Hamnet, Historical & Modern

 

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageious fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;                  Hamlet Act 3 Scene1

I'm not inclined to write blog sequels but in a way this one is a companion to what I expressed yesterday regarding rituals, including in times of loss. 

We went to see the film Hamnet which is based on Maggie O'Farrell's novel of the same name. She was involved in writing the screenplay and other aspects of the movie. 

Hamnet was the name of the son of William Shakespeare and Anne or Agnes Hathaway who died at the age of eleven, likely of the bubonic plague. While this is a historical drama it is the fictional imagining of the relationships within this family, including the close bond between Hamnet and his twin, Judith. 

The similarity between the name of the boy and the title character in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, is not coincidental in O'Farrell's development of the story, names that were interchangeable in that era. 

When Hamnet dies the family is riven by grief and the playwright who was away in London at the time of the boy's agonizing death returns to his work in the theatre. Months later the angry and alienated Agnes travels to London for William's new play and only in seeing it realizes that her husband's grief is expressed through this powerful play which is haunted by a ghost and explores the fleeting nature of life and the inconsolable realities of death. 

Every single actor in Hamnet is excellent. Last night Jessie Buckley (Agnes) won the Critics Choice Award for best female actor and she will likely take other big prizes. The boy who plays Hamnet is mesmerizing in the range of his emotion and his actual brother is Hamlet in the play. 

This is a truly moving film and I've realized in the hours since watching it that it is also surprisingly modern in the issues it explores. Agnes comes from a line of "witches", women of the forest viewed with suspicion. She eschews the supposed comforts and conventions of religion, even in her profound loss. Yet she is bereft in that loss, essentially inconsolable. So is William who wonders if life is worth living. 

We live in a time when many are sceptical about the promises of the afterlife yet the alternatives are often bleak. Remember the brilliant atheist, Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the best-selling God is Not Great, a book inexplicably included in the religion and spirituality section of many bookstores? At the time people thronged to hear him in public lectures although since his death in 2011 he has virtually disappeared from general discourse. There was eloquence but no hope in his message. 

I'm doing my best not to give too much of the plot for Hamnet away but there are scenes in the latter part of the story that powerfully express our longings at the end of life that are multiple-hanky moments. 

Hamnet, novel and film. are really worthwhile ventures into Shakespeare's "undiscovered country." 

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.