28 January 2026

We saw the film ‘Hamnet’ starring Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway. We always knew her as Anne. Her husband, William Shakespeare is played by an equally accomplished actor, Paul Mescal. The former won a Golden Globe for her performance and has been nominated for an Oscar.

Although the works of Shakespeare surpass any other, his part is subsidiary to that of his wife in Maggie O’Farrell’s novel on which the film is based. His character is more thinly drawn. It is remarkable that Mescal made so much of it.  The chemistry between husband and wife was  electric.

The film focuses on the Shakespeares’ family life and the death of one of their twins, Hamnet. O’Farrell’s thesis is that Shakespeare’s grief over his son’s death was creatively worked through in his most famous play, Hamlet.  But is this true?

Although the play is about a father and a son, both with the same name, it is about the murder of a father and the grief of his son. It is difficult to see how this replicates a father’s grief over the death of his son. It’s more likely to be a play about the difficulties of succession wrought  in the days of an aging Virgin Queen!

There is so little known about the life of Shakespeare that people can join the limited historical dots as they please. Or as some have suggested, argue that the plays were written not by one but by several playwrights all collected together under the generic name, Shakespeare!

It is admirable that so little of Shakespeare’s person is evident in his plays and that his personality remains largely hidden from view. This is a supremely Christian virtue -  to forget self and give life to others as Shakespeare continues to do amongst all sorts of people, across national borders and  over  five centuries!