New movie Hamnet, which is being talked about for Oscars, imagines the family life of William and Agnes Shakespeare - and the loss of their son. It's a touching story that fills in many gaps.
By: Caryn James / BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com
in Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell's eloquent 2020 novel and the new film based on it - Shakespeare's wife, Agnes, is portrayed as an herbalist who knows natural medicine and has an almost supernatural ability to sense the future. But she fails to save her young son from the plague - a death that prompts the boy's father to write one of literature's greatest works: of Hamlet. And, almost none of this is proven. On paper and on screen, Hamnet is a work of imagination, a profound exploration of pain and loss, built on little-known facts. You can't say that O'Farrell - who also wrote the film's screenplay with director Chloé Zhao - has distorted the truth, because there is no documented history, despite the many years of attempts by historians to shed light on Shakespeare's past.
The few facts about Shakespeare's family are far fewer in number than the questions they raise. Records show that in 1582, William Shakespeare, then 18, married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. Three years later, their twins, Judith and Hamnet - a name then used interchangeably with Hamlet - were born. In 1596, when he was only 11, Hamnet died. He was buried on 11 August, and it is almost certain that Shakespeare, who was travelling with his theatre company, was unable to return to Stratford in time for the funeral. About four years later, he wrote of Hamlet. Take what you will from this.
Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley play William and Agnes Shakespeare in the film "Hamnet" (Source: Alamy)
No one knows whether Shakespeare was forced to marry Anne because she was pregnant, or whether they were truly in love. No one knows exactly how Hamnet died, but the plague was rampant at the time and is the most likely cause. Most importantly for the book and the film, no one knows much about Anne herself, including whether she could read or write. The literature gives her a strong personality (as powerfully portrayed by Jessie Buckley in a role that is expected to be nominated for an Oscar), and a passionate romance with Shakespeare (played by Paul Mescal). Indeed, Hamnet talks about Agnes.
In the author's notes at the end of the novel, O'Farrell admits that very little is known about Hamnet and his parents. But she fills her account with careful research into the late 16th century, placing the story in historical context. During her research, she told the BBC: "I was a little taken aback by the way history and academic scholarship have mistreated Shakespeare's wife, the woman we were taught to call Anne Hathaway. We've only been given one version of her, and most biographers have simply agreed with it - that she was an illiterate peasant who forced him into marriage, that he hated her, that he ran away to London to be away from her."
Even her name is uncertain. Her father, a successful farmer, left her a dowry in his will, naming her Agnes. O'Farrell chose to give her character this name, reasoning: “[if] anyone knew her name, it would be her father.” She says: “It felt really symbolic that, on top of everything else, we didn’t even get her name right.”
O'Farrell has a strong argument against the demonization of Shakespeare's wife. Jo Eldridge Carney, author of the study Women Respond to Shakespeare: Adaptations and Adaptationscontemporary and professor of English at the College of New Jersey, told the BBC:
"This portrayal by O'Farrell is a deliberate denial of centuries of prejudice and unfounded assumptions about Anne - whether as a patient but boring saint who guarded the Stratford hearth, or as a scheming woman who lured Shakespeare into a miserable marriage."
This portrait drawing from 1708 is the only surviving image that may depict the woman Anne Hathaway - or Agnes, as she is called in the film.(Source: Getty Images)
Discovering her real name is trickier. David Scott Kastan, a renowned Shakespeare scholar and professor emeritus of English at Yale University, told the BBC: “In almost all the documents she is called Anne, and in only one – her father’s will – is she called Agnes.” Nothing else is certain. It is possible, he says, “that she was christened Agnes but was called Anne.” He adds: “I like the way the novel takes this opportunity to give her an identity of her own, separate from the marriage that we know so little about and that we always see through Shakespeare’s lens.”
To create Agnes's unique character, O'Farrell drew on Shakespeare's plays. "What I did was go back to the plays and reread them in a different way, seeing if I could find it there - because I always felt I saw Hamnet in Hamlet"But I wondered - I thought it had to be somewhere."
One inspiration for Agnes's intuition comes from these rereadings. "There are a lot of visions and premonitions in the play," says O'Farrell. "Think, for example, of the oracle in Julius Caesar'" Agnes's literary knowledge of plants and medicines also has a parallel with Shakespeare's plays - particularly in Ophelia's monologue in Hamlet, when she seems to lose her mind and distributes flowers and plants to the other characters, citing the lines: "Rosemary is for memory."
