William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children. One of them, their only son was named Hamnet. In both the movie and the book, it is asserted that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were considered interchangeable in Elizabethan times. Hamnet died at age eleven. This is all we know about him.
In Hamnet, Anne Hathaway is called Agnes because that is the name her father, Richard Hathaway, used for her in his will, in which he referred to “my daughter Agnes”. This name change indicates that Agnes was likely her baptismal name, with the two names being interchangeable at that time. And I thought that only Elizabethan spelling was all loosie-goosey.
Pictured above is Agnes as a groundling at the Globe. She has come to London for the first time and is watching Hamlet be performed. This scene comes at the end of the movie, a movie where Will and Agnes first meet in the forest, fall in love, then marry and have three children.
This is a very sensual film, with much of the “action” being supplied by childbirth, then followed by death. In-between these traumatic turns daily life is composed of happier times, the couple teaching their children, Agnes, daughter of a forest witch, instructs them about plants and their uses and Will, the storyteller, about make-believe. Other than in these childhood games, absent is Shakespeare’s art, as absentee as he is while away working in London.
Like Hamlet, Hamnet is a tragedy. Unlike Hamlet, where in the fifth act everyone dies, in the ending of Hamnet we are treated to a spiritual rebirth. Shakespeare uses Hamlet to grieve for his son and when Agnes sees this a reconciliation occurs. By this time there is not a dry eye in the house, so bring plenty of tissue when you come to see it.
