Shakespeare in Love - again?

[sippog]

Just watched Movie Connections on "Shakespeare in Love" which was the usual unabashed promo. The film itself was quite amusing - it helped if you had some kind of showbiz connection - but I found some of the gushing endorsements quite hard to take.

The idea of telling the story of a "young Shakespeare" was hardly as original and inspired as it was portrayed here. Some of us remember the John Mortimer tv series "Young Will" with Tim Curry which covered the same subject matter quite successfully as I recall.

I also can't help feeling that somebody nicked the main plot device (young noblewoman wants to be actor, disguises herself as boy etc) from Caryl Brahms underrated musical "No Bed For Bacon". Hard to believe the learned Stoppard had never heard of it.

A certain amount of disingenuousness (disingenuity?) prevailed, methought . . .