Behind The Blockbuster: Writing Lessons from Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

 Lyrical, intimate, and quietly cinematic—Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell proves that spectacle isn’t the only path to screen-worthy storytelling. In this Behind the Blockbuster episode, we explore how O’Farrell transforms a deeply interior, grief-centered narrative into something with powerful visual and emotional translation. Through nonlinear structure, close perspective, and sensory-rich detail, she builds a story where absence becomes the driving force—and where meaning lives in what’s felt as much as what’s seen. Her restraint, recurring motifs, and emotional precision create a kind of narrative gravity that invites adaptation without losing its soul. Join us as we break down how Hamnet bridges the gap between literary subtlety and cinematic impact—and what writers can learn from O’Farrell’s control of voice, emotional pacing, and thematic depth to craft stories that feel both intimate and unforgettable. 

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Stories That Change Us and our exciting new miniseries behind the Blockbuster, where we break down the novels behind today's biggest film releases and uncover the storytelling craft that made them impossible to ignore. We analyze the structure, characters and high impact choices that turn books into box office hits. Join Laurel, Melissa, Micah, and Kat as we seek to understand what makes a story not just good but cinematic. This is where the real work begins. In 16th century England, a young Latin tutor named William Shakespeare falls in love with Agnes Hathaway. A woman seen by her community as intuitive and almost other worldly. Together they build a family in Stratford raising three children, including twins, Hamnet and Judith. But their lives are shaped by absence. William spends long stretches in London, building his career in the theater, while Agnes remains at home holding the family together. Their love endures across distance but it is strained by time, ambition, and silence. Then the black plague arrives when Judith falls sick. Hamnet bravely steps between them, daring death to take him instead, unknowing how it will wreck their home when death decides to listen. Grief doesn't unite the family. It fractures them. Agnes and William retreat into separate worlds of mourning, unable to reach each other across the silence their son leaves behind. Years later in London, William begins to write a play: hamlet. In shaping the story of a grieving son and a haunted father, Will and Agnes find a way to face what they have lost. The act of creation becomes catharsis, a bridge back to healing, to memory, and to each other. Hamnet is a story about love, about the isolating force of grief, and about how art can transform pain into something that endures.

Kat Lewis 2:19

Welcome to the Stories That Change Us, a podcast where four authors discuss great fiction so that we can write great fiction ourselves. My name is Kat Lewis and I will be your host for the episode today, and I am so excited because we've recently gotten on this train of reading a book that has a either well done or controversial movie adaptation, and we've got a treat for you today in that we're discussing Hamnet. No, you're not mispronouncing it. No, you didn't blink and you thought you missed the train. Hamlet is almost a historical retelling of the backstory of the Shakespearean play Hamlet. And we're gonna dive into both sides. We read the book, we read the play, we've watched the movie. We are geared up and ready for you. But first, let me introduce my friends who are joining us today.

Laurel Thomas 3:13

My name is Laurel Thomas and I write fantasy.

Kat Lewis 3:17

My name is Melissa Grace and I write inspirational fiction for the general market.

Micah Leydorf 3:23

I'm Micah Leydorf and I write speculative Christian fiction and Bible studies.

Kat Lewis 3:28

And my name is Kat Lewis and I write romantic thrillers and screenplays, which is quite viable and relevant for the discussion today. A few quick facts for you guys about the novel Hamnet, and Hamlet. Fun fact regarding the names, it's actually the same name. I guess in old English. Hamnet and Hamlet translate to mean the same thing. So if you watch the film adaptation and you see her kind of like pause and tremble when she sees the name of the play at the very, very end as she's walking in and she kind of has this visceral reaction. It's not that he renamed the character, he literally gave the character his son's name, right? Which is, it's very sweet, very powerful. But we are very familiar with Shakespeare on this channel. If you don't know Shakespeare, you've either read Shakespeare, there's been a book adaptation, a retelling of Shakespeare. Shakespeare's everywhere. And funnily enough, I just learned recently that the Lion King is actually based off of the story of Hamlet. Did anybody else know this or am I today years old realizing that Lion King and Hamlet are the same story?

