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Shakespeare in Love

1998 film by John Madden

Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 film about a young William Shakespeare, out of ideas and short of cash, who then meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays.

Directed by John Madden. Written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.
A Comedy About the Greatest Love Story Almost Never Told... taglines

Richard Burbage

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  • The Master of the Revels despises us all for vagrants and peddlers of bombast. But my father, James Burbage, had the first license to make a company of players from Her Majesty, and he drew from poets the literature of the age. We must show them that we are men of parts. Will Shakespeare has a play. I have a theatre. The Curtain is yours.

Viola De Lesseps

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  • I would stay asleep my whole life, if I could dream myself into a company of players.
  • [to her Nurse] I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No... not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening, but love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable - like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love - like there has never been in a play.
  • Write me well.

Queen Elizabeth

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  • I know something of a woman in a man's profession. Yes, by God, I do know about that.
  • [to Lord Wessex] Have her then, but you're a lordly fool. She's been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you... it takes a woman to know it.
  • Master Kent, as I foretold, Lord Wessex has lost his wife to the theater. Go, make your farewell, and send her out.

William Shakespeare

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  • Love denied blights the soul we owe to God.
  • You see? The comsumptives plot against me. "Will Shakespeare has a play, let us go and cough through it."
  • [last lines] My story starts at sea... a perilous voyage to an unknown land... a shipwreck... The wild waters roar and heave... The brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her drowned... all save one... a lady... whose soul is greater than the ocean... and her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace... Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story... for she will be my heroine for all time. And her name will be... Viola.

Dialogue

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Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery. (recurring line)
Lord Wessex: [about Viola] Is she obedient?
Sir Robert de Lesseps: As any mule in Christendom - but if you are the man to ride her, there are rubies in the saddlebag.
Lord Wessex: I like her!
Viola de Lesseps: [as Thomas Kent] Tell me how you love her, Will.
William Shakespeare: Like a sickness and its cure together.
Viola De Lesseps: I have never undressed a man before.
William Shakespeare: It is strange to me, too.
[Will and Violet have just had sex]
Viola De Lesseps: I would not have thought it: there IS something better than a play!
William Shakespeare: There is.
Viola De Lesseps: Even your play.
William Shakespeare: Hmm?
Viola De Lesseps: And that was only my first try.
William Shakespeare: I'm done with theater. The playhouse is for dreamers. Look what the dream brought us.
Viola De Lesseps: It was we ourselves did that. And for my life to come, I would not have it otherwise.
Philip Henslowe: The show must... you know...
William Shakespeare: [prompting him] Go on!
Lord Wessex: How is this to end?
Queen Elizabeth: As stories must when love's denied: with tears and a journey.

Taglines

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  • A Comedy About the Greatest Love Story Almost Never Told...
  • Love is the only inspiration.

Cast

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Quotes about Shakespeare in Love

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  • I have always liked movies, and sometimes an image or a scene or a character stays with me for years and inspires me when I write. For example: the magic in Fanny and Alexander or the story within a story of Shakespeare in Love.
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