“Shakespeare in love” / In love with Shakespeare: metatextual potential of John Madden’s fictional biopic

The paper focuses on the specificity of metatextual potential of John Madden’s fictional biopic “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), viewed as a complex metatextualintermedial construct. The metatextual resources of the film are being analysed on three key levels: intratextual (metatextual fragments), intertextual (allusions to the other works of the canon) and extratextual (text as an intersemiotic metatext). On the intratextual level four main forms of metatextual commentary are singled out: a) the paratextual commentary; b) the leitmotif; c) the self-referential fragments; d) the allusions to the present-day realia. In relation to the intertextual level of the film’s metatextual potential references to Shakespeare’s works are discussed as a metatext which offers an explanation of the sources of Shakespeare’s inspiration. Within the extratextual level, “Shakespeare in Love” is viewed as an intersemiotic metatext which comments upon two major semantic fields: the figure of Shakespeare and the epoch of the English Renaissance. The authors also put forward the suggestions for the practical application of the research results