Shakespeare in Love Revisited

Remember the Movie? 1998 - Time Flies -

Shakespeare in Love - Is it Time to Revisit It? 

You might remember (24 years ago) the endearing movie  that included Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth and Judi Dench. The fictional story is a comedy about Shakespeare falling in love with Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) while he was writing the play Romeo and Juliet. There are many references to actual quotes from the play, historical events, and the movie has an authenticity of the times. The humor is exceptional. It won seven Oscars including best picture, best actress, best supporting actress, and best screenplay. It's a must see if you like good movies and have not seen it yet.

 The trailer on YouTube will bring it back to memory, or inspire you to watch it for the first time or maybe to view it again. The video is a deeper dive into another story about Shakepeare especially for those like myself, who have not been able to get into the actual plays (until this year), and like a good story. 

 

Hamnet - a Very Popular Modern Book About Shakepeare's Life

 from Amazon

"IONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you." —The Boston Globe

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever." 

I recommend experiencing this story as an audiobook, and it can be downloaded free if you subscribe to Audible's free trial then cancel. The prose is beautifully written as describe in a review also on Amazon: "The reader of this novel will be challenged by the urge to press ahead and discover how the story unfolds, but resisting all the while to savor the stunningly gorgeous writing. In any time, but particularly during this time of the pandemic, grief and the yearning for some shred of consolation are treated with such graceful and sensitive measure. An unforgettable literary gift."