Shakespeare in Love

Shakespeare in Love (1998) is John Madden's romantic period comedy you can watch online on iFILM. London, 1594. A young playwright is broke, blocked and out of ideas, and his theatre owner wants a new comedy now.

Will (Joseph Fiennes) promises a script that doesn't exist yet, "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter." What unblocks him isn't a muse but a real woman. Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), forbidden from acting because she is a woman, disguises herself as a man to win a part. Shakespeare sees through her, falls hard, and the affair starts bleeding onto the page. The trouble: Viola is already promised to the cold Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), and Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) keeps a sharp eye on her court. As the lovers steal their hours, the half-written comedy quietly becomes Romeo and Juliet.

Mark Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard packed the screenplay with jokes for anyone who knows the source. Half of Britain's acting bench shows up around Fiennes and Paltrow: Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson, Imelda Staunton. The film took seven Academy Awards, Best Picture among them, and Dench won hers for roughly eight minutes on screen. Stream Shakespeare in Love (1998) online on iFILM.