If there is anything that years of experiments in the genre have taught us, it’s that it’s difficult to make a good film about a great man. The entrants in this genre, from A Beautiful Mind (2001) to A Complete Unknown (2024), vary widely. Some are excellent, many more are just OK, and a few are very bad. A film about someone who is already iconic presents a problem: Can a legend be humanized without losing their legendary quality or becoming a caricature of their most famous attributes? 

Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet took on one of the greatest giants of all, William Shakespeare, and successfully reimmortalized the bard in a way he has never been seen before — through the eyes of his wife, known to history as Anne Hathaway. Though the historical Shakespeare is elusive, a few things are known for sure: He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon; he married Hathaway in the same town when he was 18 years old, and she was 26 years old (and pregnant with his child). He had three children: Susanna, Judith, and one son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 in 1596. Shakespeare wrote perhaps his most immortal play, Hamlet (the names, at the time, were interchangeable), around 1600. 

Shakespeare always gives biographers and storytellers an itch to fill in the facts. Why did he........

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