Shakespeare in Love with a Man

In the chase for audience approval and Oscar nods, screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard could not have custom tailored "Shakespeare in Love" any better. Gwyneth Paltrow bares her breasts, audiences can test their recognition of the Shakespearean quotes interspersed in the dialogue, the most acclaimed playwright and poet is known by the affectionately simple title "Will," and the bond between two beautiful lovers is yet again tragically severed. What is there not to love? Oh, and one more thing: the screenwriters took the liberty of redirecting a bit of William Shakespeare's prose to alter his sexual orientation. But in Hollywood these days, you do what you have to do to win an Oscar.

In his Feb. 6 New York Times article, Harvard literature professor Stephen Greenblatt explains that Shakespeare's popular sonnet, "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?" was actually addressed to a young man instead of the "fair-haired, wealthy young woman Viola de Lesseps" as "Shakespeare in Love" would lead one to believe. But for the sake of the movie's success--and the movie's success did depend on this fundamental alteration--the screenwriters did a bit of tinkering.

The most provocative contention in Greenblatt's article is his conclusion: "Perhaps the studios underestimated how much Americans love talent: even if the film had depicted Shakespeare writing his sonnet to a fair young man, audiences may have delighted in his overwhelming success."

Sadly, Greenblatt is mistaken. First, the movie was called "Shakespeare in Love," not "Shakespeare at Work." Greenblatt has a bit too much faith in the American public if he actually thinks that Shakespeare's peerless talent drew hoards of theatergoers rather than the movie's tragic plot.

And second, in a country where the Senate majority leader juxtaposes homosexuality with alcoholism and kleptomania and anti-gay hate crime plague our towns and cities, this open-minded optimism hardly reflects reality. Talent or no talent, a story about Shakespeare's life would not have been as successful if he was portrayed as a homosexual.

So have we regressed to treating homosexuality on stage with even less acceptance than during Elizabethan England? Protesters will clamor that surely we were able to make at least some cinematic progress with 1993's Academy-award winning film "Philadelphia." But this movie's success only illustrated that audiences across the nation were finally prepared to sympathize with a dying homosexual AIDS patient. Love had not yet entered the picture. And now, almost a decade later, screenwriters alter history and studios still shy away from a homosexual love story because of fear that it won't sell. And it won't.

Part of audiences' attraction to "Shakespeare in Love" was its constant depiction of beauty--from the gold embroidered costumes, to the regal estates, to the gorgeous Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes. And while the screenwriters could have retained this beauty and still had Shakespeare direct his sonnet to a young man, beauty alone could not have won audiences' praise as it did--the movie's heterosexual romance made all of the difference.

Had Norman and Stoppard yearned to make a movie about homosexuality, here would have been an opportunity to show that the man capable of creating the "greatest love story of all time" would have pursued not Juliet, but fair Romeo. But this plot would not have rewarded the screenwriters with adoring audiences, and certainly not with 13 Oscar nominations.

Screenwriters with that Academy Award glean in their eye must create films to which the majority of American audiences can relate. And more Americans can relate to Shakespeare's pursuit of Viola de Lesseps rather than perhaps the pursuit of Christopher Marlow, Shakespeare's authentic friend and literary rival. Norman and Stoppard wrote the movie with the intention that audience members would either trudge out of the theater longing for some Romeo to climb through their bedroom window at night, or with patrons holding on a bit tighter to the Romeo they had already won over. Had the plot focused on a homosexual relationship, the audience would not have felt the same emotional identification with the lovers split asunder.

Even here at Harvard we find a reluctance to progress from "Philadelphia's" feelings of sympathy to those of romantic empathy. For example, Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals, like all of Shakespeare's plays, is performed by an all male cast. But while Shakespeare never shied away from displays of passion between his lovers on stage, for all of the lewdness of "I Get No Kick from Campaign," there is not one kiss between any one of the musical's couples. Audiences at The Rose anticipated these displays of compassion to solidify the storys plot--in Elizabethan England, that the kiss was between two men, with one dressed as a woman, was inconsequential.

Jordana R. Lewis '02 lives in Thayer Hall.