Melissa Grace 4:35

I see it now. Didn't see it before it.

Micah Leydorf 4:37

I think I've heard that, but if you would've asked me, I would not have told you that.

Kat Lewis 4:41

Okay. Okay. So Shakespeare has a very clear trajectory of how he wrote his stories. His early stories are histories and comedies, and then his son dies and he delves into the tragedies that he is well known for. And then I guess at the end of his career, he thought, let's lighten this load a little bit. And so he rounds things out with my sources say like romantic comedies. Micah and I both think that the Tempest does not qualify as a comedy but far be it from us to question the experts, right? As far as Hamnet goes, Hamnet was released in 2020 by author Maggie O'Farrell, and it's been well received between now and then, 2 million copies sold, translated in 40 languages. The film was made for$35 million and I think has grossed at a hundred million dollars global sales worldwide. So from a screenwriting and film producing perspective, a very successful film, but as readers of the book, the play and watchers of the movie, we do have some strong opinions about the way that they shaped the story. But first ladies, let's discuss what our favorite quote of the novel is. Let's talk about a quote that stands out as a great example of tension, character development, or the author's voice.

Micah Leydorf 5:59

I'll go ahead and start. My favorite quote is whenever Shakespeare's brother-in-law is speaking to the Shakespeare character, and he's asking why on earth, his wife married him. And this is the quote, it says, the husband standing straight as a reed now arms folded, lips pressed together. What did she say? That you had more hidden away inside of you than anyone else she had ever met. So what I liked about that quote was, one thing is the author refers to Shakespeare as the husband in the book. The author never refers to Shakespeare, will William, she never uses his name. And for an author to be so audacious as to try to write backstory for Shakespeare, it's almost sacred ground to try to elaborate on the greatest English author in history. So I just love the humility that she refers to him as the husband that she's not too flippant with him. And then in the book, his wife is shown to have kind of a sixth sense and so she can tell about people from pressing the flesh between their thumb and forefinger. So that's what the brother-in-law's referring to is what she saw when she pressed the flesh, that he had more hidden away inside of him than anyone else she'd ever known. So that was, again, the theme stated of the book is that somehow his wife like saw this hidden treasure in him and knew it and pulled it out of him.

Kat Lewis 7:25

I agree that very bold of her to take on a character that has been so conceptualized, you know, from readers and fans and even producers across time. But this is more thoughtful and tender and searing and, it feels like a very raw and honest retelling of what life, not only what life was back then, but how does a creative who who lives in his head, how does he interact with the real world? I think that the movie did a great job of showing that, and this quote is a great reflection of. All the deep spaces within him.

Micah Leydorf 7:57

So this might be a little bit controversial, and I think this is the first time on our podcast that we actually have watched a movie adaptation together intentionally before we got together and all discussed. But, but I actually, having just watched the movie with all you guys. I think the movie's actually better than the book.

Laurel Thomas 8:15

No,

Micah Leydorf 8:18

one thing I was disappointed in in the book is you have this wordsmith, you have this man who is like so brilliant and he has spoken so eloquently that his exact language is still repeated 500 years later. It's still in our vernacular. We still say these things from Shakespeare, like, the lady does protest too much, or, you know, to be or not to be. And all these quotes that we just hear and everybody knows, even if they don't know they come from Hamlet and she doesn't cite a single word of that in the entire, only thing I heard was the very last two words of the entire novel. Remember me. I think nothing else of Shakespeare's in there.

Laurel Thomas 8:58

If you listen, if you listen on audio, she mimics the tone in the story.

Kat Lewis 9:05

I agree. I actually, Laura and I were talking about how the audio book experience of the novel is actually the Supreme experience. Like I would say don't read the book, go straight to audiobook because you don't get the appreciation of,

Micah Leydorf 9:19

see Here, I thought the

Kat Lewis 9:19

lyrical nature of Phenomen,

Micah Leydorf 9:21

having read it and then read the source material and watch the movie adaptation. I thought I was like prepared, but apparently I had to listen to the audio book too.

