Little Historical Accuracy


If you think you know all about Shakespeare's life after watching this movie, think again. Tom Stoppard is very fast and loose with the facts in order to tell a great story. This much he actually achieves. But at the expense of teaching everyone false history.

Obviously, when you watch a movie based in history, you should take it with a grain of salt anyway. I would hardly say this movie is based in any kind of history other than the fact that there WAS a man named William Shakespeare who wrote a play called Romeo and Juliet in Elizabethan England. And that's about it.

From my own research, here's what's actually fact, and what's fiction:

FACT:
*Christopher Marlowe WAS killed in a bar brawl.
*W.S. arrived in London about 1592, leaving his wife and kids behind in Stratford.
*Henslowe and Burbage were real men (though not as portrayed) who had theaters called The Rose and The Curtain.
* Ned Alleyn (Ben Affleck) was a real actor who performed in many of Marlowe's plays.

FICTION:
* Viola de Lesseps never existed, and neither did Wessex.
* W.S. wrote Romeo and Juliet in 1597, several years after the movie's depiction.
* W.S. did not invent the characters or the story as depicted. Romeus and Juliet was first published in 1562 by Arthur Brooke, based on an earlier Italian story. W.S. just adapted it into a play.
* There were no established colonies or tobacco crops in Virginia in 1593. In fact, there was no Virginia either.

Before you respond with the inevitable replies of "It's just a movie, get over it," I KNOW it's just a movie. Get over it.


Mirror inspector is a job I could really see myself doing.

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After intensive scholarly research I can also inform the waiting world that the Elizabethans didn't have psychoanalysts, souvenir mugs from Stratford-upon-Avon or Harold Pinter.

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And that it's possible for a director and writers to do everything short of having extras jumping up and down at the back of every scene with placards saying 'THIS MOVIE IS A SPOOF, FOLKS!!!!!' and half of the audience still will not get it.

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Why doesn't IMDb have a Like button?

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2 Likes.

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I finally got a copy of Hearts of the West the other day, the one with Gwyneth Paltrow's mum in it. Phwoooar.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

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Spotted a great phrase in The Guardian, new to me, which sums up a lot of the reaction to films like this and Drop Dead Gorgeous from the following year.

Dog Whistle Humour.

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Hello Alfa, how's tricks? I had that Black Sails in the back of my cab the other day.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

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Fine, considering. You know how we Northern stoics never complain. Did we ever get to the bottom of how old Mae West was?

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I thought you were from the soft south! Sorry, I'm a midlander me sen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_La_Malmaison

Here's one I prepared earlier.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

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Yer a soft southerner, yerself then. I thought everyone could pick up my Liverpool accent from my typing.

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I did wonder if your frequent absences were due to yet another fight with your probation officer....;O)

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

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While I don't mind you pointing out the historically acurate facts the movie alludes to, I do take issue with your statement that Stoppard would be "teaching everyone false history", because this is entirely besides the point.

Unlike your typical movie about some historical event that twists and tweaks facts in order to tell a compelling story according to the Western rules of storytelling, the screenplay to "Shakespeare in Love" does not try to do any such thing.

Tom Stoppard is one of the most famous writers of postmodern literature and the screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love" should be viewed in this way as well. One of the main concepts of postmodernism is that a work of art is stitched together of numerous quotes, allusions, clippings and elements of works of art that have gone before it. Still, the enjoyment of the piece of art in itself is not dependent on the knowledge of the source, it can be appreciated as a story on itself. However, knowing about the allusions and quotes can help to view the piece of literature in a different and can deepen the enjoyment of the piece. I have VERY much simplified this point for the sake of the argument, please read up on postmodernism if you want to know more.

"Shakespeare in Love" never claims to tell a real story based on historical events. The movie makes this clear by quickly and humorously hinting at certain aspects Shakespeare scholars fight about, for example by showing Shakespeare practicing his signature. A person who does not know anything about Shakespeare or discussion points of Shakespeare studies may not understand what this is about and only take it as a humorous side gag, people who are more proficient in the field, however, get the hint that what follows will be an intertextual satire on perceptions on Shakespeare's work. But even people who don't know about the signatures will get that the cup with "Greetings from Stratford upon Avon" printed on it is not a historical artefact but actually a hint to present times and therefore understand that they are not watching a history lesson.

I want to make this clear with just one example from your list: the murder of Christophr Marlowe. This is not purposefully changed by Stoppard so that it can fit neatly into the story with him hoping that audiences will not notice the things that are wrong about it. On the contrary, Stoppard puts it in completely acknowledging a well-read audience knowing about Marlowe end AND the whole discussion that has been had among scholars and historians about how it may have come to pass. He is actually making a humorous comment about it. If you do not know about Christopher Marlowe, how he lived, how he died and how scholars have been discussiong about this for years, than you might just take it as a dramatic turning point in the story. However, if you know the background of it, the whole affair within the movie and the implecation that Shakespeare may or may not have had something to do with it, actually becomes quite funny.

Like the greatest works of postmodern literature, what makes the script to "Shakespeare in Love" so successful is that it is highly accessible even without any knowledge of Shakespeare, even though then you might just take it for a silly historical romantic comedy. However, the more you know about Shakespeare (and the entertainment industry), the more layered and the deeper this script becomes for you and the more you can actually appreciate it.

Personally, the only real gripe that I have with the screenplay, the one thing I wish Stoppard would have avoided, is that he went with the notion that "Romeo and Juliet" is a play about love, when it is actually a lot more than that. Reducing "Romeo and Juliet" to this populist notion seems a little bit too easy for me and I wish he would have commented more on this misreading rather than just going with the common knowledge of Joe Everyman about the play.

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The film is fictional based on some real characters so i never expected any historical accuracy.

Its that man again!!

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If you think you know all about Shakespeare's life after watching this movie, think again.

If YOU watch Hollywood romantic comedies looking for historical accuracy, you're a moron.

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And if you watch SiL believing it's a romantic comedy, I won't say you are a moron but you have certainly failed entirely to grasp what it was about.

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And if you think there are other movies, or even documentaries, that will give you a more accurate idea of what life was like in the Elizabethan professional theatre, then you're wrong about that, too.

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LOL! If you say so...

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One more thing, Lord Wessex mentions his plantations in Virginia, but the first permanent settlement was Jamestown in 1607.
So how was it possible for him to have plantations in the New World?

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Because this film was set in a spoof Elizabethan London, not the real Elizabethan London. You might as well ask how it is that Pericles Prince of Tyre can have a 'walk upon the shore by the coming in of the tide' when there is not tide in the Mediterranean, or how Brutus can hear a striking clock more than a millennium before anything of the kind was invented.

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Well done for missing the point entirely.

It was never supposed to be accurate, we all know Shakespeare's real sources for the play, but this is a merry romp giving a light hearted and clever view.

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Yes,and what's the deal with Hot Tub Time Machine? Some of those songs were not even written yet and that football game between the Cleveland Browns and the Toronto Raptors was all wrong.

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You forgot another one: Joesph Fiennes looked nowhere near William Shakespeare, who was half-bald.

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And of course we know that he was bald and had that neat moustache and beard from his infancy.

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JFC, pull the stick out.

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I don't usually respond to trolls, but for you I'll make an exception. I wrote this post years ago. I don't care what you think. I've already forgotten all about it while you're getting off on insulting people on the internet because you have nothing better to do with your time.

Get a life.

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