Not even the “pretty woman” could convince Day-Lewis to star opposite her. After their meeting, however, Roberts flew back to Los Angeles and dropped out of the film. Roberts even flew to Ireland to meet with Daniel Day-Lewis in hopes he would play the bard. and London, the filmmakers couldn’t find an actor talented enough (or willing) to play Will Shakespeare.
Julia Roberts was originally planning to play Viola (the role that would eventually go to Gwyneth Paltrow), but after conducting casting sessions in the U.S. Here are some of our favorite behind-the-scenes stories about the making of Shakespeare in Love.
It would be 10 more years, a new cast and the addition of one of England’s best modern-day playwrights (Stoppard) before cameras would start rolling. After screenwriter Norman set up the film at Universal, the studio dropped out. “The Paltrow role does a kind of interesting job as her desires are awakened and fulfilled and she is able to give voice to them through the language of the play.Despite its critical and box office success, you may be surprised to know the film took a decade to get made. “ Romeo and Juliet is not just a love story, but also the story of a woman who finds her voice and articulates her desires and tries to find a way to fulfill them within the social restrictions that are placed on her,” Hooks says. In the case of the fictional Viola, the film takes much inspiration from many of Shakespeare’s leading female characters. The film is so skillfully structured that it plays on a lot of the aspects in Romeo and Juliet specifically, and also the larger body of Shakespeare’s work.” This also includes the exploration of fluid sexuality, and the playing with gender roles and the misrecognition of such, according to Hooks. “It starts out as a frolic, a kind of comedy, but then edges into tragedy. “One of the smartest things is that it doesn’t just tell a fantasy story about the origins of Romeo and Juliet, the film is dramatically structured like Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet,” says Hooks.
All were real contemporaries of Shakespeare, as of course was Queen Elizabeth. Among those helping, or hindering, the young Shakespeare in his onscreen quest for a hit new play include famous actors-of-the-age Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes) and Ned Alleyn ( Ben Affleck), theater entrepreneur Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and a teenage version of playwright John Webster (Joe Roberts). Like the era in which it is set, the male characters dictate much of what occurs in the film, and it is amongst the supporting roles where real tops reel. READ MORE: Did William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I Ever Meet? Unlike the movie, women were not allowed to play female rolesįor Hooks, the most implausible part of the film comes at the conclusion, when an actual woman performs a female role onstage (only men were allowed to be actors of the era) and Queen Elizabeth I rises up having been a hidden spectator in the public theater (plays and players made the journey to appear before the Queen at her location, she would not travel to a public playhouse). Onscreen, much credit for the inspiration is given to Shakespeare’s growing love for the fictional Viola (Paltrow), a woman of means striving to find her place in a world governed by men.
#Oscar winner for shakespeare in love movie#
Adam Hooks, Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Iowa and author of Selling Shakespeare: Biography, Bibliography and the Book Trade, remembers seeing the movie when it was first released: “The reason why scholars generally seem to enjoy the film is that it is very clear, very self-conscious and very self-aware about playing around with all these biographical fantasies that have been attached to Shakespeare over the years.”ĭirected by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, Shakespeare in Love is set in 1593 (part of a period of years in which much is historically unknown about the playwright’s life) and speculates about where the young Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), who is short on cash and ideas, finds inspiration for one of his best-known works, Romeo and Juliet.
0 kommentar(er)
