People tend to frown when Luke Thompson compares “Bridgerton” to Shakespeare.
But the British actor, who leads the latest season of Netflix’s blockbuster romance show and has been performing the Bard’s plays for more than a decade, was resolute in an interview at a London hotel.
He says in its essence, “Bridgerton” has a very Shakespearean sensibility.
Thompson explains both deal in heightened reality and both have used historical settings — onscreen, Britain’s Regency era; in plays like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” ancient Athens — to explore contemporary concerns.
He says like the string quartet playing pop hits on “Bridgerton,” Shakespeare’s writing, in its day, was much more populist, as well as accessible than today’s audiences, adjusting to the iambic pentameter, often realize.
The upcoming season of “Bridgerton” seems to strengthen his argument.
In this fourth installment, which comes to Netflix this Friday, Thompson’s character Benedict “Bridgerton” falls for a maid pretending to be a lady at a dreamlike masked ball.
Thompson adds that comedy of meeting in disguise is also “very Shakespeare”.
Source: New York Times