Behind The Scenes

Last Friday I viewed the film Shakespeare in Love. In the movie, Shakespeare is in the process of writing  the play Romeo and Juliet. This movie was completely fictional but hypothesized where Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet originated. In the beginning of the movie, Shakespeare unknowingly casted a woman for the part of Romeo, due to the fact that she pretended to be a man, at the time known as Thomas Kent. It later turned out that Thomas Kent was in fact Viola de Lesseps, a woman of the upper class that Shakespeare would have a love affair with.  At this time, the play started to shadow his interactions with Viola. Later in the movie Viola had to marry Lord Wessex, creating an end to their affair. During the final scenes of the movie, Shakespeare had to play Romeo while his love interest, Viola played Juliet. As they thought these were their final moments together they expressed their love for each other in the play. Unlike in Romeo and Juliet, Viola and Shakespeare had a happy ending in comparison. Neither of them died, but Viola did marry Lord Wessex. Overall, I thought that this movie posed an interesting question to where Shakespeare’s idea for Romeo and Juliet had originated. It is possible that these events did occur, but it is unknown. I thought this movie did a wonderful job in portraying the Elizabethan era, I for one was disgusted by the majority of everyone’s teeth during that time period. The movie did a good job highlighting the cast differences and explaining a potential hypothesis on the origin of Romeo and Juliet, as it was not thought that a love like Romeo and Juliet’s could be caught on screen.

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