This film is a love letter to Shakespeare, to the Elizabethan era.
The film's realistic depiction of the Elizabethan era:
- Bustling theaters are often forced to close their doors as sources of the plague. Playwrights and actors struggle to survive.
- The appearance of women as actors is considered immoral and bad influence. So the female roles at that time had to be played by little boys who didn't change their voices. Viola disguised herself as a man and had an affair with Shakespeare before marriage.
- There's always the stereotypical conservative protest theater. Fewer people went to church, but more people flocked to the theater. Someone in the movie stood at the entrance of the theater and accused the theater of being "shameless" and "the beginning of moral corruption."
- Queen Elizabeth I's regal skirt and collar, anti-human corset, cheeks covered in white powder, shaved eyebrows, towering thrushes, and exaggeratedly small red lips - the aristocratic women of this era were chasing French luxury fashion.
- Elizabeth, in time to prevent Viola's arrest near the end, said: "I know something of a woman in a man's profession." A tribute to the remarkable women who transcended the patriarchal era.
- The Elizabethan Theater has three floors. The more noble people are, the higher the seat is, and the commoners are standing in the open space in front of the stage. Today's Shakespeare's Globe is an imitation of an Elizabethan theatre. Instead of a dazzling array of stage props and a fake stage set, it is an attempt to present the original Shakespeare: a literal magician exerts his charm on a simple high platform, drawing the audience's soul into the universe on the stage.
- Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe, another nationally famous playwright and poet of the Elizabethan era, died inexplicably in a dark corner of history in a pub brawl. It's really good luck, but the glorious life of literature is interrupted by sudden and meaningless forgetting. Shakespeare became a leading playwright after his death, and his writing was influenced by his predecessor who was born in the same year. (There are some theories that Marlowe faked his death and became Shakespeare's shadow writer.)
The young and handsome Shakespeare is also a talented actor and poet, with boundless energy to love; the daughter of a wealthy Elizabethan businessman, yearning for talent and love.
This story is fictional based on Romeo and Juliet. The juicy young love in Romeo and Juliet must have come from an idiot who fell in love.
2096 Juliet. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thin ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
Romeo. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Juliet. Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone.
Romeo. Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is't, my soul? let's talk; it is not day.
Juliet. It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us:
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes,
O, now I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day,
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.
Romeo. More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!
What a lingering, reckless love language! The role model of all the heartfelt love in the world!
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