Maggie O’Farrell is one of the United Kingdom’s greatest living writers. When the Northern Irish author took on the personal life of our greatest ever, one William Shakespeare, it was a bestselling smash.
Her book, Hamnet, imagined the interior life of Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway, here named Agnes, and their only son Hamnet, who died at just 11 years old, four years before Hamlet debuted at London’s globe theatre. It’s a tricky work to adapt for the big screen, with O’Farrell’s novel flitting between time periods, intimately honing in on witchy forest women Agnes and her folk magic powers, with the great man only alluded to, yet never named.
