Tea at Trianon: Hamnet (2025)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 6, 2026

Hamnet (2025)

‘Hamnet’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Hamnet - Upstate Films, Ltd.

From The Catholic Thing:

Hamnet begins with the meeting and mating of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, called Agnes in the book and film, because her father’s will refers to her by that name. O’Farrell, who came across Richard Hathaway’s will, sees “Agnes” as a kind of revelation about the way, historically, the fame of fathers, sons, and husbands has subsumed female identities.

There’s truth in that, although probably not in this case. In O’Farrell’s novel, the playwright’s surname never appears. He’s just “Will.” So, in a fair exchange for “history’s” marginalization of Anne Hathaway, Farrell and Zhao place William Shakespeare in the margins of the book and the film. And, twee as I think that is, it doesn’t diminish the movie’s power. Besides, we know perfectly well who’s wooing Agnes.

Hamnet moves slowly through their courtship: a kind of midsummer-night’s-dream of wonder in what’s probably the Forest of Arden. Agnes is an almost pagan figure, gathering medicinal plants and cavorting with her falcon. Is she a witch? Will, his father being a glover, presents her with a hawking gauntlet. He tells her the story of the ill-fated love between Orpheus and Eurydice. Will and Agnes have sexual intercourse. They marry and have three children. By and by, Will leaves for London.

At the heart of Hamnet, of course, is the boy, Hamnet, the Shakespeares’ only son, born with his twin sister, Judith, in 1585. (Their oldest, Susanna, had come two years earlier.) The real Hamnet would die of bubonic plague at age 11, and is buried (as are his father and mother) at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The loss of a child is devastating. It was even in the 16th century when infant and childhood deaths were commonplace. The film does not explicitly suggest that Will retreated to London out of grief, but it seems that way, especially because we are given no hint that this young, grieving father will dominate the literature of the English-speaking world as no one ever had, or has since.

Perhaps his success, his fortune, and his work don’t justify “abandonment.” But, perhaps, there was no abandonment.

After all, Agnes was no poor child. When they married, Will was 18, and she was 26. We don’t know when Shakespeare left Warwickshire for London, but it was certainly after the births of the twins and may have been after Hamnet’s death. Anne would then have been in her early to mid 30s. (Read more.)