In September 2025, the film adaptation for Hamnet, a 2020 New York Times Best Seller by Irish novelist Maggie O’Farrell, made its Canadian Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The film was directed by Chloé Zhao and co-written by Zhao and O’Farrell, starring Jessie Buckley as Agnes Shakespeare and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare.
The film is a semi-biographical account of the couple’s early life and the death of their son Hamnet.
The film’s leads have been praised highly by critics, with both Buckley and Mescal forecasted to be front-runners for best actor and actress at this year’s Academy Awards.
Despite these exquisitely talented stars, the most heartwrenching performances, at least in this writer’s humble opinion, come from the children of Agnes and William — Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), and Judith (Olivia Lynes). What moves me is the young actors’ vivid portrayal of sibling bonds and closeness, a theme which is particularly explored between Hamnet and Judith.
From birth, twins Hamnet and Judith exist as a duo and function as two halves of a whole. There is even a scene portraying the two swapping clothes and trying to act as the other to confuse their parents and older sister.
The audience does not see Hamnet and Judith apart from one another until Judith contracts the bubonic plague, and is bedridden in the attic. From this point, they are separated until Hamnet sneaks up to the attic to stay with a dying Judith and eventually asks death to take him instead, trading his life for hers. The fancy of their twinhood is broken.
Buckley delivers a guttural performance of Agnes’ desperation to save her son and her refusal to let him go. Agnes struggles with her inability to save her son from death, and must confront the limits that her gifts as a herbalist and healer can have in the face of death.
As he reconciles with the end of his life, Hamnet repeats the mantra instilled by his father — “I will be brave.” Hamnet watches the scene of his death: his mother’s frantic attempts to save him, and Judith’s cries to him.
He calls out to his mother and rubs his hands together as if he still holds herbs outside in the garden. Hamnet uses the memory of his mother teaching and grinding herbs to ground him, taking bravery from it.
At this point in the film, I was beginning to believe that a pack of tissues should come with the purchase of a ticket.
A source of grief for Hamnet’s family is the knowledge that their memories of him are all they have left. After Hamnet’s death, Judith comes up to the attic and wants to stay for the preparations of his burial. Agnes allows this and brings Judith to see her brother. Judith becomes agitated at seeing Hamnet and argues that the body on the table is not his because it “doesn’t look like him.”
Reader, I have no shame in telling you that this scene sent me over the edge; I was a puddle. Judith’s memories, and what the audience has seen of Hamnet, portray him as active, always moving, smiling, talking, but the body on the table is cold and still.
Philippa Sheppard, a lecturer and undergraduate instructor in U of T’s Department of English, spoke about Hamnet at a lecture for Victoria College Alumni on December 10, 2025. She stated that grief was a dividing factor for the characters in the book and the film, particularly highlighting Agnes and William and their different expressions of grief.
William spends most of his time in London isolated from his family working on his play Hamlet. Agnes does not understand her husband’s grief or exactly how to cope with her own. She repeatedly questions why Hamnet’s name is used in William’s play, Hamlet; what does this play about a cynical Danish prince have to do with her son?
Sheppard, however, does not believe that Shakespeare expresses grief for his son in Hamlet. Instead, Hamlet is an expression of healing.
This healing is done through remembrance; Sheppard draws attention to the pivotal line in Hamlet, the plea uttered by the ghost of Hamlet’s father that haunts Hamlet throughout the play: “remember me.” William memorializes Hamnet by having the player in his production of Hamlet mirror his son — Hamnet’s blond hair, the clothing he wore, and his affinity for swordplay.
For Agnes, Hamnet is memorialized in their old house, where he died, and which she refuses to leave.
If Hamnet is about healing from grief, then it is fitting that the story ends with the perseverance of love and memory over grief — “remember me.”
Hamnet carries the message that memory has a power over grief, a power to provide love and happiness.
