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Warning: This story contains spoilers for Hamnet.
Many scholars have attempted to read personal history into the writings of William Shakespeare. One work that has often intrigued them is The Tragedy of Hamlet (1603), the Bard’s story of an anguished Danish prince who seeks to avenge his father’s death. Their keen interest stems in part from the closeness of that prince’s name to that of the playwright’s only son, Hamnet, who tragically died before adolescence. But it also owes to the play’s echoes of the writer’s own life: a son going mad following the devastating death of a parent, perhaps a reversal of Shakespeare’s own plight.
Now the film Hamnet, Oscar winner Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling 2020 novel, is the latest effort to reconcile Shakespeare’s life with his art. It draws direct parallels between the playwright’s loss of his only male heir and the emotional force this death may have borne. And it suggests that the wordsmith channelled his torturous grief into writing his celebrated play Hamlet years later.
Here’s what to know about Hamnet, including where truth ends and fiction begins.
Hamnet reimagines history
Hamnet, which releases in limited theaters beginning on Nov. 26, takes creative liberties with Shakespeare’s marriage and family life. At its center is a story of two parents buckling under the weight of unfathomable loss. The film begins by reimagining how Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) fell in love, first meeting when the playwright was working as a Latin tutor in the same village she lived in.
As young adults, the pair experienced an intoxicating attraction, which soon led to marriage. But after the birth of their three children, their passionate trysts are eventually…
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