Shakespeare in Love

Among its many blandishments -- pretty actors, pretty love story, pretty costumes, pretty music -- Shakespeare in Love seduces best with flattery. This clever and ingratiating Oscar winner does viewers the honor of assuming a working familiarity with Shakespearean lore. It counts on an adult appreciation of mistaken-identity plot devices and the Elizabethan tradition of men performing as women. And if it doesn't demand scholarly knowledge to participate in the fun, at least it rewards a high school diploma. It's a movie that suggests we're smarter than we thought we were.

For all the attractions of Gwyneth Paltrow at her most long-throated as Viola De Lesseps, the bard-in-training's lover and muse, for all the lures of Joseph Fiennes' spaniel-eyed gazes as the titular genius with writer's block (the actor's fawnish mopes do nothing for me, but I'll honor anyone else's fondness for the type), it's the language that deserves the huzzahs. With Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard both credited as screenwriters, I have no idea who, in hard actual fact, did what. But there's no hiding the continental suavity and stagecraft gym- nastics that are Stoppard's signature. One random example: ''Stay but a little -- I will come again,'' Will urges his beloved, quoting full Shakespeare. That the two are passionately entwined at the time makes for a hot visual pun in a moment steamier than any in all of Eyes Wide Shut.

Of course, ''Shakespeare in Love'' promotes not just Shakespeare but also the whole movie and theater industry. ''Love -- and a bit with a dog, that's what they want,'' goes one backstage quip. ''Who's that?'' ''Nobody. The author,'' goes another inside-baseball exchange. No wonder Academy voters -- i.e., actors and directors, screenwriters and producers -- garlanded this valentine to ye olde entertainment biz with seven Oscars.

Besides, it's a production that seems made for the small screen. Director John Madden is partial to snaky tracking shots through the theater and the muddy streets of 16th-century London, but the bulk of the love story is told in video-ready close-ups that don't require scope. Scope, in fact, is the crucial element missing from the film: ''Shakespeare in Love'' is an entertainment as fetching as Elizabethan embroidery and as deep as a layer of satin on the Queen's corset.

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