“I read that every house, at that time, had a medicinal garden,” says O’Farrell. “And it would be the responsibility of the woman of the house, the matriarch, to know how to prepare medicines and treat illnesses. It wasn’t something that the men knew.” Of this part of the dialogue, O’Farrell says it’s conceivable that Shakespeare was relying on his wife’s knowledge.
Seeing Agnes as an equal partner in marriage offers us – perhaps as a secret wish – an Anne/Agnes for the 21st century. Buckley’s Agnes is the kind of woman we might wish Shakespeare had – one who is special in her own way. She is so unusual that it is rumored, as Shakespeare’s mother warns in the film, that she is “the child of a witch of the woods.” She is wise, with strong convictions, and understanding enough to accept that her husband should follow his artistic calling in London. She is a woman the genius could have fallen in love with – and we can see why Mescal’s Shakespeare feels drawn to her from the start.
19th century illustration: Shakespeare reciting "Hamlet" to his family, with his wife sitting in a chair on the right and his son, Hamnet, behind him on the left(Source: Alamy)
This conception of Anne/Agnes is not necessarily a romantic one. Carney says, “While it may be tempting to see O’Farrell’s Anne as an attempt to turn her into a simple early modern feminist—a figure more in tune with our sensibilities—this portrayal is, in fact, consistent with what we know about the lives of many women of the time.” She adds, “We know that many women successfully ran what we would today call ‘small businesses’: brewing, herbal medicine, barley processing, trade, weaving, and more. The degree of education required for these occupations has been more difficult to assess.”
We still don't know if Shakespeare's wife could read. The fictional Agnes in the novel could, but O'Farrell herself thinks that in the real version she was probably illiterate. "It would be pointless to educate a farmer's daughter to read and write," she says.
The marriage depicted in the book and film becomes more distant when Shakespeare is away from his family for long periods of time, living in Stratford-upon-Avon while working in the theater in London - absences that are historically documented. But when it comes to Hamnet's death and its painful aftermath, there is only speculation.
O'Farrell, in line with the influential essay by Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, The Death of Hamnet and the Creation of Hamlet (2004), sees a direct connection to the play, beyond the similarity of the name. In the film, when Agnes travels to London to see the play for herself - a fictional extra - we see, as she does, that the actor playing Hamlet has been dressed and styled to resemble Hamnet. In a brilliant casting choice, Jacobi Jupe plays the boy Hamnet, while Noah Jupe, his brother, plays Hamlet on stage. The visual resemblance between them is unmistakable. In this interpretation, the play is not only a way for Shakespeare to express his grief - but also an opportunity to say goodbye to his son on stage, as he could not do in life.
Kastan says of the connection between Hamnet's death and the play: "It must have had some impact - we just don't know what it was. It's tempting, perhaps irresistible, to connect the boy's death to of Hamlet. The death of Hamnet/Hamlet must have been felt by Shakespeare and his family as a devastating loss to the soul. It may have been, at least in part, why, within a few years of the boy's death, Shakespeare turned to an old play (perhaps by Thomas Kyd) about a boy called Hamlet and a ghost who cries out for 'vengeance' - to write of Hamlet "It has long been speculated that Shakespeare himself played the role of the ghost in his play - reversing the roles between the living and the dead. But there are many other influences on the play, both literary and cultural. "The connections between the events of Shakespeare's life and art are purely speculative - however intriguing they may be," says Castano.
The emotional climax of the film "Hamnet" occurs when Agnesa travels to London to see Hamlet herself.(Source: Alamy)
The fact is that there is no surviving evidence to show what Shakespeare thought or felt about his wife and family – not even a scrap of paper. But new research on a fragment of a letter from an unknown sender may or may not shed light on the Shakespeares’ marriage. Matthew Steggle, professor of English at the University of Bristol, suggests that a letter addressed to “Mrs. Shakespeare” in London may have been for Anne. That would mean she lived in London with her husband between 1600 and 1610 – and would prove that she was literate. Steggle himself said that his research merely “opens the door” to this possibility, that “it is a possibility that seems hard to deny, but not certain.”
More than any scholarly research, however, this valuable film is more likely to change the public perception of Shakespeare’s wife, solidifying her as Agnes. That would be “very nice, if true,” O’Farrell says. But, “it might be a passing thing. Maybe, like this letter, something else will come to light and we’ll all have to change our minds again.” She adds the two words that define so much of what we know about the Shakespeares and their son: “Who knows?” /Telegraph/
