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# Movie and Book Review: Hamnet
- URL: https://there-might-be-cupcakes-podcast.ghost.io/movie-and-book-review-hamnet/
- Published: 2026-03-12T17:54:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-09T17:30:48.000Z
- Author: Carla Pettigrew
- Tags: reviews, Maggie O'Farrell, history, William Shakespeare, Letterboxd, audiobooks

> Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicenter, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns.

\[[Letterboxd review](https://boxd.it/dtBAjx)\] Finishing the audiobook now—it’s narrated by Jessie Buckley herself (who plays Agnes Shakespeare)—and it’s transcendent. You can [snag it from libro.fm](https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=25361&awinaffid=1849864&ued=https%3A%2F%2Flibro.fm%2Fswitch) through my podcast’s link. I will now protect Jessie Buckley at any cost. ([Hamnet at Bookshop.org)](https://bookshop.org/a/6560/9781984898876)

Hamlet is my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays. So I am in love with its backstory. This movie is lush in its appearance and its presentation. Gorgeous and full and so redolent and resonant and *rich* that you can smell it, it fills all of your senses with its trees and flowers and herbs and dirt and wood and leather and and and.

> I am dead. Thou livest…draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.  
> —Hamlet, V,ii

My little brother died when I was nine and he was seven. Judith’s experience was extremely well presented and included. I am so grateful to the author and the director for not having her be a Crying Child Trope \[tm\], a cardboard historical insert. She was presented in her silence, in her questions, in her anger, in her full pain. I felt heard and seen. I find I can’t be more articulate about this than that.

the sound of the deceased Hamnet to his mother: 

> the high whine of nothing, like a church bell after it has stopped ringing

Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare were baptized 2 February, 1585 at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/f5/6df583d7-3da2-455c-b104-e0c5ab8c796a/content/images/2026/03/Parish_Register_of_Holy_Trinity_Church-_Stratford-upon-Avon.png)

Hamnet Shakespeare died 11 August 1596, aged 11, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and was buried at the same church.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/f5/6df583d7-3da2-455c-b104-e0c5ab8c796a/content/images/2026/03/HamnetDeath.jpeg)

Judith died 9 February 1662, at the age of 77, and was buried at the same church. She outlived all three of her children: Shakespeare (6 months), Richard (21), and Thomas (19).