Hamnet: Book vs. Movie
Chloé Zhao's 2025 film Hamnet adapts Maggie O'Farrell's book about Shakespeare's family. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal play Agnes and William, whose marriage is shaped by their son's death and the work that follows it.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Maggie O'Farrell
- Year
- 2020
- Pages
- 320Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 12 hr 42 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Ell Potter
In sixteenth-century Stratford, Hamnet searches for help when his twin sister, Judith, falls ill. The family's unfolding crisis is interwoven with the earlier courtship of his parents, Agnes and a young Latin tutor who will become a playwright. Centering Agnes and their children, the book imagines the domestic life and loss behind a famous literary name.
- Director
- Chloé Zhao
- Writer
- Maggie O'Farrell, Chloé Zhao
- Year
- 2025
- Runtime
- 2 hr 5 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn
- Genre
- biographical, Drama, period drama
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
Agnes builds a family with William Shakespeare while his work increasingly takes him away to London. The death of their young son Hamnet leaves them grieving across that distance, unable to respond to the loss in the same way. William's work in the theater becomes bound up with a tragedy Agnes continues to experience at home.
No comments yet. Vote, then say why.