Review of Shakespeare in Love (1998) by Ian C — 05 Feb 2014

It's a really good movie and a wonderful love story, but it's also a complete fairy tale! Not only is the story not true, but it has several historical discrepancies. This movie is set in the year 1593.

"Romeo and Juliet" is believed to have been written in 1595. Also, the movie suggests that Shakespeare's next play after R+J was "Twelfth Night". "Twelfth Night" was written after R+J, but it was also written after "Henry IV (Part 1 and 2)", "Henry V", "Julius Caesar", "Merry Wives of Windsor," "Much Ado About Nothing," and "As You Like It".

Lord Wessex talks about having a plantation in Virginia. I find that unlikely. Sir Walter Raleigh did establish the colony at Roanoke in 1587, but England ignored the new colony because they had to be more concerned with the threat of the Spanish Armada.

It wasn't until 1590 that anyone from England traveled to Virginia again. When they did reach Virginia they found Roanoke Colony deserted and the word CROATOAN scratched on a tree. I think it would be difficult for Wessex to maintain a plantation there and no one from England ventured back to Virginia until the Virginia Company founded Jamestown in 1607.

Today movie productions, and even some live stage ones of Shakespeare plays need to cut stuff due to time constraints, but when the plays were originally performed they must have left everything in. In the scenes they show us in this movie there are some lines missing.

Finally, Shakespeare did not need a muse or a love affair of his own to come up with R+J. R+J was already an existing story written down by several different authors in several different works. Shakespeare used those as his sources for the play.

I also doubt the it started out as a play to be titled "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter".