Philip Haldeman wrote:

>I was taken aback at the selection of _Shakespeare in Love_---as compared
>to, say, _Amadeus_.  At least in _Amadeus_, Tom Hulce gave Mozart a kind
>of quirky, unpredictable personality of the sort Mozart *might* have had.
>The character of Shakespeare seemed merely like some cute Hollywood screen
>writer ...

I don't think *Shakespeare in Love* is to be taken that seriously.  It was
a delightful movie, but it was also a spoof.  *Romeo and Ethel...."? Come
onnnn!  There were a number of anachronisms in the film, at least some of
them deliberate.  How about the souvenir mug from Stratford? And there were
no colonies in Virginia that an English younger son could take his bride to
in 1593.

All this differs from *Amadeus* which, while it was acknowledged to be
fictitious, was nevertheless intended to be a serious tale in part about
the arbitrariness w/ which the gift of genius is distributed and its
rewards w/held and also about the frustration of seeing genius in another
and knowing you can't attain it yourself.

Walter Meyer