Shakespeare in Love and the Creative Process

Sure. Lots of people are going to get trapped in a hole that all historical fiction movies have: the "fiction" part. That there is no account that Shakespeare fell in love with some noble woman and then the girl ended up getting ship wrecked and all that (and I'm pretty sure there would've been a much bigger scandal in real life than was made in the movie if a woman really had stepped in on stage). But I think that this film demonstrates this really simple idea of how the creative process can work, because many of the scenes that were in Romeo and Juliet were directly from the movie and Shakespeare's encounters with Viola. And speaking as a writer myself, I can say that things like that do happen. I do often take bits of my life and people and my experiences and put them directly onto the page, with little or no change. That's what I really like about this movie, is that it demonstrates inspiration and muses perfectly. How Shakespeare is constantly inspired by a specific person or thing, and when he has that thing, he writes like crazy. On a different note, I loved the little nod at the end to Viola being ship wrecked, and Shakespeare starting his next play with her as the lead in Twelfth Night.