We constantly strive to portray the abstractions of our lives as physical things. We desire to control everything around ourselves to remain safe and secure. And is there any better way to exert control than to take what was once invisible, merely a concept, and create a tangible thing which can be studied and dissected? Science takes a falling apple and produces physics, history takes an event suspended in time and creates a book, William Shakespeare experiences love and creates art. Art is humanity’s attempt to study and evaluate emotions by making physical representations of what we all experience. Therefore, it follows that in order to make great art the artist must understand great emotions as well.

Shakespeare in Love is a film which tries to show this to its audience. Shakespeare is not a man who imagines what his characters are feeling as he writes, rather Shakespeare knows exactly what Romeo and Juliet are going through. There is a bet in the film that no one can accurately portray love in a play, however Shakespeare has faced love and loss. With his experiences and a significant talent to convert feelings into words, he wins the bet by writing Romeo and Juliet. This speaks to the necessity for artists to go out and experience life to fully understand their subject emotions. And it becomes easy to understand why some of the greatest artists of history often had troubled lives, since they had to deal with hardship in life they could easily portray hardship on the canvas, or on paper, or in song.

Art was somewhat of a mystery to me, I never took a particular interest in it. But now I see art’s importance to society. It is how we understand ourselves and our interactions with others. Art is love, happiness, sadness, loneliness, and every other emotion you can think of. Shakespeare in Love is a not just a film about Shakespeare’s tragic love life, but a story of Shakespeare “in love” as an integral part of his artwork.