The folly of Hamnet |
Democracy has not been kind to William Shakespeare. His works may be read and performed more widely than ever, but readers and audiences understand less and less of what they see. Egalitarianism encourages narcissism, and narcissism interprets all art as autobiography.
Shakespeare could only write about his own life, and if, in fact, he wrote about royal courts and noblemen, then Shakespeare must not have been Shakespeare, the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon. He must have been Edward de Vere, the earl of Oxford, or somebody like that. He could not have possessed the intelligence and imagination to transcend his personal identity, for none of us can do that. It would be superhuman.
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That’s one foolish contention arising from the idea that writing must always be memoir. “Oxfordians” are admittedly detested by mainstream scholars. There are more sophisticated versions of the same self-centric fallacy, however. One of them is up for eight Academy Awards next month.
Hamnet is a film adapted from a novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who collaborated with director Chloé Zhao on the screenplay. Its premise is that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet to channel his grief over the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Fittingly, O’Farrell traces her own interest in Hamnet’s story to her experience as someone who’d suffered a serious........