Laurel Thomas 9:28

You hear the tone, you hear the, the lyricism and it's just unmatched.

Melissa Grace 9:36

I think that is the highest compliment that you can give a writer is that you want to listen to their words. That they're so well put together that they hit your ear in such a good way.

Kat Lewis 9:48

And I do think Maggie was intentional about translating that Shakespearean rhythm into a format that a modern audience is not intimidated by and they can actually soak in and appreciate. Because again, I was listening to the audiobook version of Hamlet, and can I tell you, I listened to scene about three times just to retrain my mind of how they're speaking and the language that they're using and how they're even framing their sentences. And then at that point, I can move on with the story and actually understand it. But I can see how do you take one of the greatest literary minds ever, right? Who lived in a different time. But if you're listening to it, you fall in love with the the nature of the tone and the pacing. It's wonderful.

Melissa Grace 10:31

I loved it. Just reading it.

Micah Leydorf 10:32

I was just disappointed because again, none of the dialogue. Actually the movie really actually shows that, again, like there's hardly any dialogue in the movie.

Melissa Grace 10:41

My favorite quote, one of the reasons I love it is because it is an example of very deep POV and it's Mary, Shakespeare's mother, Agnes's mother-in-law when Judith is sick, Agnes is gripping the child's limp fingers. Mary sees as if she's trying to tether her to life. She would keep her here, haul her back by will alone if she could. She has been the mother on the palate too many times. I love that for so many reasons. It's motherhood in a few short words and it's tells us so much about Mary, who in the book is just not a soft person. So this reveals that even this hard person has a mother heart and I don't know who I learned it from, but I just remember somebody saying, don't miss, don't waste a word. Every word should multitask. And this multitask because it reveals Mary, it reveals her lens, how she is looking at this scene in front of her. And it also shows the reader life was like in the 16th century, that mothers say goodbye to their children a lot on sick beds. And you know that

Kat Lewis 12:02

I think we needed that perspective from Mary because up until that point, Mary's a very unlikeable character. She is rigid, she has very strong feelings about Agnes marrying. I mean extremist version of motherhood where we are screaming over the body of our child, juxtaposed by Mary, like rigid, quiet in the corner, right? Taking another blow to the heart, right? Talk about a quote that reveals character. I think that that's a, that's a really excellent example.

Micah Leydorf 12:29

How about you, Laurel? What was your quote?

Laurel Thomas 12:31

Well, just to add to that, I think the whole childbirth when Hamnet and Judith were being born was such a beautiful, character arc for the relationship between Mary and Agnes.

Kat Lewis 12:45

I agree.

Laurel Thomas 12:46

Because it came full circle and Agnes was like, I'm gonna die., And she's babbling. She's incoherent. And Mary is the one who is keeping her present and saying, you're not gonna die. You're gonna live. And that translated as well in the movie as it did in the book. I thought

Kat Lewis 13:05

they did that

Laurel Thomas 13:05

excellently. Yes, they really did.

Kat Lewis 13:07

Both childbirth scenes were visceral. Listen, pass me the epidural. I don't even care. No bathtub childbirths for me. But, great quote. Great quote, Melissa. But for your quote, Laurel.

Laurel Thomas 13:18

Well, I loved, of course this was the coolest thing about Agnes she senses things. And of course in those days, they feel like that's somehow related to witchcraft. But to me that's such a beautiful heart of the creative. And she's always Will's champion except for that time, when they're both just eviscerated by grief. But she knows that she's pregnant and she's talking about Susanna and she says there is nothing more exquisite to her than her child. But then she realizes she's pregnant and that she's gonna have a child at the end of summer. But all around this scene, she says there's a smell and she knows that"This rotten smell means something. It is a sign of something amiss. Something out of kilter in her house, like black mold that creeps out of the plaster in winter", and it's Will, it's his depression. And she feels that. And she's the one who says, you need to go to London. She goes to her brother and says, find a way. Find a way he'll die here. And I love the beauty of that compassion that would come instinctively through smell, through a sensory,

