When the Academy Award-winning film Shakespeare in Love opened 20 years ago, I thought it was heaven-sent, and so did all my friends in the theatre. As Aristotle noted, “poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” Through its whimsy and invention, we glimpse truths about the theatre, about poetry, and why they matter to us. The play is a what-if riff on Shakespeare, the Elizabethan theatre, and the spark that gave us the Bard’s great tragedy of young love. In a fanciful way, it allows us to move up close to a young Will Shakespeare, gifted but floundering, as well as his other now-famous collaborators, patrons, rivals and players, along with a few imagined characters. It takes us onstage, backstage, and into the hearts, minds, foibles, and fancies of those who aspire to create this rough magic. This play has been described as a love letter to the theatre.
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