By Beatrice Scudeler, Public Discourse.
That a story that demands we define ourselves by our duties of care to each other—not by individual success—should resonate with so many is perhaps a sign that the cultural tide is quietly turning. It’s time to remember that, if our interdependence makes us vulnerable, it’s also what gives us a sense of purpose.
For decades, popular culture has been pushing the idea that each of us, individually, has the right to shape his or her identity. Chloé Zhao’s new film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel Hamnet tells a different story.
O’Farrell’s Hamnet is an imaginative retelling of William Shakespeare’s family life. That is, it’s not really about him, but about his family: his parents and siblings, his wife Anne (Agnes, as she is called in the novel), and his three children: Susanna, Judith, and the titular Hamnet, who dies at only eleven.
In the novel, Shakespeare’s name is not mentioned once. He’s a shadowy character, always travelling between Stratford-upon-Avon and London. He is “father,” “husband,” “son,” “brother,” but never “the Bard.” His artistic success is alluded to, but it’s not in focus.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that, just a few years ago, this story would have failed to capture the zeitgeist in the way that it has managed to do. We’ve been interpreting and reinterpreting Shakespeare’s life and works through the lens of our contemporary sensibilities ever since his death. Poets of the Romantic Era saw reflected in him their own interest in human psychology. During World War II, Laurence Olivier’s Henry V was an explicit attempt at British patriotism in bleak times. Then we get to 1998, with the multi-award-winning Shakespeare in Love, possibly the most ’90s movie to have ever been made: hyperindividualistic, obsessed with self-expression, and excessively reverential toward creative genius. The plot—entirely made up for the film—rests on the premise that the great Bard is short on inspiration, and only an adulterous affair with a beautiful, young, and of course, wealthy woman will fix his writer’s block. Romantic attachment in Shakespeare in Love, despite its title, is ultimately instrumental to creative output.