Master William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), an up-and-coming playwright and sonneteer, is not nearly as well known as his counterpart, Christopher Marlowe (Rupert Everett). As the company rehearses his new play, William and Viola's love is transferred to the written page leading to the masterpiece that is Romeo and Juliet.ġ593 London. Shakespeare soon sees through her disguise and they begin a love affair, one they know cannot end happily for them as he is already married and she has been promised to the dour Lord Wessex (Colin Firth). Dressing as a man, and going by the name of "Thomas Kent", she auditions and is ideal for a part in his next play.
She is also a great admirer of Shakespeare's works. She loves the theatre and would like nothing more than to take to the stage, but is forbidden from doing so as only men can be actors. He is in search of his muse, the woman who will inspire him but all attempts fail him until he meets the beautiful Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow). William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is a known but struggling poet, playwright, and actor, who not only has sold his next play to both Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes), but now faces a far more difficult problem: he is bereft of ideas and has yet to begin writing. He immortalizes Viola as the heroine of Twelfth Night, saying "she will be my heroine for all time." Or at least until he needs to write another play.The world's greatest ever playwright, William Shakespeare, is young, out of ideas and short of cash, but meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays. Will finds hope in tragedy, which is easy enough for him considering he isn't being shipped across the Atlantic with a man he doesn't love. It isn't the loss of her acting career or her freedom that she laments, but the possibly that this man might never write again. Will almost quits writing, he's so depressed, but Viola tells him, "If my hurt is to be that you will write no more, then I shall be the sorrier." This puts her firmly in place not as a great actress or a passionate lover, but as Shakespeare's muse. A comedy about a cross-dressing shipwreck survivor? (That sounds like a good sequel… or an episode of Gilligan's Island.) Before she leaves, she inspires Will to write Twelfth Night in which he imagines her ship wrecks, killing everyone (especially Wessex who he probably fantasizes being eaten by sharks as well), but Viola survives. We get tears and a journey when Viola must leave with Lord Wessex, her husband, to America. As the Queen says, this is how it ends: "As stories must when love is denied: with tears, and a journey." No other performance of this play, no matter how good it is, could ever be as passionate, unless the two leads were in a tragic romance of their own.
We think the reason it does is because the two actors are in love. Shockingly, the Queen is there, and she settles a wager earlier "as to whether a play can show the very truth and nature of love." Her verdict: It can. She plays opposite Shakespeare, as Romeo, and their love is so true, it burns up the stage. And because Viola is a woman, she can play Juliet in a way that no man can. The audience gasps, either because a woman is one stage, or they can't possibly believe a man could be that beautiful. She is reversing the gender-reversal by playing her own gender.
So Viola returns taking on the very role she inspired. However, just as the curtain is rising, the man playing Juliet can no longer play her. But she's been exposed and expelled from the stage. Throughout the film, Viola has masqueraded as a man to play Romeo. But before we get to the tragic denouement, first the dramatic climax. For a romantic comedy, the ending to Shakespeare in Love is pretty tragic.
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