Shakespeare in Love (1998)

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Tom Stoppard via New York Times:

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1937 and educated in India and England, Tom Stoppard has consistently brought an insider-outsider's amused detachment to playwriting and a buoyant theatrical athleticism to philosophy, physics and semantics. Born in 1937, he became an international celebrity with his first produced play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (1967), which re-told Shakespeare's "Hamlet" from the perspective of two hapless courtiers on the sidelines of the main events. The verbal pyrotechnics and philosophical game-playing that animated Rosencrantz" have been part of his signature ever since.

"Jumpers" (1972) is a metaphysical murder mystery, while "Travesties" (1974), set in Zurich in 1911, imagines an encounter among Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara. Occasionally criticized for emphasizing intellectual cleverness at the expense of emotional substance, much of Mr. Stoppard's work in fact directly addresses the conflict between head and heart, between philosophical ideals and debunking reality -- themes eloquently pursued in "The Real Thing" (1982), "The Invention of Love" (1997), "The Coast of Utopia" (2001), a three-play cycle about 19th-century Russian intellectuals, and "Rock 'n' Roll" (2006), set in Czechoslovakia and Cambridge in the late 1960's and the 1990's. Mr. Stoppard's work as a screenwriter includes "Brazil" (1985) and "Shakespeare in Love" (1998)

Mel Gussow on Stoppard and Shakespeare via NYT:

With ''Shakespeare in Love,'' Mr. Stoppard takes a more leisurely approach, opening up his story to include the world of Elizabethan theater: its factionalism, chicanery, self-interest and rigidity. Periodically, Mr. Stoppard has touched on theatrical matters: the play within the play in ''The Real Thing'' and in ''The Real Inspector Hound.'' But in ''Shakespeare in Love'' the theater is center stage, and all contemporary resonances are intentional, as when an actor asks a producer his identity and the man replies, ''I'm the money.''

Queen Elizabeth herself, as incarnated by Judi Dench, proves to be a figure of surprising liberality, at least in the arena of theater and romance. In addition to Marlowe, John Webster is in the lineup as a youth with a sadistic streak, and there is more than a hint that the lady Viola will inspire a future Shakespearean comedy.