Hamnet
, directed by Chloé Zhao, is a strong contender at this year’s Oscars. It is a heart-wrenching fiction about Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes (or Anne), and the event that allegedly inspired the play
Hamlet
: the loss of their only son, Hamnet, at the age of eleven.
Agnes never forgives her husband for being absent at their child’s death. Years later, she attends a performance of
Hamlet
and realises that he has transmuted his grief for a dead child into the grief of a Danish prince for a dead father.
