Shakespeare in Love takes a playful and delightful turn on the creation of Romeo and Juliet. A rather steamy, inventive, and somewhat parodic take on William Shakespeare’s approach to writing one of the greatest classics of all time, screenwriter Tom Stoppard energetically blends the drama and fiction of playwriting with the constructed fiction of the screen, doing so both through language (the whole film is written in iambic pentameter) and through parallel stories (the fictional biography of Shakespeare and the actual play). The fluidity between these parallel universes speaks to a larger conversation on the relationship between art and life. This is something Stoppard visually plays with during the brawl scene on stage when Lord Wessex challenges Shakespeare to a duel; during a suspenseful moment when Shakespeare is about to pierce Wessex through the heart, his choice of sword fails him and undermines his attack, bending as it humorously pokes at Wessex but also at us, the audience, and the spectacle of theater and of film-making. The film is able to so brilliantly convey a William Shakespeare as an everyday man that reminds us at most that he was a populist writer above all, something we oftentimes forget when we approach his work and place it on a pedestal.