Period pieces need research that serves the story. David Landau explains how screenwriters study a time period, its speech and daily life, and use it.
When we write period pieces, we need to do the research as to what the time period was like, how did they talk, what was the normal form of existence at the time. The trick is being able to convey these elements without boring our audience with a history lecture. Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s screenplay for “Shakespeare in Love” demonstrates that something can be historically correct and still be much moiré than a history channel segment or a period romance novel. They managed to make us feel like we were actually there, and not just learning about it. The dialog is only partially affected towards the time period and some more modern situations, such as the moment when the taxi boat driver handing Will his play (everyone has a play or a screenplay don’t they?), are what help us identify with the characters and their lives.
Norman and Stoppard literally pull out the stops on the literary history of perhaps the world’s most famous playwright, William Shakespeare. What strikes me is how fluidly they slip in historic facts surrounding the Bard and his time, incorporating it into the story for both plot and just great effects. These men have done their homework. Within the first five minutes, while at the same time setting up the time, place and status quo of the story, Norman and Stoppard reveal some of the gems of their research and how well they will employ it through out the film.
The film opens with theater producer Henslowe’s feet being held in a fire by the two henchmen of Fennyman, the moneylender. When Henslowe promises to have the money in three weeks, Fennyman has his feet removed from the fire and asks how.
HENSLOWE: I have a wonderful new play.
FENNYMAN: Put his feet in.
HENSLOWE: It’s a comedy.
FENNYMAN: Cut his nose off.
HENSLOWE: A new comedy by William Shakespeare FENNYMAN: And his ears. (3)
Norman and Stoppard use this simple exchange not only for comedic effect, but to establish the standing of Shakespeare in Elizabethan society and the state of theater in general. Theater was a lowly profession, and as the writers display in the film, located between brothels and taverns. Shakespeare himself was a mere freelance writer, dashing off whatever he could sell. The moral distaste for drama is presented blatantly by page 8 when Will passes a preacher on the street decrying the corrupting influences of theater to any and all. This character will reappear, literally pulled into the theater by the end of the film and enraptured by the first performance of Romeo and Juliet. But the writers give him more importance than just this fun little gag of set-up and pay-off. They give us a glimpse of where Will gets his poetry from. For as the preacher spouts on, condemning the two theaters of the neighborhood, the Curtain and the Rose, he shouts as Will passes by “And the Rose smells thusly rank by any name. A plague on both their houses.” (8)
Will takes notice of the phrases – which as we know he will rewrite and make immortal.
Another wonderful example of the writer’s use of historic elements is the simple and underlying subplot of the rivalry between Will and Christopher Marlowe. While we only see Marlowe once, his plays are always mentioned and the actors all audition for Will using a Marlowe monologue. The present day academic debate as to whether Marlowe may have written some of Will’s plays provides the basis of the wonderful bar scene between the two playwrights as Marlowe gives Will advice on the play Will is trying to write, Romeo and Ethel, suggesting changes that become the very backbone of Romeo and Juliet. One can not write reference humor if one doesn’t know the reference. And the humor here works regardless if you are award of the academic arguments or not.
The writers utilize other wonderful facts of the past and enlist them into the plots, subplots and comedy of the screenplay, making them more than passing period color, but essential plot points. The fact that women could not perform on stage, that Queen Elizabeth loved theater, even the fact that Will wrote whatever he thought would sell, become wonderful undercurrents which frame the story and provide much of the conflict. While this story as to how Shakespeare came to write his most famous play may be entirely fiction, by making the surrounds and plot elements true to history, Norman and Stoppard crafted a heart and mind winning portrait of William Shakespeare, bringing him down off the exalted pedestal scholars have placed him on and allowing him to walk among the rest of us as a hard working, very human, run of the mill romantic with a gift and love for his art.
Research is essential in almost anything we write. Often through research we find many nice touches that make the story feel all the more authentic. And when that happens, it connects with the audience in an even more special way.
“Shakespeare In Love” is published by Hyperion/Miramax books.
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