A Waste of Shame: The Mystery of Shakespeare and His Sonnets

From one of the lesser sonnets (129), this title "waste of shame" taken whole from the first line is used by the scriptwriter to strike a mildly disapproving tone with respect to Shakespeare's apparent sexual ambiguity, instead of making a more general statement in line with the sonnet's entire message. In other words, poor Will -- he just couldn't make up his mind whether he liked boys more than girls or vice versa. Now, the actual message of the sonnet is more like, poor all of us -- we all have this thing in us that makes us subject to losing our reason or good sense from time to time because of our erotic impulses. And if there is any ambiguity, it is a reflection of how different the before and after seem to us once we have acted on those impulses.

In either case, it is a somewhat depressing theme. The film does manage to demonstrate that there was much going in Shakespeare's time and place to be depressed about. Rupert Graves shows again how much he gets into this kind of stuff in a very convincing performance. The costumes and sets seem a bit Merchant-Ivory rather than dismal, but I cannot fault either the overall production or its historical setting. In that regard, it beats the fluffy Shakespeare In Love all to pieces.

The notion of romantic love was not much admired in 1603. It was regarded as we might regard some of the lesser mental illnesses today. So all those long, deep looks between the guys in this film might even have stirred laughs had they been performed in the old Globe.

Rupert Graves is not an actor I care for much, but he is good in this film as William Shakespeare, having to eternally make money and using that as an excuse to escape domestic life. This is all shown through a story about what might have been the motivation behind the writing of the Sonnets, which are one of the finest achievements in English poetry. The story is credible, although of course there are many theories about the issue. The period settings were very believable, and in contrast to a number of films about the era (eg All is True) the dialogue was easily audible and understandable. Amongst other performances, Tom Sturridge makes a devious pretty boy, and Indira Varma is very good as the mixed race prostitute Lucie, making her way in a world which will use her even as she uses the men. Camilla Arfwedson manages to make an impression in a single thirty second scene, and Zoe Wanamaker also has an effective cameo.

The tiny amount of commonly accepted speculation on the glorious Sonnets of William Shakespeare (given dubious structure in their initial collected published form leading to centuries of speculation as to what they may or may not have revealed about Shakespeare's own life) are thrown at the viewer in the first 15 minutes of this unfunny 85 minute TV fantasy from "The Open University/BBC" and shown in one of their less demanding time slots on BBC America in 2005.

It certainly is not essential that an actor portraying a famous personage actually resemble that personage, and Rupert Graves certainly bears little resemblance to William Shakespeare, so we don't have to worry over long as to whether or not the glorious Zoe Wanamaker (in her tiny role as the mother of the beautiful but unwed young Earl whose estates are in fee-tail, making his producing a male heir essential for the family) also resembles her original. In fact, almost none of the historical characters portrayed bear any resemblance to their known portraits which, in turn, leads one to question everything ELSE stated in the film, and indeed, such skepticism is warranted. Shakespeare is shown as an established playwrite and poet, yet he says his "current" play is his early collaboration, the COMEDY OF ERRORS! Out the Bard's window, the carts are calling for families to "bring out their dead" (which they certainly *did* for mass burials a century earlier at the height of the "black death," but if the plague were raging in London at the time shown, Shakespeare would have HAD no "current play" for the playhouses would have been closed down and his company touring the still plague-free provinces! In such circumstances, Shakespeare might actually have been able to see his dying son in his last days - which most historians say he did not, but then Shakespeare's contemporaries and virtually all writers who followed would have been astounded at the depiction of W.S. as the London whore-monger depicted here! The bits of production from Shakespeare's actual plays (especially the "Clowns'" Gravediggers' scene from HAMLET) are so scrimped on as to bear NO relationship to any conceivable actual performance.

Take it for what it's worth (I paid $1.99 for a DVD in a second-hand shop which was about right) and there is enough to find one can enjoy, but don't take ANY of it at face value and expect to learn anything about the Bard or Tudor/Stewart England.

William Boyd has written some wonderful books and screenplays. I am a bit confused about his intention here. Is he trying to say that the Bard was so disturbed by the death of his son Hamnet that he transferred his affections to William Herbert? In a purely platonic way? Does he see something of the delicate Hamnet in Herbert's feminine good looks? Boyd is walking on eggshells here. He has to play around with the traditional chronology and compress events considerably to have both the young man and the dark lady of the sonnets arrive in Shakespeare's life on practically the same day. Of course, nobody knows for sure what happened, or even if the story told in the sonnets is autobiographical, so Boyd has a perfect right to postulate what he will. But I am disappointed with his treatment. He seems to have thought he was rewriting "Ulysses," with Shakespeare as Leopold Bloom. Here was an opportunity to speculate about the great loves of Shakespeare's life, and Boyd reduces one to a son-surrogate and the other to a working mom. And poor Anne Hathaway is a henpecking shrew. The daughters play no role in this drama. It's also interesting that Boyd exalts Shakespeare to the position of poet-in-residence with the King's Men, without explaining that he also took a hand in the troop's business and acted important roles in his own and others' plays, all the while he was becoming a wealthy landowner in Stratford. This might go a ways toward explaining why the playwright didn't return to live with his family until he was ready to retire. In the film, Boyd would have you believe that everybody he knew was trying to get their favorite cash cow to leave London and effectively retire from the stage.

I also liked a lot of things about "A Waste of Shame," not the least of which was Rupert Graves' dead-on impersonation of the Bard. I also liked seeing the criminally underused Nicholas Rowe as Richard Burbage and Zoe Wanamaker as the Duchesss of Pembroke. It was Wanamaker's father, Sam, who fought to rebuild the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames, where it stands today, as evidenced by its inclusion in this production. The scenes with Ben Jonson and of Shakespeare at the book stalls were also inspired. But Tom Sturridge (as Herbert) looked like a clueless generation X-er in a bad wig, and Shakespeare's attraction to Lucy (the dark Lady) was underdeveloped--what did he see in her, apart from the fact that she was working, as he was, in London in order to support a family in France? I am rating this film as high as I am because William Boyd cannot help but write a literate script, and the acting in this production (with the possible exception of Sturridge) is first-rate. I also like Boyd's use of lines from the sonnets to introduce scenes. But I remain unconvinced by the scriptwriter's major premise, that, rather than take Herbert to bed, Shakespeare only wanted to be his father.