Interacting with the stage and screen in Hamnet (2025)
When I saw Hamnet (2025) with my twin sister for our birthday, I wasn’t expecting us to leave the film in tears. For every birthday since we were in college, we’ve gone to see whatever came out on Christmas Day, but this year, we caught the final showings of Hamnet. As twins, the story of Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare tore us apart, and I apologized to my sister for recommending the film. Its recent premiere garnered award season recognition and in the following week, won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Drama). Besides hearing about its merits, I knew about the novel, but hadn’t read it yet, and was curious to see how it related to my study of Hamlet. After completing my thesis on Hamlet film adaptations and metatheatre, I was struck by the film’s ability to convey grief, not only in a way that connected to my twin sister and I, but to audiences who could share in any experience of loss.
Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, imagines Shakespeare’s life in between historical facts, and supposes that his only son’s death inspired his most famous work, Hamlet. It decentralizes Shakespeare in favor of his wife Agnes (historically named Anne, but was called Agnes in her father’s will), played by Jessie Buckley. It combines both historical research with fiction to fill in the gaps of what could never be located as fact, in the literary genre of biofiction.
The film, directed by Chloe Zhao, translates the highly researched novel based on historical facts into a compelling drama for wide audiences. It begins with making a connection to Hamlet at the beginning of the film in a quote that explains the interchangeable names of Hamnet and Hamlet, which some have believed to be the reason why the death of Hamnet in 1596 inspired Hamlet, first staged in 1601. No prior knowledge is needed for general audiences to see that the performance of Hamlet is staged for audiences on the screen in the final scene, engaging in a conversation with Hamlet and opening up space to reconnect with this highly canonized play in new ways. The film conveys the strategies of metatheatre I have seen in my study of Hamlet adaptations, of self-reflexivity, role-playing, and the play-within-the-play.
The film chronicles the relationship between Shakespeare and his wife, their children, and the death of their son, largely taking place in Stratford-upon-Avon, reserving his career as a playwright in London for the end of the film. Shakespeare’s twins, Judith and Hamnet, are born in traumatic circumstances, where Judith’s survival characterizes her whole life and the reason the young family doesn’t move to London. When Judith becomes ill, Hamnet trades places with his sister, thinking he will trick death into taking him because they look so much alike. His tragic death brings about her survival, which is what set off my sister and I’s tears. As sisters who would also do the same for each other, Hamnet’s sacrifice and care for Judith was a portrayal that could move anyone. Especially at their young age of 11, he was so brave and protective of his sister, whose whole life was about surviving. Unlike audiences, Judith doesn’t get to experience his thinking as he’s dying, as she is sleeping beside him, and when she wakes up, he has already passed.
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As the family grieves the loss of Hamnet, Agnes feels like her husband Will (not named Shakespeare until she travels to London in the film), played by Paul Mescal, is distant and working too much to feel his loss. Agnes travels to see why he has put their son’s name on a playbill, and finds through the play, how he has dealt with the grief of losing their son. Agnes, and audiences, recognize him when he appears on stage as the Ghost of King Hamlet in Hamlet. During the final scene in particular, I wanted to reach out and touch the boy who was playing Hamlet, as Agnes did, because he did look so much like young Hamnet (which is no accident, by the way, as Noah Jupe, who plays the actor playing Hamlet, and Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, are real-life brothers).
Metatheatre can be seen in this scene, when Agnes watches the production of Hamlet, because it enacts the three strategies of self-reflexivity, role-playing, and the play-within-the-play. These three strategies of metatheatre invite audiences into the already existing conversation between the film and its reference to Hamlet, as well as the one between the film and our lives, which makes literature, like Hamnet and Hamlet come alive. Metatheatre allows the film’s broad audiences to feel the grief of a Shakespeare play with or without reading it. The film shows Agnes at possibly the earliest performance of Hamlet, and through her eyes as she experiences his work for the first time.
The three strategies of metatheatre are seen in the final scene of Hamnet, as Agnes interacts with the play on screen and combines both the viewers’ familiarity with Hamlet and Agnes’s understanding of her husband’s grief. Her confused wonderings, shouted out to the stage in the film, convey the beginning of her process to understand, once she realizes why he is using their son’s name in the play. By experiencing the play of Hamlet with the audience, she comes to know and acknowledge his grief, and shares it as both an audience member, and his wife. She interacts with the play, and the players, by asking questions, reacting, and responding to the performance, realizing that Will’s grief has been put into this play, and finally sees and understands him in a way that both the Globe Theatre watching Hamlet and film audiences watching Hamnet can share in this same grief.
The first strategy, self-reflexivity, can be seen when any work or playwright uses or reflects their own anxieties about art or the world into their work. In this scene and in the larger context of the film, self-reflexivity locates Shakespeare’s inspiration of Hamlet to be the death and grief of losing his son, where he puts his grief on display for audiences, and Agnes, to locate and experience it. Through this self-reflexivity, the boundaries between real life and stage come together to produce the play.
The strategy of role-playing can be seen when any actor or director takes on characters that are either actors themselves, or, take the place of real inspirations. In this performance of Hamlet, Will makes the characters of the Ghost of Hamlet and Hamlet father and son, based on his own son who he wanted to “switch places” with. By role-playing as the Ghost, and conjuring Hamnet’s ghost in the character of Hamlet, he can inhibit the dead and reawaken his son’s spirit. Agnes recognizes him in this role, and infers that her husband must have trained a young actor to behave like their Hamnet. This scene not only shows Will role-playing as the Ghost, but the actor playing Hamlet role-playing Hamnet, also seen in their physical similarities as brothers.
The final strategy of the play-within-the-play is not a new one, however, it does have a special significance in Hamnet because of its connection to Hamlet, which has the most famous play-within-the-play, the Mousetrap. The play-within-the-play is Hamlet in Hamnet, which uses a few scenes to communicate the play which Agnes experiences as a mirror to understanding Will’s grief. The performance of Hamlet within Hamnet communicates or adds another layer of plot through its performance, which allows audiences to see how Will has grieved for their son since being in London. Audiences are also able to talk back to the stage, or screen, and interact with the scene as Agnes does.
Although we did not actually talk to the screen, my sister and I talked to each other, afterwards, and through tears, about that last scene, which allowed us to contextualize the film as a way to share grief with others. Inside and outside the theatre, we were able to share in the grief of Will and Agnes, and Judith, as twins. Through this film, my sister was also able to experience the grief of Hamlet, again, after going to see a performance with me last summer. She has learned about Hamlet and metatheatre through my research in the thesis, and through this film she began to see what I mean when I talk about literature coming alive and being shared.
