{"id":409541,"date":"2026-01-13T05:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T05:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/409541\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T05:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T05:05:08","slug":"jessie-buckley-and-paul-mescal-shine-in-adaptation-of-maggie-ofarrells-novel-about-william-shakespeare-and-anne-hathaway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/409541\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal shine in adaptation of Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel about William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FILM <br \/>Hamnet \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<br \/>(M) 126 minutes<\/p>\n<p>Germaine Greer was the first writer to set about rehabilitating the reputation of Shakespeare\u2019s wife, Anne Hathaway.<\/p>\n<p>Must-see movies, interviews and all the latest from the world of film delivered to your inbox. Sign up for our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p5kznc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Screening Room<\/a> newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>Her speculative biography, Shakespeare\u2019s Wife (2007), was an eloquently forthright feminist look at a woman who had been dismissed by several other scholars as an illiterate opportunist who forced the young playwright into a loveless marriage through pregnancy.<\/p>\n<p>Hathaway\u2019s detractors had let their imaginations loose on a meagre supply of known facts. So had Greer. But she backed up her interpretation with a hefty amount of research into Elizabethan history and custom. Hathaway\u2019s social status, Greer wrote, suggested that not only could she read and write, she might have been considered more eligible than Shakespeare himself.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jessie Buckley (left) and Paul Mescal in Hamnet.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5d70d247e81e0a3cf5ffdf29a53006f161e5a608.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Jessie Buckley (left) and Paul Mescal in Hamnet.<\/p>\n<p>Then in 2020, Irish novelist Maggie O\u2019Farrell offered up an even more audacious portrait of Hathaway in Hamnet, her lyrically heartfelt treatment of Shakespeare\u2019s most personal tragedy \u2013 the death of Hamnet, his 11-year-old son, from the plague.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Farrell co-wrote the script for this adaptation \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/culture\/movies\/rose-byrne-golden-globes-winners-2026-oscar-win-best-actress-20260112-p5ntfc.html\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">which has just won a Golden Globe<\/a> \u2013 with the film\u2019s director, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao (Nomadland), and with a few changes, it maintains the novel\u2019s shape, mood and themes. O\u2019Farrell\u2019s Anne \u2013 or Agnes, as she\u2019s called \u2013 is a healer, more at home with the plants and animals of the forest than she is in the house where she lives with her father and straitlaced stepmother.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Buckley (centre) is a revelation in Hamnet, and won the Golden Globe for best female actor in a drama.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/e6d57a10931b92926005e2fb5652c2b5a5ae2391.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Buckley (centre) is a revelation in Hamnet, and won the Golden Globe for best female actor in a drama.Credit: AP<\/p>\n<p>The book conjures a setting in intimate contact with the natural world and the film\u2019s design vividly evokes its ambience. These families may have grand houses by Stratford standards but their nearness to the surrounding woodlands hints at the presence of something untamed and unpredictable. That threat is borne out when the plague comes to town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILM Hamnet \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605(M) 126 minutes Germaine Greer was the first writer to set about rehabilitating the reputation of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-409541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}