What would it have been like to stand among the first audiences of Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Rough-clothed shoulder to rough-clothed shoulder, muscles swollen from a hard day’s work, a stink of garlic and beer in the air – yet, from on stage, those words of madness, of the futility in grief, quietly tethering heart to heart, stranger to stranger? At least five major outbreaks of the bubonic plague struck London within Shakespeare’s lifetime. It’s hard to imagine who in his audiences would not have been touched by some untimely loss of life.
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s largely speculative novel about the play’s conception, builds to an immaculate depiction of one of its first performances. We see only a handful of its scenes performed. Still, you feel the full force of its impact, like an enormous, shuddering release of long-held breath.
