‘Hamnet’ and the true history of Shakespeare’s family

Some historical movies make you more curious to know the real story behind them Hamnett, And few areas of popular history have as few answers to those behind it as a 16th-century biography of the Shakespeare family.

The new film from acclaimed director Chloé Zhao is based on the 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell, called HamnettO’Farrell and Zhao collaborated on the script, which is a largely faithful adaptation of the book,

Spoiler alert: This discusses the plot Hamnett In detail including the end.

Both follow the Stratford lives of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and their three children. The family’s joy was interrupted by Shakespeare’s prolonged absence from London theaters and the death of Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, from plague at the age of 11. In its tear-jerking final act, it tells the story that Shakespeare wrote small village To make Hamnet sad.

So what is accurate, and what is artistic invention? As Shakespeare’s own history shows, the answer is: a light sprinkle from Column A, and a heavy draft from Column B.

How historically accurate is it? Hamnett,

Here’s the first thing you need to know about Shakespeare and his immediate family: We barely know the first thing about Shakespeare and his immediate family. We have some written evidence, such as baptisms, funerals and the Shakespearean wedding; We have records of disputes over their coats of arms. But the greatest playwright in history, as far as we know, never wrote a word about himself or his family.

It makes Shakespeare seem like a blank canvas – and his many admirers have made many paintings of it over the centuries.

Some of that speculation is based more on educated guesses than others. In his award winning book Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (2004), Harvard historian Stephen Greenblatt makes a persuasive case that Shakespeare was deliberately obscuring himself because his family was secretly Catholic, at a time when Protestant fear of Catholic plots against Queen Elizabeth made this a very dangerous identity.

At the other end of the sensible scale is something that scholars today largely dismiss: authorship disputes. This is the conspiracy theory, invented by aristocrats 300 years after his death, that Shakespeare, the son of a glovemaker in Stratford-upon-Avon, could not possibly Wrote all those great plays. Rather, for some reason, it was Sir Francis Bacon or some other specific candidate working through Shakespeare.

If this is the scale, then Hamnett Greenblatt is pretty close to the end. The film presents its picture within the limits of logic and does not contradict the details we know. And it includes more than a few Easter eggs to keep Shakespeare buffs happy.

Was Shakespeare’s wife Agnes or Anne?

You may know Shakespeare’s wife as Anne Hathaway (no relation to the modern actress). But you’ll also notice that when the character is named in the movie, she’s called Agnes. Which one is correct?

The answer, as far as we can tell, is both.

Mashable Top Stories

In documents surrounding her marriage in November 1582, she is “Anne Hathaway”. (This was an era in which there was no fixed spelling for last names; just ask her husband for the form, “William Shagspere”). But the will of her father, a peasant farmer, lists her as Agnes. At her grave again, it’s Anne.

The portrayal of Anne/Agnes as a wild, pagan woman of the woods is O’Farrell’s invention (sorry, Witchtok). But it’s unlikely she had a thing or two to teach her future husband, thanks to a detail that isn’t mentioned in the film: Anne/Agnes was 26 when they married, while Will Shakespeare was just 18.

Otherwise, the film portrays the Hathaways well. You will see his actual hut in the film, which is still a tourist attraction. It is safe to suggest that the Hathaway family was more staunch than the Shakespeares, who were in financial difficulty due to John Shakespeare’s poor business decisions.

And yes, Anne/Agnes was pregnant at the time of the marriage; Their first daughter, Susanna, was born about six months later. How thoughtful a decision this was, you can guess as much as an army of scholars.

How did Hamnett die?

Shakespeare’s second and third children, twins Judith and Hamnet – who were probably named after neighbors – were baptized in February 1585. His father was a popular London actor and playwright by the end of that decade. Hamnet was buried in August 1596, around the same time the bubonic plague was spreading its periodic fury in England.

These are brief accounts of Hamnett’s life; Everything else is invention. We think that Shakespeare was probably touring in Kent at that time with a company of players. We believe that Shakespeare came to the house for the funeral – “Hamnet, filius William Shakespeare,” the burial register says – but even this we don’t know for sure.

In 16th-century England, more than one in three children died before the age of 10. This was a common occurrence, and it almost always happened at home. Shakespeare himself may have seen his sister die at the age of 7. But that doesn’t mean Shakespeare was not Restless; Many of his contemporary poets, such as Ben Jonson, wrote sad poems on the deaths of their children.

Was small village Written for Hamnet?

We cannot know the status of the Shakespeare marriage at this time. But the film is on solid enough ground that it shows the playwright has retreated into the theater more than ever before; In fact, this was his most productive period.

As historian Stephen Greenblatt says, “Whether Shakespeare was suicidal or sober after Hamnett’s death,” he threw himself into his work.

However, to believe the film, you would think that Shakespeare wrote the play shortly after Hamnet’s death. In fact, many of the plays that followed were comedies, such as as you like It And much Ado About NothingHe came closest to portraying the grief of parents king john, Where a woman becomes suicidal due to the death of her son.

related to small villageHe came to Shakespeare about four years after Hamnet’s death. But like much of his work, it was not an original story; Another play, based on the legend of Hamlet, a Danish prince who avenges his murdered father, was performed in London when Shakespeare was an aspiring actor (and is now lost).

But why did Shakespeare create His Like Hamlet – a hero teetering on the brink of madness, suicide, depression and lost love, unlike any hero before or since? is a question that we will ponder over for many centuries.

By highlighting a few lines of its father-son dialogue, and imagining Anne/Agnes watching her first play this way, Hamnett Provides a very concrete answer.

Was it happily ever after for Shakespeare?

We don’t know how much of an absentee father Shakespeare was during his theater career, but there is evidence that he wanted to leave London and return to his family: he returned, permanently, in 1613.

Shakespeare died three years later, at the age of 52, leaving his wife the “second best bed” in his will. Anne would outlive him by another seven years. His daughter Susanna married a local merchant and had a daughter of her own, the last of the Shakespeare dynasty. Judith also had children, but all three died before her.

Much has been made of that “second best bed”, but historians generally do not believe that Shakespeare intended to insult his wife. The opposite is more likely: in a fancy Tudor-era home, the best bed was usually reserved for guests, so the second-best bed was probably the one in which the couple slept.

And as long as we’re painting things on a blank Shakespearean canvas, let’s imagine that Anne/Agnes was smiling with a secret smile when she heard about the last gift left to her by her late husband. This is not evidence that she ever recovered from Hamnet, but it does suggest that she lived a life well lived.