Hamnet sees bravery as a universal quality

Bravery is considered a virtue. I don’t think it’s unique to a single culture or geographic region of the world; it’s a universal value that has existed across time. What is also universal is who is expected or compelled by others to be brave and who is often overlooked for having this quality. I have been stuck on this notion of bravery since watching Hamnet, a movie based on William (Will) Shakespeare’s life and the fuel believed to have driven the writing of his famous play, Hamlet.

Set in a small, rustic community in sixteenth century England, Hamnet opens with Will (Paul Mescal), a scholar and aspiring writer, tutoring three young lads in Latin. He is distracted by a woman (Agnes) exiting the woods and heading toward a nearby barn, carrying a hawk on her gloved arm. Telling the boys to keep reading, he abruptly leaves to greet her and the banter between the two indicates their attraction for each other.

Initially shown sleeping in the woods, Agnes (Jessie Buckley) presents as an odd duck. But as the theorist Max Weber asserts, you can’t understand someone without engaging them. And for the next two hours, director Chloé Zhao trains the camera on Agnes. We learn that Agnes’s mother taught her to appreciate nature and rely on its forests, waters, natural yields, and rhythms to take care of her. Deeply invested in this, Agnes takes off in the middle of the night to give birth to her child, Jessie, alone in the woods. When her mother-in-law physically restrains her to keep her from doing the same with a later pregnancy, she curses her, vows to never forgive her, and struggles emotionally to give birth to her twins, Judith and Hamnet, by traditional means.

The child of an abusive father, Will exhibits frustration and sadness soon after he and Agnes start their family and expresses doubts about his ability to be a good father. Concerned, Agnes tells her brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) that she will send Will to London to do the work he loves because it is “what he needs.” With Will now gone for months at a time, Agnes raises their three children on her own, which takes its toll. Soon after the excitement of his return home, he suddenly appears in the kitchen with his bag packed and explaining to Agnes yet again that “people are waiting for him in London.” Agnes slowly ceases peeling the shells off the basket of boiled eggs on the table to stand up and hit him. Embracing her and staring into her eyes, Will asks, “What do you see?” She replies, “Nothing, nothing at all.” And as if resigning herself to the reality of her life, she tells him to go.

Period pieces centering families rarely view parenting as taxing in any way (Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), Belle (2013), Downton Abbey). This is a bias in a lot of these films, as they typically portray people of means with nannies and servants to hand off children and offload household duties when the parents don’t want to be bothered. In terms of contemporary releases that parallel Shakespeare's family structure, Tully, the 2018 film starring Charlize Theron as a stay-at-home mom, best aligns with the tone and main themes in Hamnet.

In Tully, Theron’s character becomes exhausted caring for her infant at night and hires a nanny. Screenrant writes that the film gives parents permission to ask for help when feeling overwhelmed. Agnes has the option for support from her and Will’s family but rejects it in part because of her lingering resentment about the forced indoor birthing of her twins and the friction between Will and his father. Four hundred years later, these types of family dynamics are still at play in many parents’ options for help.

In Hamnet, Will’s absence also takes a toll on his young son (Jacobi Jupe), who could sense when his father was preparing to leave. After a fun family outing, Hamnet approaches Will and asks if he is leaving again soon. Will confirms this is the case and picks up his roughly nine-year-old son, twirls him around and repeatedly tells him that he needs him to be the man of the house, stay away from his grandfather, and be brave. “You can be brave, right?” Hamnet assures his dad that he can. But as Hamnet tries to keep his promise to his father, tragedy strikes the family during Will’s absence, and Agnes blames Will for never being there.

It is interesting that a film about Shakespeare gives significantly more face time and attention to his wife, Agnes than to the playwright himself. Could it be that Hamnet is less about Shakespeare’s motivation for crafting the requiem for his lost son and more about shining a light on Agnes’s role in freeing him to do what he loved? If the story is understood in this way, then “bravery” requires viewing through a more expanded lens. 

Agnes going into the dark woods alone to birth her child took courage and strong will. Caring for the daily needs of her young children, planning meals, and addressing their ailments required a mustering of mental and physical energy that would leave most people too exhausted to care for themselves. Despite being told by her family that it is too late to do anything for her child, for instance, Agnes tirelessly pushes the soups and fluids, dabs their forehead with cool towels, talks to them, and holds them close. I struggle to think of any load that is heavier or labor that is more intense and heart-wrenching.

Yes, the prevailing thought is that men are brave, and boys are expected to be. Consider if Will’s highly successful and profitable plays could have been written without the tenacity of his wife, Agnes, and the unpaid work she performed at home. Clearly Zhao believed that bravery isn’t a notion reserved for men and boys only, but a quality that appears in many different forms and should be recognized in others as well.