Hamnet

Another contribution to the still ever expanding works about Shakespeare, the playwright who contributed so much whilst leaving so little actual historic evidence. That lack of evidence has allowed myriad historians and authors since to grasp the few small knows and then weave their own reality into the gaps.

In this case we have the potential story of the Stratford Shakespeare, gaining a wife and then a family and finally turning the demons of his imagination into plays and poems. The main focus is family and a loving caring father but one who is increasingly absent away in London. And at the core we eventually arrive at the tragic death of his son Hamnet.

All three child actors playing the Shakespeare family were excellent. The actual death of Hamnet was tragic. But whilst we did have some setup of his closeness to his twin sister, it was scant. As the main name actor of the whole story, Hamnet seemed one of the least parts of the film, there to die but without much to make us know and understand him and really feel that death other than as any child's death.