“The movie starts with him trying to get his money back. Shouldn’t we see if he gets the money?” The person speaking, a podcaster, refers to the money lender in Shakespeare in Love. The opening shows this person torturing a theater manager who owes him; the result of the torture session, as the movie tells things, is Romeo and Juliet. The money lender gives the theater manager what a screenwriting manual somewhere must call a Compelling Reason, in this case a compelling reason to get something on the stage fast and pay off the money lender. The ball’s now rolling and a story results, that story being the awkward conception and glorious birth of one of our planet’s best-known works of literature. As Romeo and Juliet takes shape, the audience gets to watch familiar pieces fall into place in unfamiliar ways; we also see a hero work out his destiny and a heroine sacrifice her future.
I think the podcaster’s remark is the sort where somebody feels underwhelmed but won’t leave it at that. She pokes in the cold ash; can she turn up a thought? Something to say… Screenplays are supposed to hang together, that’s structure, and right at the start there’s the man yelling about what he wants. Did he get it finally? If we don’t know, then that’s got to be a mistake. So there, that’s her thought. She should’ve asked herself if anyone would care if the money lender got his money. Probably they wouldn’t—he’s a beast. To the extent he’s on our minds, we’d like to see him change. Which he does in a quick scene near the movie’s end. He thinks his favorite cap from home would do well for the apothecary; he offers it and hopes young Will accepts. The contrast with his first appearance is like a storybook: one side the roaring monster who wants what’s his, other side the man who gives to a cause greater than himself.
In fact the two moments are so markedly different that have to be kept apart. The film puts 110 minutes between them, and the second moment’s treated briefly, without great emphasis. The contrast somehow creeps up on you even though it’s been demonstrated in plain terms. I think that’s clever and I attribute it to Tom Stoppard, who did most of the screenplay. The whole script, possibly because of Stoppard, is a valentine to being a writer. The story it tells is an occasion long ago when everything went right, when the writing was so fine that a whole world had to fall in love. Writers hope that’s what their words will do to people. With Shakespeare we know it happened—Romeo and Juliet is beloved everywhere, and so is most of everything else that Shakespeare wrote—so Shakespeare in Love can pile on the immediate glory for its hero and produce a respectable wet dream of writer gratification. The money lender loves Will’s story so much he has to offer his cap. It’s like he no longer cares about getting his money. But nobody told the podcaster.