It is a paradox that the most widely-read and interpreted writer in the history of the English language, William Shakespeare, remains an enigma. Such is the paucity of verifiable information regarding The Bard’s biography that he has become a semi-legendary figure — a literary King Arthur, composed of reflections of his own plays.
One fragment of documentary evidence which survived establishes that Shakespeare and his wife, Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway, had three children: two girls and a boy. The boy was named Hamnet, and died at the tragically young age of eleven, possibly in an outbreak of bubonic plague — a disease which ravaged Tudor England, where child mortality was a grim fact of life. While the exact circumstances of the boy’s death will never be known, his brief life serves as inspiration for the movie Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao and adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel.
The film opens in the windswept woodland around Stratford-Upon-Avon. Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), the free-spirited daughter of a local forest witch, is flying her pet falcon, and is lost in communion with nature. On her way home, she is spotted by a young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), who has been retained as a Latin tutor to repay his abusive father’s debts. Romance blossoms between Agnes and Will, whose differing manifestations of social awkwardness are endearingly compatible. Agnes is soon pregnant with their first child, Susanna, and the couple are hastily married, despite objections from their families.
Will is frustrated by his ambitions to write professionally rather than follow his father’s trade as a leather-worker, and he rebels when his father beats him one time too many. Agnes, pregnant again, realizes that Will’s potential lies elsewhere, and sends him to London in search of a career in the theater, while she remains in Stratford and gives birth to fraternal twins Judith and Hamnet.
Eleven years later, tragedy strikes. Plague sweeps through England, and the twins succumb to the illness. Agnes tries desperately to save both children, but only Judith recovers, while her brother dies an excruciating, agonized death. Will rushes back to Stratford, but arrives too late: Hamnet has already passed. Devastated by their loss, Will and Agnes fall into despair as grief threatens to consume their marriage.
This movie is not ‘Shakespeare In Love II’, which appeared to be the expectation of many sorely disappointed viewers I witnessed at the movie theater. It makes no attempt to dissect Shakespeare’s motivations, nor offers any revelatory insights into his character. It is an emotionally fraught photo album of a loving marriage in crisis — a series of beautifully-framed tableaux depicting the overwhelming and contradictory emotions that define a family. Mostly, it’s a study of the eviscerating grief of losing a child; of the sickening, bottomless voids left in bereaved parents; and of the grueling inner journeys they must undertake to heal themselves.
Jessie Buckley’s performance as Agnes is extraordinary — she is tough, earthy, and unbreakable one moment, revealing an eggshell-thin fragility the next. This emotional odyssey of bellylaughs and primal screams, of joy, pain, rage and catharsis, has earned her a thoroughly deserved ‘Best Actress’ Oscar nomination. It was a difficult, harrowing, and deeply rewarding two hours.
Recently arrived in the Tri-Cities from Scotland, Damian Beagan is a former freelancer who wrote movie and music reviews for a variety of UK websites.
