scientist/magician Harriot led the school, mentor to Galileo and Kepler. He never published, indeed repeatedly destroyed his notes, because of recurring heresy trials. Similar trials resulted in Harriot's friend Bruno being burned by the Pope, Galileo coming close, and (likely) Marlowe being murdered, leaving the field open for Will. Southampton would later lose his head over this, driving Will deeper into the Catholic occult intrigue - all this recorded in the mysterious sonnets (and later referenced in `The Tempest').
Now there's some hot stuff! Wow what Stoppard could have done! What comparative drivel we have instead.