FOR SHE WILL BE MY HEROINE FOR ALL TIME

William Shakespeare: Words, words, words. Once I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empires. Love that binds two hearts together come hellfire and brimstone. For six pence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But, now?

One of my favourite films of all time, and one I get repeated abuse for advocating, is Shakespeare In Love (1998).

Funnily enough, I didn't even like the film the first time I saw it, finding it a little over played and twee but then found myself later becoming increasingly fond of it, returning to watch it more often than I would have initially imagined.

The comedic Hollywoodisation of William Shakespeare's biography seems an obvious idea in retrospect but as this was the first film to fully treat the subject in a light hearted way I always think it was uniquely original, depicting the London theatre world of the Elizabethan age as akin to that of the film business in Los Angeles in the late 20th century.

As someone who has spent a great deal of his time pitching his ideas before they're actually written, I related only too well to the erratic, harried and love sick Will as played by Josef Fiennes. Of course, I'm not comparing myself to Shakespeare but to the familar caricature of the desperate writer eager to please that screenwriters Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman satirised so well in this ingenious re-telling of the Shakespeare mythology. By making Shakespeare relatably human and flawed, they were able to dispense with the predictable pedestal he is typically placed on and bring him down to earth amongst the rest of us mere mortals.

One particular favourite scene of mine has Shakespeare testing his 'elevator pitch' for what will later become Romeo and Juliet to an unimpressed, yet constructive, Christopher Marlowe who gives him some help in improving the idea.

All the cliches of the tormented writer are utilised within the story: writer's block, lack of funds and the perpetual need for a muse to inspire the masterpieces about to be written - in this instance, Romeo and Ethel: The Pirate's Daughter, later to become Romeo and Juliet.

After finding his muse in the form of Viola de Lesseps, a theatre loving lady of the court who is to be betrothed to the obnoxious Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), Shakespeare sets to work on his most famous play.

The meta structure for the concept of the film plays out with typical Stoppardian brilliance as the behind the stage drama mirrors the onstage tragedy and a neat dance of thematic alignment between Shakespeare's personal and creative life is replicated with the story of Romeo and Juliet, dazzling us until we're left with one of the most perfect endings of any Hollywood film in the past forty years.

Winning a wager instigated by Queen Elizabeth to accurately portray true love on the theatre stage, Shakespeare wins the bet but loses the girl. Viola then is given the task of paying Will the bag of coins on behalf of the Queen, who is knowingly providing the young lady a final opportunity to say goodbye to the playwright.

Destiny now fully against them, Will vows to immortalise Viola as a heroine for his next play, Twelfth Night.

And after their final embrace, Will sets to work, fuelled by his broken heart as we see the beginning of Twelfth Night play out on screen in the most purely cinematic scenes of the entire movie with Viola escaping disaster at sea before stepping foot on the golden sandy shores of Virginia, America (actually Holkam Beach, Norfolk used to stunning effect).

Just like Brief Encounter, or other famous movies where the lovers cannot be together in the final reel, there is a heightened sense of emotion when equilibrium is denied. And yet, Shakespeare in Love has a trump card up its sleeve in that it is able to convey the power of art in its unique ability to transcend suffering by converting pain to joy and beauty, in this instance a play.

William Shakespeare: My story starts at sea, a perilous voyage to an unknown land. A shipwreck. The wild waters roar and heave. The brave vessel is dashed all to pieces. And all the helpless souls within her drowned. All save one. A lady. Whose soul is greater than the ocean, and her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace. Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story. For she will be my heroine for all time. And her name will be Viola.