Watching Sandy Powell's designs for Shakespeare in Love for the second time only reaffirmed my feeling that she deserved the Academy Award, if only for the peacock-feather dress worn by Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth. I was literally drooling over the costumes both times through the film.
             The film itself is a lovely fantasy loosely based on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, i.e. Marlowe, Burbage, Henslowe, Tilney, and of course, the Virgin Queen herself. The basic plot is this, William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is experiencing a bout of writer's block when he meets the lovely Viola (Gwenyth Paltrow). He is enchanted by her beauty and yet does not recognize her when she appears at the theatre, under the alias Thomas Kent, to perform the role of Romeo in his yet-to-be-completed comedy, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter. Meanwhile, she is madly in love with Shakespeare the poet, but unfortunately is promised to the utterly detestable Wessex, who she will marry in two weeks pending the Queen's approval. Shakespeare finally figures out that Kent and Viola are one and the same, and all, including the play, progresses well until they are found out by a young John Webster (later to compose The Duchess of Malfi). He turns her over to Tilney, the master of the revels, who closes down their theatre, but through the kindness of Richard Burbage, they are allowed to perform their play, sans female, at his theatre. The show seems ready to go up with Shakespeare himself playing Romeo, but at the last minute, Juliet's voice changes, and the newly married Viola is plucked from the audience to fill in. Tilney and company invade at the play's conclusion, but are thwarted by the Queen herself. In a toast to realism, Shakespeare and Viola are not allowed to finish the movie together; she is en route to the New World, while he sits down to write a play for Twelfth Night, its heroine of the name Viola.
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