Shakespeare in Love was a triumph for British film-making. Ronald Blythe gets on the trail of the locations used in this Oscar-winning film
Shakespeare, for all his wit and wonderful insights into human nature, remains something of a mystery. Very little is known of his personal life, and even less about the inspiration for Romeo and Juliet - probably the greatest love story ever written, which established the Bard as one of the greatest playwrights in human history.
So what inspired this man, who was probably no more than a jobbing writer and actor in 1594, to reach such sublime heights? Was Shakespeare in love?
Writer and film producer Marc Norman found the idea irresistible. He came up with the idea of Shakespeare falling in love with one of his actors, a woman who pretends to be a boy in order to appear on stage. He explains, "Because Shakespeare was already married by then, by its very nature the love affair would seem to be doomed, leading to all the mirroring and parallels with Romeo and Juliet."
At this point Norman brought in renowned contemporary playwright Tom Stoppard, who was asked to unleash his own fertile imagination on the idea. He had mixed Shakespearean fact with fiction before, with great success, in the hit play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a muse on two minor characters in Hamlet.
The result, as the production team, cast, filmgoers, critics - and the Academy itself - have all agreed, is a witty, light-hearted, funny and yet deeply moving and sensual film which deals with the Bard in a mischievous and playful way, without ever cheapening his achievements. In fact the triumph of Shakespeare in Love is that it tells the story of doomed love all over again, with conviction, pathos and moments of precious humour.
Armed with Stoppard's brilliant script, director John Madden had to find a similarly inspired cast. Had he not achieved this, the end result may well have been very different -indifferent, even. American actress Gwyneth Paltrow was his choice for Viola from the moment he read the script, while her perfect partner came in the shape of Joseph Fiennes -- born in England, brought up in Ireland and no stranger to Shakespearean work on the British stage.
The rest, as they say, is history. Shakespeare in Love became the most honoured movie in Miramax history when it joined an elite group of seven films to nave received 13 or more Oscar nominations.
At the 71st Academy Awards this year, it went on to secure seven Oscars, including Best Actress in a Lead Role for Gwyneth Paltrow, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Dame Judi Dench and - by no means its least achievement - Best Art Direction. As I was to discover, an inspired choice of locations - all of them in Britain - had much to do with the winning of this award.
With the script and the cast in place, production designer Martin Childs was given the challenge of recreating the crowded, dirty. bustling streets of Elizabethan London in 1593. As the few Elizabethan buildings still standing are isolated from each other and surrounded by buildings from other periods. this setting clearly had to be built.
In just eight weeks, a construction crew built 17 buildings, including two theatres (The Rose and The Curtain), alleyways, a brothel. a tavern, a market place and. of course, Shakespeare's London lodgings - all on land behind Shepperton Studios.
But, as the story unfolds, speciric indoor settings and outdoor locations were required, too. This was where locations manager Rachel Neale made her entrance.
The choice of Fiennes as Shakespeare and Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire as Lady Viola's stately home completed a remarkable set of coincidences. The original house at Broughton was built around 1300 and subsequently passed to William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. His sister's granddaughter married Sir William Fiennes (a surname that originates in the north of France) in 1451 and Fiennes' ancestors have lived in the castle ever since.
It just so happens that actor Joseph is a cousin of the present occupier, the 21st Lord Saye and Sele. And the story has a particularly satisfying conclusion: funds received from the film company for the scenes shot at Broughton helped buy back a portrait of the 13th Lord Saye and Sele, which came up for sale at Sotheby's recently.
In fact, Broughton Castle - more of a fortified manor house than a castle - has benefited considerably from its suitability as a film location over the past 20 years. Film companies' money has helped to revitalise and restore much of the fabric of the house. which came under siege from Royalists during the Civil War, thanks to the Parliamentarian leanings of the then incumbent, William, the 8th Lord Saye and Sele.
"We knew Broughton from The Madness of Kine George IIl," Neale explains. "Martin Childs, the production designer, was the senior art director on that film, so we had been there before - and loved it."
If Broughton was Lady Viola's palace, then the gates to her estate were a little farther away than the end of the garden. The production team chose a stretch of the River Thames near Marble Hill House, Twickenham, west London, to build those. They were not interested in the house itself - which is an English Palladian villa, built in the early 18th century for Henrietta Howard, mistress of King George III. But the riverbank made an ideal set-ting for the gates to Viola's palace.
The production team chose another relatively unspoilt sweep of the Thames at Barnes, a little farther downstream, for the panoramic river scenes. "It was chosen because, standing at Barnes Bridge, you can look both ways down a good sweep of the river. Looking downstream there are not that many houses. Looking upstream, there are a few, but we were able to 'remove' these with the help of computer technology - and put our own in!"
Eton College near Windsor, in Berkshire - without doubt, England's best-known public school - also found its way into the film. "We used Eton for the wedding scene, when Lady Viola makes her way down the steps of the church with her new husband, the Earl of Wessex. and gets into her carriage," Neale explains. "We also used another part of the college for a shot of Lady Viola coming out of church."
