So would Shakespeare give a thumbs-up to the film ‘Hamnet’? A University of Utah professor’s take

The one question a reporter was most eager to ask University of Utah English professor Richard Preiss was also the one he felt most silly asking:

“Would Shakespeare approve of ‘Hamnet’ — the acclaimed new flick imagining a tragic moment from the playwright’s family that became the wellspring of his iconic work ‘Hamlet’?”

William Shakespeare died over four centuries ago. There are apparently no existing journals or letters offering glimpses into his personal feelings or opinions at a particular moment. No interpretive commentaries are attached to his works.

And while he’s credited with writing dozens of plays, he never penned an autobiography or gave a newspaper interview.

And nope, there were no Shakespeare-authorized Instagram or X accounts.

So any answer to the “Shakespeare: thumbs-up or thumbs-down” query regarding “Hamnet” is, of course, speculative.

“But it’s not a silly question. … I think Shakespeare would have watched the film with great pleasure and fascination,” said Preiss, whose research and teaching interests include Shakespeare and early modern British literature.

“I think that if you were sitting in a movie theater next to Shakespeare, his first reaction would be absolute amazement and bewilderment,” added the professor.

“First of all, he would be marveling at the technology of cinema. He would be thinking excitedly about the artistic possibilities that that medium represents.”

Shakespeare, supposes Preiss, would also be amazed that his work was being adapted, performed and talked about centuries after it was written. “According to all the evidence we have, Shakespeare really did not think very deeply about posterity. He was not really writing for the future so much as the present.”

And the “Bard of Avon,” Preiss added, would surely marvel that the work of a primarily commercial playwright who produced mass entertainment for an Elizabethan-era audience had become, 425 years later, the pinnacle of art in Western civilization.

“That alone would be a complete shock to him.”

Connecting ‘Hamnet’ with ‘Hamlet’

The film “Hamnet” — an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s historical fiction novel of the same name — presents a grief-driven connection between the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, and the subsequent creation of one of his most iconic plays, “Hamlet.”

The “Hamnet”-to-“Hamlet” connection may not be historically conclusive. In fact, the play “Hamlet,” said Preiss, is actually a reboot of an existing play that had been written about 10 years prior by an unknown playwright.

But the professor also suggests that the interpretation is appropriate for modern audiences. Both the film and the book recognize that there is likely meaning to the coincidence of Shakespeare adapting his tragic play at a particular moment when he had lost a child by almost the same name.

“So there has to be some relationship, we want to think, between those two things,” said Preiss.

“And that temptation to project meaning into doubt or into a space of emptiness is exactly what ‘Hamlet’ is about. When we confront this meaningless void, how do we tell ourselves that anything that we’re doing has any value?”

Preiss added that he’s certain that Shakespeare — if he were sitting in his local Cinemark with popcorn in hand — would be forgiving of any artistic liberties taken in “Hamnet.”

“He would have been fine with it,” said Preiss.

“I think Shakespeare would have watched the film with great pleasure and fascination — and, just as intently, he would have been watching the reactions on the faces of the audience members. That’s what would tell you his opinion of the film.

“If he sees people being moved by it, then he’s fine with it. Because that’s the purpose of art, right? Shakespeare was not a snob.”

‘Hamlet’/‘Hamnet’: A defense of the humanities — the power of art

Besides examining how one processes deep grief, “Hamnet” reminds moviegoers of the humanities’ cathartic capacity.

The film’s climactic depiction of a staging of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” demonstrates the power of art to heal and connect individuals, family members and communities.

When asked why Shakespeare’s work endures across centuries, Preiss said that the playwright understood that “absolute fidelity to historical fact” was secondary to “the deeper moral and esthetic projects of producing art.”

Shakespeare, Preiss added, almost never wrote a play based on an original plot. But he adapted them freely because he had a keen sense of what audiences wanted.

“As a result, Shakespeare produced plays and fictions that are enormously plastic and lend themselves to modern adaptation.

“There is no ‘right way’ to do them, and that’s why they’ve invited artists to continue adapting them and making them speak to contemporary moments.”

And regardless of Shakespeare’s motivations for writing “Hamlet,” the sheer lasting power of the play doubles as a defense of the humanities.

Meanwhile, the film and book of “Hamnet” follow an impulse imagining his texts emerging from personal experience.

Today, there are ongoing, national debates about the value of the humanities, particularly in higher education. It’s a moment of financial and political tension.

But popular entertainment such as “Hamnet” declares that the humanities still matter to people, said Preiss.

“It is a story about the emotional resources that people need to fall back on when they experience periods of deep grief and loss in their life,” he said. “It’s about the power of other people’s stories and other people’s experience to enlighten us and to invigorate us and to give us those emotional resources and how we learn from each other’s experiences.”

After viewing the film, Preiss concluded that “Hamnet” is ultimately about art.

Art takes many forms in the film, said Preiss, pointing to Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes. It’s suggested Agnes is something of a witch because of her deep intuition and relationship with nature. Her vaguely supernatural powers are presented as a kind of “early modern technology.”

But late in the film, Preiss observed, Agnes and her fellow audience members viewing a production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” come to understand that art — specifically theater — is itself a kind of technology. A kind of witchcraft.

Art allows Shakespeare to process his own grief and guilt — while allowing Agnes and others to do the same.

“Art is a way of creating magical spaces that transcend empirical reality and that lend meaning to our lives,” he said.

“Life is not something that just happens to us, the film is arguing. It’s a thing that we make deliberately — learning how to see patterns and connections behind things which do not exist independent of us, but we’re a part of them.”

Empowering college students with life-affirming ‘cultural literacy’

As a college professor, Preiss teaches Shakespeare to a variety of undergraduates — many pursuing varied careers, including future nurses, accountants, engineers, entrepreneurs and chemists. Maybe even a few aspiring English professors.

But regardless of their academic and career paths, Preiss argues that all will benefit — professionally and personally — from exposure to the works of Shakespeare and the humanities. They empower students with the cultural literacy “to make a life.”

Education, he added, should stretch beyond workforce training.

“It’s also the preparation of an individual human being to live a meaningful life in which they participate in a culture with their fellow human beings.

“The very act of seeing a film and wanting to talk about it is an extension of that — and also reaffirms the value of that.”