These are the facts: William Shakespeare had a son named Hamnet. The boy died of bubonic plague at the age of 11. Shortly after that, Shakespeare started working on the play called Hamlet.
This has haunted Shakespeare scholars. It haunted James Joyce, who had Leopold Bloom ponder it at length in Ulysses after losing his own son. It haunts me, too. What does it mean? It must mean something. Yes, the book by Saxo Grammaticus that Shakespeare used as a source for Hamlet was about a hero named Amleth, but that can’t be just a coincidence, can it?
Greatest writer in history though he was, Shakespeare was also a father who had to bury his only son. He must have had thoughts about that. Trouble is, he never put them down directly, as opposed to numerous contemporary writers who also lost children. Instead, we’re left to puzzle out where he did write about it. Was it in his 33rd sonnet? In Constance’s speech about her dead husband in King John? Or was Hamlet his cogitation on what kind of man Hamnet might have grown up to be?
Maggie O’Farrell wrote a work of speculative fiction about the subject, and now Chloé Zhao has adapted it into a beautifully crafted and occasionally crushing film that makes a compelling case that Hamlet is about its creator’s transformation of his grief into art. Zhao previously won Oscars for her Nomadland, but I can confidently say that this is her best work to date.
The story picks up in 1584, where Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is stuck in his hometown of Stratford, unable to find a job despite his university education and paying off his abusive, self-important father’s debts by tutoring local boys in Latin. In that capacity, he meets Agnes “Anne” Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) and is enchanted by her knowledge of herbal medicine even before he learns that she’s the oldest daughter of the wealthy landowner next door. They marry and have three children: older sister Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and twins Hamnet and Judith (Jacobi Jupe and Olivia Lynes). Ironically, Agnes is overly protective of Judith, who is initially thought to be stillborn and who is the first in the Shakespeare household to contract the plague.
If you’re a fan of O’Farrell’s novel, you should know that the film is quite a different thing. Where O’Farrell jumps from character to character and adopts their viewpoints in turn, Zhao tells the story in a linear fashion and sticks with Agnes as Will goes off to London and catches on with a theater company. The novel’s sharp observations about daily life in Elizabethan England give way to Zhao’s impressionistic rendition, as Agnes is frequently associated with natural imagery — we first see her sleeping in the roots of an ancient tree. The Polish cinematographer Łukasz Żal uses only natural light and makes the interiors look like Dutch master paintings from the period.
Any fictional work about Shakespeare will necessarily have to fill in gaps because there’s so much we don’t know about his life. Much like the late Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love, this movie contains a great many Easter eggs in the form of lines that will later show up in Will’s plays, though it is charming when the three Shakespeare kids entertain their mother by dressing up as witches and acting out what will become the opening scene of Macbeth.
Maybe Hamnet’s resolve to get sick and die in Judith’s place is a touch heavy-handed (though something similar is in the novel), but the young Jupe plays it quite well. The Irish lead actors give this film more substance than it would otherwise have, especially Buckley in the scene when Hamnet dies in excruciating pain despite Agnes’ frantic efforts. Then, too, there’s the shattering whipsaw of emotions when Will hurries home to Stratford after being informed of Judith’s illness and is overjoyed to find his daughter alive and recovered, only to then catch sight of his son’s body being prepared for burial.
Just as Shakespeare in Love truly took flight with its production of Romeo and Juliet, this movie reaches sublime heights when Anne travels to London and sees her husband’s Hamlet, without knowing anything about the story or having ever been to a playhouse. The appearance of Will in all-white makeup portraying the ghost of Hamlet’s father and addressing a Hamlet (Noah Jupe, the real-life older brother of Jacobi Jupe) whose hair is dyed blond and curled like Hamnet’s is shiver-inducing in this context.
No one ever made a more mournful ghost than Mescal, especially as Will visibly relives his recent trauma while declaiming the ghost’s speech about his poisoning death. When Hamlet acts out his own death and Agnes and other members of the audience reach out their hands to him, it brings home the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy no matter how many Hamlets you’ve seen. (And I’ve seen a lot.) Much like last week’s Sentimental Value, Hamnet is a testament to the power of drama to provide a salve to the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. In the face of all this, there’s not much to do besides give it a curtain call.
Hamnet
Starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. Directed by Chloé Zhao. Written by Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell, based on O’Farrell’s novel. Rated R.
