Take our Depression Test

Find a therapist to heal from grief

Hamnet exquisitely traces how each private sorrow moves through a family.

This is what great art does, it metabolizes sorrow.

In therapy, we try to do something similar, we help grieving clients externalize what has been sealed inside.

Like many readers, I first encountered Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, a time when illness and mortality felt ever-present. The novel draws on a handful of historical facts: Shakespeare and his wife Agnes (also known as Anne Hathaway) had three children; in 1596, their 11-year-old son Hamnet died, likely of the plague. A few years later, Hamlet appeared on the London stage. In that era, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were used interchangeably. O’Farrell imagines what feels psychologically inevitable: that one of the greatest works ever written about grief was born from a father’s own.

What the novel does so exquisitely is trace how each private sorrow moves through a family — reshaping marriage, identity, and meaning. It asks a question therapists know well: What happens to love in the face of unimaginable loss?

When I learned that Hamnet had been adapted for film, directed by Chloé Zhao, I was both hopeful and skeptical. The novel is ethereal, embodied, and steeped in intuition and the natural world. How could a film capture its otherworldly quality — especially Agnes, whom O’Farrell renders as instinctive and proudly mystical in her knowing?

Zhao’s gift in the film's rendering is restraint. She trusts silence. She trusts landscape. She allows grief to breathe.

Jessie Buckley’s Agnes is spellbinding without excess. She is sensual, attuned, unguarded, and fiercely maternal. Paul Mescal’s mesmerizing young William is drawn to Agnes not only as a lover but as an imaginative force. She is not simply his wife; she is the gravitational center of his creative life.

The two scenes that stayed with me most from O'Farrell's book were the ones I felt most skeptical about. And Zhao mastered both, honoring their wonder.

In the first, Hamnet’s twin sister, Judith, lies gravely ill. Their mother keeps vigil. In the middle of the night, young Hamnet — carrying his father’s instruction to be brave and protect the family — climbs into bed beside his beloved sister and hoodwinks death into taking him instead. It is a devastating portrayal of a child’s magical thinking brought to life. When reality feels unbearable, children often imagine they can bargain with fate: If I am brave enough, loving enough, selfless enough, perhaps I can undo what is happening.

The intimacy of twins, two nervous systems shaped together from the beginning, makes his act feel both impossible and believable. Zhao allows the moment to hover between the earthly and the spiritual—honoring how love blurs that boundary, honoring O'Farrell's rendering. She designs a cinematic portrait of attachment so profound that this sacrifice feels possible, believable, and downright magical.

The second pivotal scene unfolds years later at the premiere of Hamlet. Agnes, somewhat estranged from her husband and still shattered by grief, travels to London. Her husband did not tell her about the play. She learns of the premier and the play through happenstance. Learning its title feels like a betrayal. How could he use their son’s name? How could he keep all this from her?

But as she watches, something shifts. Her husband has chosen an actor who looks exactly as her son would have, were he still alive. (Fun twist: The actor who plays Hamlet in the play's premiere, 20-year-old Noah Jupe, is the real-life older brother of the actor who plays young Hamnet, Jacobi Jupe, age 12.) Agnes sees her loss translated into language, gesture, symbol, and meaning. Her private loss, in tandem with her husband's, gains a shared voice. It's decimating dual presence gives birth to an extraordinary study in how we ache for our lost loved ones. We search everywhere for them. We reach for them with outstretched longing. We can't fathom how to live without them or where to find them. Agnes' sorrow, alongside her husband's, becomes communal. In psychological terms, grief that once lived only inside the body now has form. It can be witnessed. Shared.

Take our Depression Test

Find a therapist to heal from grief

This is what great art does. It metabolizes sorrow. Never perfectly, but with such force. For the artist, it transforms raw pain into structure. For the audience, it offers recognition. We see ourselves reflected in someone else’s story, and in that reflection, we feel less alone.

In therapy, we try to do something similar. We help people give shape to what feels formless. We help grieving clients externalize what has been sealed inside. Watching Hamnet, I was struck by how powerfully Zhao's film captures this process; not as grand catharsis, but as potent recognition.

Grief isolates. Art connects.

When we sit together in the dark — in a theater, in a room, in the presence of a story — we participate in an ancient, human task: transforming loss into meaning. Hamnet reminds us that even the most private heartbreak can sometimes form a bridge back to one another.

O'Farrell, M. (2020). Hamnet. Knopf.

© Psychology Today