'Hamnet' Picks Up Prime Holiday Release Date

History is constantly changing; as new details and discoveries come to light, the past (which half the time isn't even the past) takes on a new angle. Even subjects people have studied for centuries, like the life and times of William Shakespeare, can suddenly be turned on their head when a historian puts two and two together. Sometimes those histories don't even need to be entirely accurate — Shakespeare knew that, and you can read Richard III and then compare it to the real history recently discovered if you want to know what happened next. Now, the tables are being turned as a modern author rewrites Shakespeare's past to reflect new knowledge in Hamnet.

That author, Maggie O'Farrell, released Hamnet in 2020. Told through the eyes of Shakespeare's wife, Agnes Hathaway, William's success as a playwright takes him to London more and more often, and she winds up raising their three children alone. The novel is a fictionalization of their real-life family tragedy, when Hamlette Sadler Shakespeare, known to the family as Hamnet, passed away at 11 years old. (It is estimated that up to one-third of all children born in the U.K. in the late 1500s died by age 10.) Born in 1585 as a fraternal twin with his sister, Judith Shakespeare, O'Farrell turns his untimely death into a heart-wrenching tale of parental grief that inspired Hamlet.

Since the Royal Shakespeare Company adapted the work to reopen in 2023, the story has garnered more attention than ever. It wasn't long before director Chloe Zhao announced she had selected Hamnet to be her next feature film project, using the stage show as a basis for the film script.