Jessie Buckley took home the Oscar for Best Actress at this year’s Academy Awards for her portrayal of Anne Hathaway, William Shakespeare’s wife, in the film Hamnet.
The film, which premiered in American theaters late last year (and in Czech cinemas at the end of January), has sparked considerable interest in the extent to which the story of Shakespeare’s deceased son is based on the real circumstances of the most famous playwright’s life.
Late in the year, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, translated by Martin Hilský, was also named Book of the Year by the Czech newspaper Lidové noviny. In an extensive interview, a leading Czech Shakespeare scholar, who will celebrate his eighty-third birthday in April, sheds light on the possible truth behind Hamnet, discusses his love for Shakespeare, and the challenges of translating the aforementioned book.
The interview reveals:
- What do we know about young Hamnet Shakespeare, the protagonist of the film Hamnet?
- What was Hilský’s difficult journey to Shakespeare, whom he “found” only in his forties?
- How can Milton combine the Bible, science, and Darwin?
- Why was Milton misogynistic and anti-feminist, and when does he write about love as beautifully as Shakespeare?
- Should the casting of Shakespeare’s plays be “politically correct”?
- Could AI write Shakespeare, and what is Hilský discussing with it?
Have you seen the film Hamnet?
I have, and I’ve also read the book.
What is your opinion of the source material, Maggie O’Farrell’s novel?
I liked it. It’s written in a peculiar style, often with very short sentences, which is interesting. But it’s one of many books on this topic. In 2016, the four-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, English-language writers were given the assignment: “Write a novel or short story on the theme of a Shakespeare play, on the theme of Shakespeare.” That produced a lot of novels, and it continues.
The key is for them to be good books. It’s clear that it’s fiction, not a document. That’s important to remember. There are even books that illuminate Shakespeare in ways you haven’t seen before. That happened to me with Margaret Atwood’s The Tempest (a modern retelling of The Tempest, ed.’s note). This isn’t the case with Maggie O’Farrell, but the book is definitely nice.
And the film adaptation of Hamnet?
I greatly appreciated the wonderfully played roles in the film. The names are a little different there, and even in the book, Shakespeare’s wife isn’t Anne Hathaway, but Agnes, which is confusing for readers.
The film was particularly interesting at the end, which is slightly different from the book. The book doesn’t quote Hamlet. The film has a direct final scene of Hamlet in the Globe Theatre. I appreciated that, especially the large gestures of the hands.
People in the first row raised their hands, then there was a shot from above, and Hamlet almost touched them; Agnes stood in the first row. That was a moment that says a lot from within about Shakespeare and about what kind of relationship the audience of that time might have had with Hamlet. That seemed insightful to me.
But I strongly disagreed with something and was sorry about it,
