Tom Stoppard has spent a lot of his career deconsctructing Shakespeare (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)and this was no exception. It was praised by English proffesors from top to bottom.
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Unoriginal? Please name three films prior to it that it copied...or just two.
I did notice that the amount of laughter in the theater was divided into two groups, those who had read (as in studied and know) Shakespeare and those who had not. I'd quess that at least 25% of the humor went right over the heads of everybody in the latter group.