The Real History Behind 'Hamnet'

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Hamnet .

Many scholars have attempted to read personal history into the writings of William Shakespeare. One work that has often intrigued them is The Tragedy of Hamlet (1603), the Bard’s story of an anguished Danish prince who seeks to avenge his father’s death. Their keen interest stems in part from the closeness of that prince’s name to that of the playwright’s only son, Hamnet, who tragically died before adolescence. But it also owes to the play’s echoes of the writer’s own life: a son going mad following the devastating death of a parent, perhaps a reversal of Shakespeare’s own plight.

Now the film Hamnet , Oscar winner Chloé Zhao ’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling 2020 novel , is the latest effort to reconcile Shake