From personal particular to unified universal: One point on “Hamnet” (UK, 2025)
Parental grief is one of the hardest emotions and situations to cope with. For most of humanity, a child dying before a parent does is just “unnatural”, not something that is supposed to happen. As historians can attest, Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet, who died at age 11. Not much else is known about him, but recently (2017-20220) his figure recaptured public imagination:
- Hamnet (Oberon Modern Plays) by Dead Centre
- Hamnet as a character in the British sitcom: Upstart Crow
- A focus in the 2018 film “All Is True” by Kenneth Branagh
- Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel Hamnet, from which the movie is made which is currently in theaters, and I want to share one observation about
Jessie Buckley does an amazing acting job showing a mother’s pain as her son dies. Then also how lethargy takes over and all other emotions are drained from her. She stays in this limbo between technically being alive but spiritually not. Then she goes to see the premiere of her husband’s, Shakespeare’s play. She enters the Globe Theater angry with William, believing he will exploit their son’s memory. But as the play progresses, she finally manages to move away from her personal, very real, and very deep pain towards acceptance and even forgiveness. What makes this possible is her witnessing the interaction between the play, the actors on the stage, and the audience. When she sees the grown version of what she imagines as her son, giving meaning to death on stage and then becomes one with the audience in their ecstatic reverence of the immortality of the moment, then she recognizes that Shakespeare did not exploit their son’s memory, but by creating a tribute to him, turned his death into a universally relatable experience. Ham/n/let has lived with us, with every generation ever since. The moment shown below is the moment right before this transformation in Agnes occurs, right before she awakens to life again and opens up to her surroundings. When I wrote “ecstatic” above, that was an understatement of the catharsis the filmmakers created on the scene. It was one of the most awe-inspiring scenes I’ve ever seen on screen. Go watch the movie for that.
Jessie Buckley as Agnes in Hamnet
P.S. After I wrote above, I explored a bit more and found Lucas Blue’s analysis of the film, where he discusses this part of the movie starting at about 20 minutes into the video. As I listened to it, I kept nodding. He explains more of what goes on, and I fully agree with his analysis, which gave me more to consider. I also learned that the actor who played young Hamnet and Hamlet on stage are real-life brothers. So in some sense, Agnes was seeing a version of his dead son come alive on the stage.
After losing their son Hamnet to plague, Agnes and William Shakespeare grapple with grief in 16th-century England. A healer, Agnes must find strength to care for her surviving children while processing her devastating loss.