Eton, as well as being one of the most famous of English colleges, is also one of the oldest. Founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, it soon became woven into the rich tapestry of Britain's cultural heritage.
Many Old Etonians have gone on to achieve greatness in public life - perhaps none of them more so than the Duke of Wellington, victor over Napoleon at Waterloo, and later Prime Minister. There have been 20 Old Etonian prime ministers in all, from Walpole and Pitt the Elder to Macmillan and Douglas-Home in the late 20th century.
Writers who studied at Eton include Gray, Shelley, Fielding, Huxley and George Orell Sir Humphrey Gilbert. founder of the colony of Newfoundland and Captain Oates, a member of Scott's famed expedition to the South Pole are among the explorers and the scientists list Robert Boyle Sir John Herschel and Sir Joseph Banks in their number.
For the interior scenes of Viola's wedding with Wessex, Neale chose another of her favourite locations: the church of St. Bartholomew the Great, in West Smithfield, London. This historic church, founded in 1123, is the oldest parish church in the City of London - an ideal choice for an Elizabethan weddirig.
The church contains a fine pre-Reformation octagonal font and more curiously, a 15th-Century monument to Rahere, a jester at the court of Henry I. Rahere, it seems, was more than a flippant joker. He was the founder ot both the church and the nearby hospital.
'There was very little to disguise in the interior," Neale explains. 'And I was already familiar with the building: it was used in Four Weddings and a Funeral, though of course no period features were needed to add authenticity to that film.
Another grand interior was required for the Banqueting Rail at Whitehall, a palace built by Henry VIII but long since demolished. It is here that Two Gentlemen of Verona is performed before the Queen, played by doyenne British actress Dame Judi Dench.
Neale chose the Great Hall at Middle Temple for the scene again, because she knew it. The period was just right. the stately Elizabethan chamber having been built between 1562 and 1573. It was heavily damaged in the Second World War but has since been rebuilt and restored.
Again, coincidence played an intriguing part in the making of Shakespeare in Love, for the Bard himself is said to have taken part in the first recorded performance of Twelfth Night in this very hall, on 2 February 1601.
For two of the most dramatic scenes in the film Neale had to look farther afield than London and the Home Counties. But again, past knowledge came to the rescue with some stunning outdoor scenes on the Holkham Estate on the North Norfolk coast.
Holkham Hall was specifically built to house and show off the wonderful array of treasures collected by Thomas Coke, First Earl of Leicester, on his Grand Tour. The Earls of Leicester have lived there ever since. It took a full 30 years - between l734 and 1764 - to build and decorate the Hall, giving some idea of its sumptuousness - an important part of the syrnmetrical splendour of the house as a whole.
The house at Holkham is, of course, Palladian and too late in its architectural style to find a place in an Elizabethan film. However, the lakeside scene where Viola declares her love for Will was shot within the Holkham grounds - an inspired setting for a tender moment.
But the true inspiration was the choice of the beach here for the final scene in the film, where an imagined Viola finds herself washed up on the shore. She has been lost to Will forever, but she remains in his fertile imagination to become the heroine of his latest play, Twelfth Night. The north Norfolk coast is broad, flat and windswept and the beach at Holkham is one of the most unspoilt and spectacular in Britain, the sands extending for five uninterrupted miles. Behind the shoreline lies a semi-circular basin which, at high tide, fills to form a spectacular shallow lagoon.
The whole area is part of Holkham National Nature Reserve - one of the largest in England and Wales, covering nearly 4.000 hectares. In winter tens of thousands of geese arrive along with several thousand oystercatchers. In the spring and summer it is a haven for ground-nesting birds such as lap-wing. avocet and marsh harriers.
"The sea is a mile out, there," Neale adds, "and there is no road onto the beach, so it was quite difficult to get everything down through the dunes." However, on the day of filming, the sun shone brightly, the air was crisp and the wind whistled along the shore, creating a wild and mysterious place fitting for the despair of lost love.
"I didn't really know how well the film would do at the time, Neale admits. "I knew it had a great script and some great actors, but that was all. For me, the great thing was that we had such fun making it. Sometimes you have fun making a film but most often you don't - sometimes it can be pure hell. Of course, having fun doesn't necessarily mean that a film is going to be successful but I always hoped that it would be.
Any anecdotes to tell? "Well, none that are printable! And, as for awards, art director Martin Childs got one of the 13 nominations, so if he gets an award that will be for me, too. This was teamwork; there were no prima donnas in this production team."
Neale was speaking to me just days before the 71st Academy Awards ceremony in California. I was soon to learn that Shakespeare in Love had indeed won the Oscar for Best Art Direction, along with well-deserved awards for Dame Judi and Gwyneth and others. That seems to me a fitting end to the story.
Thanks very much to Linda (Hugs) for sending this article to me.