A Few Further Thoughts About "Shakespeare In Love"
Shakespeare In Love imagines a love affair between a young William Shakespeare and a (fictional) well-born woman who dreams of a career on the stage - at a time when women were barred from such pursuits.
She disguises herself as a boy and secures the part of Romeo in Shakespeare's new play, while simultaneously falling in love with Shakespeare and providing the inspiration for that same play.
Tom Stoppard's screenplay is a love letter to Shakespeare and to British Theatre in general, and the finished film is marred (in my opinion) only by the casting of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Although the overwhelming majority of the cast is British, Shakespeare In Love is nonetheless a Hollywood film, and the film's producer felt it was important for at least one of the leads to be played by an American - preferably a famous American. Unfortunately for everyone (especially everyone who had to work with him) that producer was Harvey Weinstein.
Much has been written elsewhere about Weinstein's track record as a sexual predator, as well as his treatment of the many women who were unlucky enough to cross his path. I will leave that particular discussion for another time, but I can't help feeling that Weinstein's fingerprints are all over the casting of Gwyneth Paltrow in this film (literally as well as figuratively, according to Paltrow's testimony).
Perhaps because the film was selling itself as a classic Romantic Drama; perhaps because they wanted the poster to remind everyone of Gone With the Wind; or perhaps simply because Harvey Weinstein is only interested in women who are sex objects - Gwyneth Paltrow is portrayed throughout the film as a very conventional "beauty" in the Hollywood sense. She is charming and graceful and lovely, with luscious golden locks and is clearly visualised here as the heterosexual male ideal of the perfect woman.
Unfortunately, Stoppard's script does not support this concept. The character, as written, has no interest in marriage or life at court; she wants to be an actor on the stage, and is willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve that goal. Her arranged husband (played with moustache twirling relish by Colin Firth) is only interested in her for financial reasons: she is a source of income for him, and of no other value.
The problem is that Gwyneth Paltrow is framed as the "most desirable woman in the room"; the one to whom all eyes are drawn. If this were an American High School movie, she would be the Prom Queen - the one all the nerdy kids dream about at night, even though they know she is way out of their league.
It would have made more sense (and a much more interesting film) if she had been portrayed as an awkward and slightly gangly woman; someone ill-suited to the airs and graces of life at court, but who is tolerated (presumably with a mix of pity and contempt) because she comes from money. This would have reinforced Colin Firth's complete disinterest in her (except as a source of income). As it stands, Colin Firth has said that he imagined his character as gay - but "gay" is not "blind" and a gay man can still recognise the Prom Queen, even if he isn't attracted to her.
In West Side Story (as long as we're talking about Romeo and Juliet) the character of "Anybodys" is portrayed as a tomboy: a young woman who is not remotely feminine and who wants to join the Jets as a full-fledged member of the gang. She is repeatedly rebuffed by the (male) gang members because she is female. Of course she also doesn't conform to their standards of female identity (compare her to Graziella and Velma - the "girlfriends") so she loses out on both counts.
If Shakespeare In Love's Viola had been visualised along these lines, then her transformation into the actor "Thomas Kent" would take on a whole new light. The awkward, ungraceful young woman would suddenly make a lot more sense as a young man. It would also make the climax of the film even more dramatic, when Viola is called upon to play Juliet at the last moment (sorry; spoilers). Now we have a woman pretending to be a man, playing a woman (think Cherubino and Octavian, all you opera-lovers out there) but this could have been the chance for the "tomboy" to finally play female, for the first time in the film. It would have been a very powerful moment if the woman everyone had ignored suddenly emerges on stage as a Great Beauty and shows the world that she knows how to perform "feminine" when she wants to. Colin Firth's Lord Wessex, watching her from the audience, would see his wife as an object of desire for the first time in the narrative, but he would also see that this "femininity" is merely a performance; it's a costume that she can put on and take off at will, and serves merely to disguise the person that is her.
Such a reading of the character would also tie in very nicely to Shakespeare's own concept of "beauty". A recurring idea in Shakespeare's plays is the notion of women wearing make-up as a metaphor for insincerity (or worse). Hamlet throws this idea at Ophelia:
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; Heaven hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.
…and later, when examining Yorick's skull and dwelling on the futility of existence (cheerful chap that he was) he says,
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.
In A Winter's Tale, young Perdita says,
Desire to breed by me.
Shakespeare apparently had strong feelings about women who used the outward signs of "beauty" (or glamour, to be more precise) as a performance - a means to hide their true selves. To him, this was merely a mask, and the purpose of a mask is to hide.
With this in mind, it would make sense for the fictional Shakespeare of Shakespeare In Love to be drawn to a non-glamourous, un-feminine Viola. In the story, his first sight of her (as a woman) is at a dance at her father's estate. In the finished film, Gwyneth Paltrow (the Prom Queen) is the object of everyone's gaze. How much more interesting the scene could have been (and how much more "Shakespearean") had she caught Shakespeare's eye because she was the only woman at the dance who was not performing to the male gaze.
Sadly (very, very sadly) such a concept was never likely to find its way into any film produced by Harvey Weinstein.
Gwyneth Paltrow's Viola doesn't even make internal sense within the film. There is simply no way all that luxurious flowing hair could ever fit under the wig she is supposedly wearing when she is Thomas Kent, the actor. Where does it all go??
It's also worth noting that history is full of men who have pursued all sorts of careers (soldiers, truck drivers, musicians, monks and, yes, actors) who were eventually revealed (sometimes only after their deaths) to actually be women. This phenomenon is almost certainly far more widespread than is generally acknowledged; men have generally had far more social and life-style options open to them, and some women have decided that living as a man is the more palatable choice.
Very few of those women looked anything like Gwyneth Paltrow.
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