Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love. The film is marvellous and so powerful that no one can resist that love drama. The story of Romeo and Juliet is itself so frightfully emotional that no one can resist the charm of the tragedy and the pain of the love story. So many artists, in so many genres and arts, have tried themselves at adapting this story, this play, this tragedy to their stages or screens or canvasses, and all have been inspired so deeply by Shakespeare's story that Romeo and Juliet have become a true galaxy of masterpieces and stars. The latest ever produced is Shakespeare in Love and the screenplay is richer, more poignant and freer than the images of the film. The screenplay is enriched with stage directions that are so brilliant, so precious that the text, the dialogue, what is going to become the words of the actors, is enhanced and beautified by them. After a while we don't even know what is the gem and what is the golden bed that carries the gem. The screenplay is by itself a work of art, a masterpiece, and the film, if you watch it again afterwards, finds tremendous new meanings and undeemable finesse in the recollections you may have kept of all those lines that are not said, that are not shown, that are at best translated into images, settings, flying visual impressions that the words of the stage directions anchor in your memory, your heart and your brain with delicate tendrils that cannot break anymore. Any lover of Shakespeare, any lover of literature, any lover of love dramas and hate tragedies must read that screenplay to see how laughter and tears can intermingle in an unbreakable alliance. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universities of Paris, IX and II.
