Great Scene: “Shakespeare In Love”
A revelation scene from the Academy Award winning screenplay and movie Shakespeare In Love (1998), written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.
There are so many fantastic scenes in the script, but here’s a great one: Viola, who has dressed as a man “Thomas Kent” in order to act in Shakespeare’s newest play, has delivered a note to Will informing him that Viola is to marry Lord Wessex. Will chases after Thomas to seek his opinion about what to do. This is a classic example of a scene where the reader / audience knows something one of the characters doesn’t, in this case Thomas Kent’s true identity — and it plays out with equal parts humor and pathos, with a deft punch line at the end provided by the Boatman, a nod to any screenwriter who’s had a cabbie toss a script their way en route from LAX (as happened to me once).
Here is the movie version of the scene.
Such a wonderful movie, especially for writers.
For more articles in the Great Scene series, go here.
