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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Special Travel Sports People Features Living Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Will he, won't he?
By Mohamed El-Assyouti
Young Romeo Montague, an upstart playwright in Renaissance Italy is suffering from a mental block. His producers take hold of his diary and concoct a play in which a young aristocratic woman disguised as a man takes the leading role -- that of amorous Shakespeare.
Or is it that Juliet Capulet, writing plays and hiding her shameful preoccupation with this most common of trades from her upper class family, contrives to make her servant boy into a front for her activity?
Thus the Capulets' messenger -- young Will Shakespeare -- becomes famous as a talented playwright and in gratitude to his lady he sets her up with attractive superstar Romeo de Montague.
Or better still Queen Elizabeth -- fond of creating fictional drama and making people believe all life is but a play -- acts as young Juliet's nurse, becomes a go-between twixt her charge and Romeo, managing to bring their love to both a romantic and tragic climax.
All three versions are equally valid, the important point being that a gifted playwright has occupied an imaginary space between two protagonists and produced one of the most popular love stories in history. Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's script (which received an academy award) manages to recreate that particular imaginary space for us. Of course, none of the aforementioned versions is explicitly used, nor is any line traced between the Bard and Masuccio Salernitano, Luigi da Porto, Arthur Brooke or any other earlier source for the story of Romeo and Juliet.
Instead of futile references to real histories the movie portrays a fictional personal history of Shakespeare himself (Joseph Fiennes), one that is no less valid than any other that might have been. Norman and Stoppard's excuse is that the Bard was more post-modern than any of us may think. He must have written himself into and out of his plays in ways that would elude any attempt to ground our understanding of his drama on the basis of a biography that is in any case incomplete and even mysterious.
Consequently, any dealing with Shakespeare today must be on the ground that he chose, i.e. the plays. Nothing that is so is so. The play is the thing. Thus far is understandable and even praise-worthy, though a little while into the film such approval is checked. To reconcile the Swan of Avon with a post-modern world of unoriginal copies and virtual realities is one thing but to scramble Romeo and Juliet into Titanic is not only a manifestation of a Hollywood at wits end, but a symptom of a new world order that effaces any differences between the love of Rose and Jack, Juliet and Romeo, and Viola and Shakespeare, or Orsino for that matter.
The Elizabethan stage, and particularly the plays of the Bard, dramatised a variety of kinds of love: Troilus and Cressida are as far from Antony and Cleopatra as Greece is from Egypt. But the pair of lovers in this movie are much closer to those in Titanic than either.
This latter brought in the largest box office income Hollywood has ever seen, and lasted for almost half a year in local movie theatres. Shakespeare in Love is at a slight disadvantage as far as the box office is concerned: no silicon graphics, special effects, and more lamentably, no Celine Dion on the soundtrack. Furthermore, Paltrow, who received an Oscar for her distinguished performance, is not as corpulent as Kate Winslet, who was a hit with the local male youth.
In The Postman, a flop locally and world-wide, Kevin Costner plays a travelling actor who plays Shakespeare to an audience that knows nothing about his plays. Today, the audience of Shakespeare in Love should be on its guard, since the charming appeal of the stars may cause them to lose their way to the Bard. While this Hollywood production intelligently draws on two plays -- Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night -- to fictionalise an account of Shakespeare's life, the audience might mistakenly take the Bard's cinematic relationship with Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Queen Elizabeth and Lord Wessex at face value.
Norman and Stoppard's script borrows heavily from Shakespeare, regularly quoting his plays. Minor plot twists, that at any particular point can proceed into this tragic vein, that comic twist, are cleverly informed by the Bard's own plays, with tongue firmly in cheek. Consequently, while the Titanic audience is unlikely to be too disappointed, those familiar with Shakespeare's plays are up for an amusingly witty treat.
Shakespeare in Love is now showing at Ramsis Hilton 1 and Tiba 1.