Micah Leydorf 14:39

I love the author vehicle of finding a way to communicate it by making it a smell, how to communicate how a person's interior life is. That she senses something's wrong with her husband and how to communicate that to the reader. That brings up a interesting point and a difference between the book and the adaptation, and I'll ask if you guys picked up on this, whenever she was communicating to her brother that Will needed to go to London, she, in the movie was saying, this life is too small. He needs to be where like the people are and where things are happening and this such small life will crush him. But I felt like that was just so kind of shallow and modern compared to what was represented in the book. Was his father?

Laurel Thomas 15:23

Yes.

Micah Leydorf 15:23

The oppression and the abuse of his fa he couldn't grow because his father was like. Pushing him down and crushing him, and that kind of just was just barely scraped by in the movie.

Kat Lewis 15:34

I do think that the movie suffered from a lack of a clear antagonist, at least up until the midpoint, because in the novel his father is a suffocating presence. His father is somebody that is inescapable. And

Micah Leydorf 15:48

and violent

Kat Lewis 15:49

presence. And violent, yeah.

Micah Leydorf 15:50

Even you just kind of skated by when he warned his son, stay away from your grandfather. Exactly. Like he won't hit your sister, but he will hit you. And they just kind of skated by that, like, oh, oh, I just mentioned it

Melissa Grace 16:00

They both chose someone in their partner, both Shakespeare and Agnes, who was the opposite of their parent. And the thumb forefinger thing, to me that is such an incredible visual that the author gave us for just like a focal point for agnes's ability or whatever. But when she saw so much in him, it was the opposite of what yes, his father saw

Micah Leydorf 16:27

was he saw

Melissa Grace 16:27

him as he looked at him.

Micah Leydorf 16:28

You can't be a glove

Melissa Grace 16:29

maker. He saw him.

Micah Leydorf 16:30

Therefore, you have no value in this world.

Melissa Grace 16:31

You have no value at all to me. And the same with her stepmother, just never loving her for who she was and seeing that will loved her for who she was,

Micah Leydorf 16:42

which, you know, was this healer and had these, this gifting, these natural giftings.

Melissa Grace 16:46

And one of the things that I loved so much about the book is that I did feel like there was a connection between her. Her thumb forth and finger thing and see that he loved her for who she was, and something to the effect of she had said, if I ever find that, I will not let go of it. And I don't know that they communicated that in the movie

Laurel Thomas 17:12

The book was so nuanced. Could see the nuances of the dad and you could see the long term abuse. You could see how the mother just ducked her head and how everyone just basically couldn't do anything about it in that culture. But the nuances of Agnes, the nuances of Will, they came across in the book so beautifully. It was leisurely.

Kat Lewis 17:35

As somebody who doesn't necessarily read dramas like this, um, I did think the book was slow, and I did think the movie was slow, but I will tell you the payoffs are well worth it. I cried quite hard in this book. I was trying not to have these cathartic sobs, you know, The relationship between Will and Agnes is such a beautiful picture of how you can bless the creatives in your life because the creatives in your life are stumbling around like Will, right? We have these other voices and these other things, and you see it as green, but we see it as a kaleidoscope of other colors. And Agnes just shows you like just the quiet, calm, that you can just speak to them and draw them out of their head in moments when they're spiraling. The moment in the movie where he's drunk and it's late at night and he can't even communicate to her what's going on inside of him. As a creative, I felt very seen, but it also gave me a mirror to hold up to myself to say, okay, Kat, there are moments when people can't talk to you and you have to pull yourself out of that deeply creative space. But that kind of goes along with the quote that I love, which is, this is coming from Agnes's point of view and it's about Will. And she says,"She knew there was more of it than she could grasp, that it was bigger than both of them. A sense too that something was tethering him, holding him back. There was a tie somewhere, a bond that needed to be loosened or broken before he could fully inhabit this landscape. Before he could take command". I don't know that I need to explain that for creatives, that sometimes we feel like there's something holding us back from this landscape that we can fully see and almost taste. The creative process is actually being able to grasp that. It also was the curse of the relationship. His constant pursuit of this landscape and sometimes leaving his family behind.

