Screenwriters with that Academy Award glean in their eye must create films to which the majority of American audiences can relate. And more Americans can relate to Shakespeare's pursuit of Viola de Lesseps rather than perhaps the pursuit of Christopher Marlow, Shakespeare's authentic friend and literary rival. Norman and Stoppard wrote the movie with the intention that audience members would either trudge out of the theater longing for some Romeo to climb through their bedroom window at night, or with patrons holding on a bit tighter to the Romeo they had already won over. Had the plot focused on a homosexual relationship, the audience would not have felt the same emotional identification with the lovers split asunder.

Even here at Harvard we find a reluctance to progress from "Philadelphia's" feelings of sympathy to those of romantic empathy. For example, Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals, like all of Shakespeare's plays, is performed by an all male cast. But while Shakespeare never shied away from displays of passion between his lovers on stage, for all of the lewdness of "I Get No Kick from Campaign," there is not one kiss between any one of the musical's couples. Audiences at The Rose anticipated these displays of compassion to solidify the storys plot--in Elizabethan England, that the kiss was between two men, with one dressed as a woman, was inconsequential.

Jordana R. Lewis '02 lives in Thayer Hall.