You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello, and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad and today my guests are Mark Norman and Tom Stoppard, the screenwriters

of the movie Shakespeare in Love, which was directed by John Madden and is currently in

released from Miramax.

First I'll be talking by telephone with Tom Stoppard in London and then with Mark Norman here in the studio.

Shakespeare is still said to be the most respected writer of this millennium, and our subject today will be playing with Shakespeare.

The screenplay of Shakespeare in Love is a remarkable construction. When one sees it, one is surprised

that it managed to evolve in all of its complexity and make it to the screen. You've played

with Shakespeare twice before. I'm talking to Tom Stoppard, the wonderful author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, Arcadia, Jumpers, Travesties, and others.

But in particular, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and Dogs, Hamlet, Cahutz, Macbeth,

have been your most prominent forays into Shakespearean turf.

What do you feel about the Bard?

Yes.

Well, I suppose anybody who writes and anybody who writes plays

feels the Bard's presence from the mountaintop.

But on the other hand, he's a very friendly kind of God, if he's a godlike figure.

He's not a remote one.

And as we all know, his world consists of very ordinary people as well as kings and queens and princes and

...