May 26, 2008

Holkham beach, Norfolk, UK

This is Holkham beach, scene of the last shots of a favourite movie, Shakespeare In Love. The beach stands in both for the New World to which duty and her father drive Gwynneth Paltrow away from Shakespeare and love and for the coast of Illyria in Twelfth Night, which Shakespeare is just imagining. From the film script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard:
My story starts at sea,
a perilous voyage
to an unknown land.
A shipwreck.
The wild waters roar and heave.
The brave vessel
is dashed all to pieces,
and all the helpless souls
within her...
drowned.
All save one:
a lady...
whose soul is greater
than the ocean,
and her spirit,
stronger than the sea's embrace.
Not for her a watery end,
but a new life beginning
on a stranger shore.
lt will be a love story,
for she will be my heroine
for all time.