Shakespeare in Love is a very clever film.

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 1998)

A number of years ago I happened to see an SCTV sketch which depicted William Shakespeare in the back of the Globe theatre furiously attempting to finish the last scenes of Hamlet, when he was suddenly cornered by two actors demanding more money. Francis Bacon, the play's producer, refused the actor's demands and ordered Shakespeare on the spot to write the two men out of the work. Shakespeare complied. And, taking quill in hand, he quickly scribbled out that greatest of all clinker, `...Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead....'

It is with a similar lighthearted touch that Shakespeare in Love takes us into the dreamed up world of the English playwright's back stage life to depict the powerful love affair which provided him with the literary `stuff' for Romeo and Juliet.
Or course, the merit of the movie rest not on the historical accuracy of its rather concocted Elizabethan tale, but rather on the clever way it manages to fashion and weave the little earthy pieces of Shakespeare's own life, situation, and romance into the material which would become the magic of the world's greatest romance. Tom Stoppard, whom, I understand, wrote the screenplay's final draft, has reframed Romeo and Juliet within a sparkling context which manages to both explode and reinvigorate the spirit of the original work.
While some of the film's comic schtick does, at times, get a little overbearing, Shakespeare in Love is certainly one of the cleverest romps I've seen in a long time.
I enjoyed it immensely, and cannot recommend it highly enough.