By Richard Joyrich As part of the coming hoopla surrounding the purported 400 th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario has arranged for the North American premiere of a play version of the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love as part of the upcoming 2016 season. The play, adapted by Lee Hall, from the 1998 screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, opened in July, 2014 in London’s West End and closed last April. Declan Donneley, who directed the play in London, will be directing the play again for the Stratford Festival. The 1998 film, of course, presents a completely fictional look at William Shakespeare and some of the people involved in the Elizabethan Theater. It got great critical acclaim and won several Academy Awards. I am unaware of any theater awards the 2014 play version has received. Of course, the 1998 film was completely historically inaccurate, perhaps deliberately so. One memorable “gaffe” occurs during t...
a Michigan group dedicated to the study of the works of William Shakespeare with particular interest in the authorship question