Hamnet Is Beautifully Acted and Gorgeously Shot, but It Misses the Point

Hamnet Is Beautifully Acted and Gorgeously Shot, but It Misses the Point

Dana Stevens in Slate: The curiosity that drove the Irish novelist Maggie O’Farrell to write her bestselling 2020 novel Hamnet sprang from the scarcity of documentation about the book’s title character, Hamnet Shakespeare. Born in 1585 to William and Anne Shakespeare, the twin brother to a girl named Judith, Hamnet died of unknown causes in 1596, the only one of the Shakespeares’ three children not to reach adulthood. But for the records of his …