Today I saw Hamnet and let me just say—wow. A truly emotional film with stellar performances from the entire cast and stunning story telling. In short, the film follows the fictionalized story of Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes. You closely follow Agnes and watch as she navigates motherhood, being a wife, as well as her faith and spiritual connection to nature. The story puts much emphasis on specifically her relationship to her children. You see the birth of her firstborn daughter and then later, the birth of her twins, Hamnet and Judith. Judith nearly surviving birth, there’s a moment that deeply touched me where when Judith is born, she is silent, unmoving. You see the devastation on Mary Shakespeares face, whom she believes Judith has died. Outloud she says, “She has gone to heaven”. Agnes looks into Mary’s eye and says, “no she has not”. She insits she has “gone to the other side”. I think that sums up Agne’s character. She moves by the beat of her own drum. She is not dismissing the idea that her child had passed, but more demanding space for her non christian beliefs—which for that time, was incredibly untypical and likely something you could be persecuted for. I think why it touched me so much is that she dares to believe. Even though only she holds her own belief system, it’s her faith she chooses. And when she then looks back at Judith with a knowingness that she would live and you hear her start to make a sound, I was holding back tears.

It never truly occurred to me how much Agnes has been in the shadows of Williams Shakespeare. There's so much we don’t know, but seeing her brought to life in this way was incredibly moving. I think the stand out part we watch Agnes go through greaf, first with her Hawk and later wither her son Hamnet. We watch Hamnet metphorocially cross over as he walks through a dark opening within a forest. Before walking into the opening he looks up at the sky and calls for the Hawk who then appears—almost a beacon of light. I haven’t completely decided the meaning, but it added warmth in the moments of loss. As an audience member, you feel devastated that this child is experiencing death alone and at the same token feel calmer knowing he has his hawk.

Agnes is mourning the loss of Hamnet and when Shakespeare returns home from London, you feel it is a house divided. Agnes is angry that Shakespeare wasn’t there for his son’s death and angry that he died in agony. When he later returns to london to work on a play we watch him take back the anger and experience of what has happened into these young actors. It’s truly in that moment you can see that he is literally using the agony of his son’s death to inform the performance of the actors and later to writing. In the end, Agnes finds out that Shakespeare, whom she believes has written a comedy, has actually written a tragedy called Hamlet. For myself, it was then that I connected that Agne’s husband was Shakespeare as through the film you never hear of his last name. She is in the audience watching the play and for the first time it’s as though she sees her grief recognized and I think most movingly, you see the audience deeply affected by Hamlet’s death on stage. There’s a moment where Hamlet is dying on stage and Agnes reaches out and grabs his hand. So emotionally moved, audience members reach out to grab his hand. Looking around, she sees everyone’s reaction and it’s almost acknowledging that yes, what happened was indeed a tragedy. And in a way, you feel a moment of relief for Agnes because her grief and pain are being recognized. Hamnet is being recognized through Hamlet and it was just a moment that is truly sticking with me.