A Passion for Love, and for Theatre

Abstract

Michelle LaFlamme’s Production Notice of the Bard on the Beach production of Shakespeare in Love offers a celebratory description of the “performativity of gender” in this “re-historicized” romp into Will Shakespeare’s writing career. With the play’s fictional representation of Shakespeare’s love—for his theatre and the young aristocrat who inspires his creativity—Shakespeare in Love demonstrates a cultural need for historical backstories that add human fallibility to Shakespeare’s character that both humanize and democratize in equal measure.