Hamnet’s Most Annoying Quirk Is Also Its Most Meaningful ...

Hamnet’s Most Annoying Shakespeare Quirk Is Also Its Most Meaningful Idea

Paul Mescal as the husband staring up at something while outdoors in Hamnet

By Alex Harrison Published 34 minutes ago Alex is the Senior Movies Editor, managing the New Movies team, as well as one of ScreenRant's Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics. After graduating from Brown University with a B.A. in English, he spent a locked-down year in Scotland completing a Master's in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh, which he hears is a nice, lively city. He now lives in and works from Milan, Italy, conveniently a short train ride from the Venice Film Festival, which he first covered for SR in 2024. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap

In general, Chloé Zhao's Hamnet is a faithful adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel of the same name (O'Farrell is, after all, a credited co-writer on the screenplay). But it does one curious thing the book does not: quote Shakespeare.

While the character is mostly referred to as the Husband, neither version of the story makes much effort to hide that its protagonist, Agnes, has fallen for and married a young William Shakespeare. It's baked into the premise, which aims to tease out a connection between the death of their son, Hamnet, and Shakespeare writing Hamlet just a few years later. The novel leaves him unnamed in part to underline that this is primarily Agnes' story, but also because throwing his name around would make us think of him as the famous playwright instead of a normal, human character.

The movie ostensibly takes the same approach, except when it decides to quote some of Shakespeare's most famous plays at the most painfully obvious moments. In one, after a romantic day with Agnes, young William says, "What light through yonder window breaks?" as he scribbles the words from Romeo & Juliet on parchment. In another, he speaks aloud Hamlet's "To be or not to be?" soliloquy as he contemplates throwing himself into the Thames. It's not unlike the much-parodied music biopic cliché, in which a singer has a eureka moment after someone conveniently says what will become their most beloved song.

It's an odd groaner of a choice in what is otherwise a raw, emotional movie. But together with a few other scenes, it plants an idea that becomes the thematic center of Hamnet's ending.

In Hamnet, Recitation & Art Have Their Own Power

Hamnet the book builds to a quite moving reading of Hamlet as Shakespeare's way of trading places with his son. At the start of the play, it is Hamlet's father who is dead, and the husband himself performs the character's ghost, a detail that is kept for the film. But Zhao aims to expand on O'Farrell's original idea, and she introduces two concepts to do it.

The first comes from Agnes. Early in Hamnet, as we learn about her relationship with her mother, a prayer-like chant she was taught as a child to help her remember the medicinal properties of a certain plant is repeated several times. Most meaningfully, Agnes encourages her brother to say it with her, as if their aim is to conjure her presence with her words.

Similarly, when Agnes' hawk dies years later, she teaches her own children how to cast a wish up into the sky and essentially summon him to carry it up to the heavens. Hamnet eventually literalizes this during his crossing over from life to death, when the bird actually appears in the sky above him. This and the herb chant are ways to use ritualistic action or recitation to channel the dead – not literally, but emotionally. It's as if their spirits are still with Agnes, continuing to accompany and guide her through life when called upon.

The second comes from the husband, and requires his writing. Hamnet depicts a version of Shakespeare's artistic process that makes his poetry a direct translation of his feelings at any given moment. Selling this necessitates the obvious, one-to-one-ness of these moments. Romeo & Juliet springs from his own experience of young love; Halmet from his fatherly grief.

Tellingly, before the husband recites Hamlet's soliloquy on the dock, we see him running lines from this play with his actors. He's emotional and harsh when the young man playing Hamlet trips over them, eventually accusing him of only "mouthing the words" before performing them himself, imbuing them with all the pain that went into their writing. When not merely mouthed, but felt, the emotion that Shakespeare put into those words can be brought back by them.

Hamnet's Finale Turns Private Grief Into A Collective Experience

The performance of Hamlet that serves as Hamnet's finale brings together these two practices, one each from husband and wife, to create something even more transformative. As in the book, Agnes has the realization that her husband's play is his way of reviving their son, and from that moment she experiences it that way. A live performance is much like a ritualistic recitation of Shakespeare's words, and has the effect of channeling both the husband's emotion and Hamnet's spirit (which the movie literalizes as well).

But Zhao's Hamnet shows us much more of the play than the book does, because performance art adds a third element. In the book, O'Farrell has let us in on a private significance to Hamlet that only Agnes and the husband would otherwise experience; in the film, the entire audience seems to share it. When Hamlet speaks his dying words and Agnes is so moved that she reaches out to the actor on stage, the rest of the audience does the same. The play not only "revives" the boy and expresses his parents' grief at his passing, but allows people who never knew, loved, or mourned him to feel what it was like.

And, in the right conditions, so does Zhao's movie. If you see Hamnet in a packed theater, as Agnes and her fellow theatergoers shed their tears, you may notice yourself or those around you doing the same. This is also why the Hamlet performance is elongated in this adaptation – it's important that we, Hamnet's audience, share some of the experience of Hamlet's audience, so that the film becomes as much a testament to the power of collective viewership as to art itself.

10/10

Hamnet

10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed PG-13 Drama Romance Release Date November 26, 2025 Runtime 126 minutes Director Chloé Zhao Writers Chloé Zhao, Maggie O’Farrell Producers Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Sam Mendes, Steven Spielberg, Nicolas Gonda, Caroline Reynolds, Maggie O’Farrell

Cast

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Jessie Buckley Agnes
Paul Mescal Will

Genres Drama, Romance Powered by

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Hamnet

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