Directed by John Madden (1998).
Screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.
Starring Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Judi Dench, Simon Callow, Martin Clunes, Tom Wilkinson, and Ben Affleck.

Shakespeare in Love has everything you could ever want from a film; great script and dialogue, great performances, great sets and costumes, comedy, action, romance...

Joseph Fiennes is excellent as the bard himself, suffering badly from writer's block and unable to write a word owing to the loss of his muse. While at the palace of Queen Elizabeth, looking on at a performance of his play 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' he notices and is entranced by the lovely Viola De Lesseps, a young woman who is obviously in a league above his own. What he doesn't notice, however is that Viola is silently mouthing the lines that the actor on stage is speaking, clearly she knows this play by heart and has a passion for the theatre. Viola has also caught the attention of Lord Wessex, the villian of the story.

Now Will has found his muse and starts to write the beginnings of a play which will turn out to be one of the most celebrated love stories of all time; Romeo and Juliet. Viola has a cunning plan which will enable her to indulge her passion and she dresses up as a boy and auditions for a part in Shakespeare's new play, tentatively titled 'Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter'. Thus the two ill-fated lover's paths cross...

The marvelous script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard weaves the tale of Shakespeare and Lady Viola and the emerging story of Romeo and Juliet with great skill and moments true tenderness as well as supplying healthy doses of sword-play and menace from the pompous and self-important Wessex, played by Colin Firth. Co-writer Stoppard also wrote the wordy and inventive 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead', originally a play in the 60's, Stoppard also made a film of this story in which he directed Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as childhood friends of a bewildered Hamlet...