‘Hamnet’ review: sob your eyes out to this tragic Shakespeare origin story

The latest film from Chloé Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of Nomadland and underrated Marvel movie Eternals, is a gathering storm of grief, creativity and healing in Elizabethan England. Based on the blockbuster novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zhao, it’s a revisionist reframing of Shakespeare’s marriage that places the focus on his gutsy wife, Agnes. When The Bard absconds to London to chase his playwriting dreams, she’s left to raise their young family in sleepy Stratford-Upon-Avon.

When we meet Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), she’s a flinty outcast who locals claim is the daughter of a forest witch. To be fair, Agnes doesn’t exactly discourage these rumours – she spends most of her time in the woods making herbal potions and taming birds of prey. Capricious William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is instantly captivated and sets about wooing her like the OG Romeo. Soon, Agnes is pregnant and wedding William against the wishes of his domineering mother, Mary (Emily Watson), who softens as she sees her daughter-in-law blossom into an equally stoic matriarch. 

Agnes’ farmer brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) acquiesces and remains supportive even when the marriage becomes unconventional – realising that William will crumble if he can’t make something of himself in London, Agnes lets him live there for months at a time. She keeps the rest of the family away from the big smoke though, worried that their elder daughter Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) is too delicate to cope with the plague-ravaged capital. However, as pestilence spreads, their two youngest children Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) are struck down with the disease in Stratford.

Given that the central conceit of O’Farrell’s novel and Zhao’s film is that Shakespeare channelled an unspeakable personal tragedy into a great literary one, it’s no spoiler to disclose that only Judith survives. Actually, the film shows its hand at the start with a written prologue informing us that ‘Hamnet’ and ‘Hamlet’ were considered the same name in 16th-century Stratford. Shakespearean scholars are split on whether the bereavement really did inspire one of Bill’s best plays, but like O’Farrell’s novel, this film has no pretence of being anything other than historical fiction. It uses real-life events to tell a transcendent story, just like Shakespeare did in his history plays.

Zhao’s direction is never quite naturalistic and occasionally feels heavy-handed: in one scene, we see William considering suicide by the River Thames while reciting Hamlet’s familiar “to be or not to be” soliloquy. But there’s no denying this is a powerful portrait of grief driven by a shattering performance from Buckley, who’s currently frontrunner to win Best Actress at this year’s Oscars. The Academy won’t struggle to find an isolated clip of her technical and emotional brilliance, but Hamnet really needs to be experienced in full. It’s a harrowing reminder that tragedy is stalking all of us and can’t be shouldered alone.