Re: Harry’s fate according to the bookies (more literary spoilers)

[justcarol67]

Dung wrote:
> 
> Thanks ever so much for that Carol, it's really interesting. I was 
> always amazed at how well Shakespeare In Love worked, I had no idea 
> it had such structural support from R&J itself. As you say, though, 
> there are a few deaths in R&J early on which shouldn't really be 
> there if it was originally intended to be a comedy. IIRC it was Kit 
> Marlowe (in SiL) who gives Will the idea for the first death, so 
> perhaps the writers weren't being so clever after all. 
> 
> Ah well, there's always Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, one of 
> my all-time favourites. Anyone who loves Hamlet should see it, or 
> read it - the film's excellent, too. 
> 
> Dungrollin
> Do you want to play questions? <g>
>
Carol:
You're very welcome. Glad you enjoyed it. There are tidbits throughout
"Shakespeare in Love" that border on what little we know of
Shakespeare's and Marlow's lives; for example, Marlow was killed at
age 29 in a brawl (though Shakespeare wasn't involved) and his plays
influenced Shakespeare's, and Shakespeare was married to an older
woman (he had a daughter whose name escapes me and twins named Hamnet
and Judith; Hamnet died at thirteen. This isn't in the film, but it
has always amused me that his wife willed him her "second-best bed").
The sonnets to the Dark Lady are also touched on near the beginning of
the film, IIRC (it's been awhile since I watched it). The rest
cleverly combines speculation and fiction (there was never a plan for
"Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter" or anything like it), and
somewhat blends Romeo's lovelife with Shakespeare's (Romeo starts off
infatuated with an unseen girl named Rosaline before falling in love
with Juliet). Also, many of Shakespeare's comedies, as I'm sure you
know, involve the heroine disguising herself as a boy--all the easier
because female roles were played by boys before the Puritans closed
down the theaters. (When Charles II opened them again, he allowed
women to play female roles as they already did in France, where he had
lived in exile during the Cromwell regimes.) So Viola's disguise is
based on a real theatrical practice and Shakespeare's own heroines.
Anyway, it's a very clever script that could only have been written by
someone (or two "someones" thoroughly familiar with Shakespeare).

I haven't seen "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." Obviously, I
should.

Carol, who doesn't know what "play questions" means and wonders if
it's anything like Trivial Pursuit