Great and well-known as is the name of Shakespeare, the man as a man and the events of his life, which made him what he was and led him to undertake the work that has produced one of the world's greatest dramatists are comparatively little known except to students, and yet so full are they with the pathos and humor and tragedy and heart interest that he later put into his plays and poetry, that everyone will be glad to have them brought within the reach of the common ken. In more ways than one this has been remarkably well done in the Sawyer release, which is in no sense a biography of Shakespeare, but as its title indicates rather a portrayal of the romance and poetry of his youth and early manhood. In reality it is the story of his love for the beautiful and gentle Charlotte Clopton who died young, and for the pretty, shy, idyllic albeit shrewish Anne Hathaway whom he afterwards married and whose sharp tongue drove him first to the Lucy Arms tavern and later to the road to become the "roaming player" who was to entrance both his own world and the nations then unborn. Then comes the climax in his rise to fame, the celebrated performance of his "Romeo and Juliet" in the Blackfriars Theater by royal command, his subsequent presentation at court, and finally, as he slumbers with his congratulating and merry-making friends, the visions of the children of his brain that have risen up and crowned him with an immortal laurel wreath. As can readily be seen the undertaking is a most ambitious one and on the whole the results in production are remarkably good, despite the fact that the story is a little too long drawn out and sketchy in the last two reels and that the photography might have been better. The papist plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth has also been handled crudely and inaccurately and in such a way that it is likely to shock Roman Catholics of today both here and in Canada, although the spirit of the treatment is quite in keeping with the ideals and spirit of Englishmen. The exterior locations of the picture are taken in the real vale of Avon where Shakespeare lived, and the greatest pains has been taken to reproduce in costumes, properties and settings the actual atmosphere of the old Elizabethan life. Consequently even were the blemishes of the picture much greater than they are, it would still be of enormous educational value, and when its revision by the capable hands that now own it is completed this value will be increased incalculably and the picture should rank as one of the great productions of a great year. - Moving Picture World, October 24, 1914
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