To Win or Not to Win: Adelphi's Shakespeare Expert Reviews the Oscar-Nominated Film "Hamnet"

When the 98th Academy Awards air on Sunday, March 15, among the Oscar categories to watch are the eight nominations earned by the movie adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling 2021 novel, Hamnet.

Adelphi’s resident Shakespeare expert, Louise Geddes,

Louise Geddes, PhD, an expert on Shakespearean drama and performance, teaches English in the College of Arts and Sciences.

PhD, associate dean for student success strategic initiatives, who teaches English in the College of Arts and Sciences, notes that this 2025 adaptation of the novel spins a yarn of what little is known about William Shakespeare’s family life and focuses on his marriage to Anne/Agnes Hathaway. It also suggests that his tragedy Hamlet was inspired by the death of their real son, Hamnet, in 1596.

According to Dr. Geddes, “The screenplay is created from a fascination with all that isn’t known about Shakespeare’s life—and this has prompted numerous movies and books before this.” Spoilers ahead.

Adelphi’s Shakespeare Expert Weighs In

Dr. Geddes, whose research interests include Shakespeare in performance and the ways his work is interpreted in modern life, shares what she believes has earned Hamnet the Oscar accolades.

Q: What is known about Anne Hathaway?

A: We know that Anne was older than Shakespeare and that she was likely pregnant when they married. She had her garden and she was known for herbal remedies. I think O’Farrell’s book Hamnet comes from a response to the casual and institutional sexism in the idea that if she was older and pregnant, he must have been forced into it—that he probably didn’t like her and went to London to escape her.

Q: What do we know about her life with Shakespeare?

A: The book addresses that and the fact that Stratford might have felt too small for him. We do know he ended up going back to Anne and living out his retirement with her. The book, more than the movie, really digs into what was left behind. To me, the book is a portrait of a marriage from a woman’s perspective. The husband wanted to find his path elsewhere, but they were living a small-town life. She had her children; she made sacrifices for him to have his life. I think the book really beautifully engages in this idea and does a lot to undo the narrative that he must have hated his wife.

Hamnet the Film Versus Hamnet the Book

Q: What do you think the buzz about the movie stems from?

A: That it’s the story that inspired Hamlet. But it shifts the focus away from the wife onto Shakespeare and why he wrote the play. I really enjoyed it, but it’s different from the book where he’s only known as “the Latin tutor” and “the husband.” Agnes doesn’t really understand that he’s a successful playwright.

In the book, when she goes to London and realizes that he’s incredibly famous, it’s such a shock to her, not because of the grief for their son, but because she’s been married to this man for so long, and there’s this whole part of his life that she doesn’t know. The book works really hard to tell their story. The movie does the exact opposite. It makes it about Shakespeare, and Hamlet is the product. It makes the suffering of losing Hamnet worthwhile because the art happens. That’s a very different narrative.

Q: And yet the director is a woman.

A: Yes. Honestly, I was a little disappointed that it focused so much on Shakespeare, because Agnes is such a rich character in the book. The movie shows us moments of Shakespeare crying alone over the death of his son. The book doesn’t care whether or not he’s crying. The book cares about what he’s doing for his family, for his marriage and for her. The movie lets him off the hook a little bit for not taking care of his marriage. It says he’s feeling his grief in his own way and his wife may need to understand that. It asks us to ask more of her.

I know many women, as wives and mothers, often put our feelings aside to take care of others, and the book says it doesn’t have to be that way. So I was a little surprised that a woman would take that perspective.

The Study of Shakespeare Today at Adelphi

Q: As an expert on Shakespeare, what did you enjoy most about the movie?

A: Visually, it was absolutely stunning. The depiction of the Globe Playhouse was gorgeous and the way they presented Hamlet was really beautiful. And there were these very striking moments, like after the death of their child where Agnes is pushing Shakespeare away. He just grabs her and holds her. I think it really conveys the depth of their love for one another and of their loss. I do think it did a lovely job of presenting Shakespeare the man.

But the movie did something the book didn’t want to do. While the book didn’t want to tell Shakespeare’s story, the movie wanted to tell both of their stories. I don’t think that was necessarily a bad thing. It’s also natural, because I don’t think you’re going to sell a movie worldwide about a woman most people have never heard of and who is Shakespeare-adjacent. It made for a really powerful movie.

Q: Why is there a fascination with what motivated William Shakespeare?

A: I think we all like the idea of a romantic genius.

Shakespeare continues to be popular because we adapt and modernize him constantly. When I teach Shakespeare in my English classes students always ask, “But what is it about?” I tell them it’s about anything you want it to be. It frustrates them, but I’ve been teaching for a while, and you see different generations of students respond very differently to the plays.

Hamlet, to a lot of people, isn’t a romantic hero. I’ve had students who thought he was a brat. One of the reasons we love Shakespeare is that we can use him to talk about contemporary issues. But there’s also this real desire from so many people who ask: What did he want me to get from it? The answer is probably that he didn’t care. He wanted to sell tickets.

But it’s a lot of fun to teach that way, to loosen up from the idea that there is a correct way of reading Shakespeare.

There’s a famous line from Hamlet when he’s talking to the actors, and he says, “to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” That’s arguably what all of Shakespeare’s plays do: They reflect back at us what we want to see in that particular moment.

We’re constantly reinventing him, and we probably always will.