New Scientist recommends Hamnet and his perspective on our connection with nature

Film Hamnetbased on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, it rightly highlights the relationship between humans and nature. We meet Agnes (Jessie Buckley, pictured above), Hamnet’s mother and William Shakespeare’s wife, in the woods, asleep. She is said to be the daughter of a wood witch and is seen making poultices and herbs.

But understanding the connection between humans and nature is something Shakespeare was very aware of. IN Settlement” the king asks after Polonius – knowing he is dead. The prince says he is at dinner: “Not where he eats, but where he is eaten… We fatten all other creatures to feed us, and we grow fat on worms… A man may hunt the worm that ate the king, and eat the fish that fed on that worm.”

Shakespeare places people on a food chain. In intelligent, mobile HamnetO’Farrell and director Chloe Zhao recycle the dead boy’s essence into the fictional Hamlet.

Rowan Hooper
Podcast Editor, London

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