Suit Says Novel Was Basis for ‘Shakespeare’

As Miramax gears up for what may be its biggest Oscar night yet, bestselling author Faye Kellerman has slapped the filmmakers with a lawsuit charging that last year’s “Shakespeare in Love” mimicked her 1989 novel, “The Quality of Mercy.”

In papers filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Kellerman leveled copyright infringement allegations against Miramax; Universal, which helped make the film; Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, who co-wrote the screenplay; and Hyperion Press, which published their screenplay.

While the other defendants could not be reached, Miramax denied the claim in a statement Thursday: “We have not been served with the complaint, but its timing suggests a publicity stunt. We are familiar with the claim and believe that it has absolutely no merit. We are confident that the court will reach the same conclusion. The two stories are so different that the idea that one was copied from the other is absurd.”

Kellerman’s attorney, Barry Novack, said the suit was filed the week before the Oscars by coincidence. He said he filed this week because he had just learned that Miramax had rejected his client’s claims. “They could have waited until after the Oscars to respond to me, in which case I would have taken the same steps.”

In the suit, which also seeks unspecified punitive damages, Kellerman claims the film and novel contain similar plot points: “William Shakespeare, a young struggling playwright, falls in love with a young, well-born but untitled woman forbidden to him and betrothed to another man, and conducts a love affair with that woman. The young woman departs to another continent. Shakespeare writes a play based upon events that occur during their love affair.”

In the film, Shakespeare falls in love with Viola de Lesseps, whom he meets when she successfully auditions for his new play. The movie follows the couple as they pursue the twisting path to curtain time as well as their romance.

In Kellerman’s novel, Shakespeare falls in love with Rebecca Lopez, a Portuguese converso--a Jew forced to convert to Christianity--whose family smuggles Jews out of Spain. Shakespeare helps her hijack a boat to save a friend from the Inquisition, and the playwright also turns detective, sniffing out the suspicious death of his mentor.

The suit alleges that Shakespeare’s love interest in both the film and novel masquerades as a man to “do things that are forbidden to her as a woman. . . . A young playwright, William Shakespeare, encounters her on the streets of London, then loses sight of her. Chasing her through the streets of London, he subsequently discovers that she is a young woman in men’s clothing.”

The suit also notes that Kellerman’s book is set in 1593 because an additional story line hinges on an actual event that occurred that summer--the closing of London’s public theaters because of an outbreak of bubonic plague.

The movie is also set in 1593 and includes theater closings due to bubonic plague. But as the film opens, Shakespeare is writing the play that becomes “Romeo and Juliet,” a play he actually began in 1594, according to the suit. “Thus there is no logical or historical reason to set the motion picture during the identical year in which ‘The Quality of Mercy’ is set,” the suit says.

Novack said Kellerman hadn’t seen the film and wasn’t aware of the similarities until a letter to the editor was published in the Los Angeles Times over Christmas noting “uncanny resemblances.”

Irene Lacher’s Out & About column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on Page 2.