The Oscar-nominated new film Hamnet depicts the family life of William and Agnes Shakespeare and their “soul-shattering” loss of a child. It’s a powerful story that fills in a lot of blanks.
In Maggie O’Farrell’s eloquent 2020 novel and deeply moving new film based on it, Hamnet, Shakespeare’s wife Agnes is an herbalist with a knowledge of herbs and an almost supernatural ability to sense the future. However, she is unable to save her young son from the plague, and his death prompts the boy’s father to write one of the greatest plays in literary history, Hamlet. And almost none of them are verifiably true. On the page and on the screen, Hamnet is a work of inspired imagination, a rich exploration of sadness woven from all sorts of facts. It cannot be said that O’Farrell, who also wrote the film’s screenplay with director Chloé Zhao, distorted the real-life story. teeth Despite centuries of historians investigating Shakespeare’s past, there is no known story.
The sparse facts about Shakespeare’s family far outweigh the questions they raise. Records show that in 1582, 18-year-old William Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. Three years later, their twins were called Judith and Hamnet, the same name as Hamlet at the time. Hamnet died in 1596 when he was only 11 years old. He was buried on August 11, but it is almost certain that Shakespeare, traveling with his troupe, missed the funeral in time. About four years later he wrote Hamlet. Make it what you want.
AlamyNo one knows whether Shakespeare felt he had to marry a pregnant Anne, or whether the two were intensely in love. No one knows how Hamnet died, but the plague was prevalent at the time and is considered the most likely cause of Hamnet’s death. Most important to the book and movie, no one knows much about Anne herself, including whether she was literate. This fiction gives her a strong-willed personality (as portrayed on screen by Jesse Buckley in an Oscar-nominated performance) and a passionate romance with Shakespeare (Paul Mescal). Hamnet is very much about Agnes.
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
