By the eighth episode of "Will," it is painfully apparent that the writers are struggling to come up with ideas. In this instance, much of the episode focuses on the personal travails of Kit Marlowe, as he wrestles with his soul. Alice Burbage, who is devastated by the end of her love affair with Will, now seeks comfort in religion. And the plague strikes in London when one of the actors, Autolycus, contracts the disease after striking up a relationship with a fellow bird lover! It seems that Will Shakeshaft is dropping out of the narrative!
In the midst of the different plot strands, Will is berated by Alice for his lack of productivity as a playwright. He has written three parts of the Henry VI series. She now asks him if he is working on part four. It turns out that Will is slowly conceiving the concluding play to the Henry VI tetralogy. It dawns on him that he can "shine the light" on the evil of the heretic-hunter Topcliffe by writing an allegorical play to expose his evil. But how will he point the finger at the powerful Topcliffe without risking censorship and punishment?
Through the inspiration of the little street urchin Presto, Will recognizes that he can write a "story set in the past to illuminate something in the present." The past will be that of an evil king who was killed at the close of the Wars of the Roses, and the present will be the vile machinations of Richard Topcliffe to be exposed in the theatrical incarnation of Richard III.
Will interviews Topcliffe, asking him to recount the story of his life. Topcliffe provides Will with such dramatic material as his obsession with horses ("my horse, my horse") to be transmogrified into the most famous line of "Richard III": "my horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse." Of course, the screenwriters are at a loss to find any inspiration for Shakespeare's dramatic material from Elizabethan London. They fail to recognize that the court was the breeding ground for Shakespeare's dramatic corpus and that he would need the most complete library of the era to tap into the source materials for his plays.
The single point that feels right about this episode is that the author Shakespeare was indeed using literary source material to shed light on the realities of the world of Elizabeth I. The problem is that the court was the seedbed for his inspiration, not the hardscrabble world of London.
In the midst of the different plot strands, Will is berated by Alice for his lack of productivity as a playwright. He has written three parts of the Henry VI series. She now asks him if he is working on part four. It turns out that Will is slowly conceiving the concluding play to the Henry VI tetralogy. It dawns on him that he can "shine the light" on the evil of the heretic-hunter Topcliffe by writing an allegorical play to expose his evil. But how will he point the finger at the powerful Topcliffe without risking censorship and punishment?
Through the inspiration of the little street urchin Presto, Will recognizes that he can write a "story set in the past to illuminate something in the present." The past will be that of an evil king who was killed at the close of the Wars of the Roses, and the present will be the vile machinations of Richard Topcliffe to be exposed in the theatrical incarnation of Richard III.
Will interviews Topcliffe, asking him to recount the story of his life. Topcliffe provides Will with such dramatic material as his obsession with horses ("my horse, my horse") to be transmogrified into the most famous line of "Richard III": "my horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse." Of course, the screenwriters are at a loss to find any inspiration for Shakespeare's dramatic material from Elizabethan London. They fail to recognize that the court was the breeding ground for Shakespeare's dramatic corpus and that he would need the most complete library of the era to tap into the source materials for his plays.
The single point that feels right about this episode is that the author Shakespeare was indeed using literary source material to shed light on the realities of the world of Elizabeth I. The problem is that the court was the seedbed for his inspiration, not the hardscrabble world of London.