The greatest play in the English language was born of father and mother’s wrenching loss of their firstborn son. That’s the premise of Maggie O’Farrell’s historical novel “Hamnet,” now turned into an intimate Chloé Zhao period piece about a child’s death at a time when half the children born didn’t make it past their fifth birthday.
It’s about William Shakespeare’s home life, the earthy older woman this would-be “scholar” fell for and how they coped with a marriage neither family wanted, with the perils of 16th century childbirth and child rearing and the theatrical career demands of a glove-maker’s son labeled “useless” by his own father, but who’d become a playwright celebrated the world over, a famous figure in life and a towering one after his death.
Whatever else this film accomplishes in reminding us that parents are shattered with the loss of a child no matter what era they lose him or her, “Hamnet,” the little boy playing him (Jacobi Jupe) and Jessie Buckley’s performance as his bereft mother and wife of “The Bard of Avon” will break your heart.
Zhao, bouncing back from the Marvel “Eternals” paycheck picture/debacle, serves up a touching romance between a distracted young man of letters and a woman so attuned to nature she hunts with a pet hawk, knows the uses of every herb and tree and the incantations that go with their preparation and is thus labeled the “daughter of a witch.”
Young Will (Paul Mescal) is Latin tutor to some higher-born Stratford folk when he starts to notice the sister of the landowner (Joe Alwyn) who wanders the woods and fusses over her hawk.
Will may catch hell for being “useless, tradeless” and for putting on “airs” above his prospects by his glover-father John (David Wilmot). But he catches the wary eye of “Agnes” (as Mrs. Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway, was sometimes called) after he puts himself in her path — repeatedly — when he’s supposed to be teaching her brother’s children.
He’s not much on conversation, Shakespeare admits. “So tell me a story,” she challenges him. And so he does, that of Orpheus and Eurydice. He was instantly smitten with the ethereal Agnes. Now she’s taken with this rash lad who pretty much proposes on their second meeting.
“I must be hand-fastened to you. No one else will do.”
Her brother isn’t inclined to endorse or interfere, but his mother (Emily Watson) is thrown into a “She’s bewitched you” fury. As Anges is pregnant when all this comes out, there’s nothing for it but for Will to piece together work, write on his own time, in the evenings by the fire, and impregnate his new wife a second time.
But Agnes knows he must go to London to find his destiny. He will have to do it alone, as she fears the contagions and risks of the city more than she fears him having his head turned. Having Will around between theater seasons, teaching and wardrobing his three children to play “the wyrd (weird) sisters (witches)” from his latest play, “Macbeth,” giving stage combat lessons to his son Hamnet, will have to do.
But with plague about, his career will keep them apart at the moment Agnes needs him most.
Zhao keeps the focus of this fanciful spin on history domestic, as the story is very much told from Agnes/Anne’s point of view. Our heroine frets over omens, the dream that she will have “two children” at her bedside as she dies, struggles with her mother-in-law and loneliness in her husband’s absence, with raising their children her main focus but not the only one as she keeps home and hearth together.
Buckley makes Agnes flesh and blood and longing and fear and superstition and anxiety a woman of her era with feelings deeper those of the famously-deep female stage characters her husband was writing and young men were typically performing in drag on London stages.
Mescal gives us a Shakespeare of obsessive drive and a poet’s ear — snatching songs and phrases such as “the undiscovered country” (death) from Agnes for a soliloquy to come. This Will is callous enough to know he must write while he has the commissions, and nothing — not even tragedy — can dissaude him from the notion that the show must go on.
And young Master Jupe, playing the Orson Welles-at-10 cherub Hamnet, whose name was interchangeable with Hamlet back then the author (and director) assure us, will steal your heart. He is sensitive and brave, theatrical and noble. Jupe’s performance transcends the way the character is written to make Hamnet such a cornerstone of all their lives that it’s easy to believe his loss would be both gutting and inspiring.
The story’s third act yanks those final heartstrings as a grieving mother wonders what manner of outrage her distant husband has perpetrated on their loss by writing “The Danish Play.” We see that play anew, as Agnes might have, and Buckley makes us feel the hurt that cuts more than the Shakespeare script and the callow young player (Noah Jupe) bringing him to the stage of the Globe for the first time show.
But everything leading up to that — the curious courtship to the trauma of childbirth, Will’s world of words meeting Agnes’ mercurial feelings and folkways — is what gives that finale its heart and soul. And Buckley ensures that her character accumulates emotions, grievances, worries and trauma and that we feel all of it every time it matters.
It’s a great, understated performance. And if you forget to bring tissues with you to see her mourning her “Hamnet,” that’s on you.
Rating: PG-13, sexual content, partial nudity, deaths
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Jacobi Jupe,
Olivia Lynes, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Joe Alwyn and Emily Watson
Credits: Scriped and directed by
Chloé Zhao, based on a novel by Maggie O’Farrell. A Focus Features release.
Running time: 2:05
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