For films and books about Shakespeare’s life, there is little source material to draw on beyond the few known facts of the great writer’s parentage, hometown, marriage, children, property and death. Shakespeare biopics therefore require considerable speculation and invention on the part of writers and directors.

Director Chloe Zhao’s earthy and sensuous film Hamnet is based on the book by Maggie O’ Farrell, who also co-wrote the screenplay. It not only foregrounds Shakespeare’s personal rather than professional life but does this by focusing chiefly on the experience of his previously maligned wife, Anne Hathaway (referred to as Agnes in the film).

From the 18th century to well into the 20th, Shakespeare biographers and researchers tended to represent Hathaway in highly negative terms. She was viewed as the “shrewish” wife that Shakespeare impregnated, was forced to marry and later escaped by fleeing Stratford for the exciting world of the London theatre.

This perception of Hathaway is grounded in sexist assumptions drawn from the few known facts of their marriage. Namely, that........

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