Micah Leydorf 19:24

I feel like there's not enough. It's so funny as creatives that there's not enough works about creatives, like you said about the creative process.

Laurel Thomas 19:33

And I felt that was true in the book. The opening image is so cool, four or five, six pages of Hamnet walking down the stairs into a house that was empty.

Kat Lewis 19:47

So chilling. Okay. Okay. Let's move into literary elements, because I think that you're, I think that you're touching base on something that I just admire her so deeply for. But what literary elements were executed well or in a fresh way in this novel, and how did that execution influence the plot? Yeah. So Laurel,, what are you talking about?

Laurel Thomas 20:06

Well, definitely, I mean, the opening image, you wanna call it an image because it's pages long, but it's so poignant and almost to the end of the steps, he jumps like a little boy would. Yes. And lands on his knees. it's poignant. It's thematic. It's just gorgeous. But it's not what you would expect in an opener that is supposed to grab you

Kat Lewis 20:29

Exactly. She kind of did what I feel like they did in the musical Hamilton, where we all know that Aaron Burr shoots Alexander Hamilton. We all know this. And so the very opening song is creating this question of how did we get here? And I think that that opening sequence it grabs you because you can relate to this little boy wandering, this empty house. It's chilling because it is foreshadowing. And it also hooks you with this question of how did we get here? And I think as far as literary elements goes, she nails several things in that opening sequence that you're talking about.

Melissa Grace 21:04

And she just endears this little boy to us. But it's just puts on him this mark of authenticity that makes him a more real person.

Kat Lewis 21:17

Very enforced. I think sometimes as authors, we choose the most complex thing. How do we make these characters love this little boy? Well, he should be kidnapped on the road to school.

Micah Leydorf 21:28

Well, there's a common device that we use called Save the Cat, where it's like you have your character do some small thing and it just clues the reader into, oh, this is a good guy, or it's a bad guy.. But with Hamnet. It's, like you get caught up in the action of he is trying desperately to find someone to help his sick sister, to

Melissa Grace 21:47

save his sister.

Micah Leydorf 21:48

Like you say, it doesn't feel forced. It's not like, oh, they just threw in a save the cat. It's just like, but of course you're immediately rooting for this little boy who loves his sister.

Melissa Grace 21:55

How much more significant is our grief for this mother and for this little boy when we see him in this light of being willing to go be brave and die. That's how it was in his head. And she could have written it where he was the one who got the flea bite

Kat Lewis 22:16

she did with such an incredible job with that whole. It was hard for me to stay in the moment'cause I was geeking out at how well she did the foreshadowing of Judith and Hamnet mimicking each other. Swapping clothes. And then Judith saying he tricked death. And Hamnet saying, you know, I'll be able to trick death and he won't be able to tell us apart. I was like, go girl. That is artistry. That is knowing your craft. And I just, Maggie, if you ever listen to this, I think that you did that fabulously. all of that just was a dagger to the heart, right? Because we really not only loved this little boy, we saw what the little boy meant to the family. And I think maybe that's why it took so freaking long in both the book and the movie, is they were trying to really establish how special Hamnet was and how devastating the loss was. I don't know if she could have done it more in a more timely fashion.

Micah Leydorf 23:12

I personally, I know Laurel mentioned something about a whole backstory about how the disease traveled across the world. I felt that could have been shortened. It's kind of like, you know, Victor Hugo, I don't need as much about the Paris sewers. I'm good.

Melissa Grace 23:29

I have to disagree here.

Micah Leydorf 23:31

Okay.

Melissa Grace 23:31

I liked, as Laurel put it, the leisurely pace. I think that's just the perfect word for it. And I felt like she used all of that to point back toward her theme, which is the vitality of inner life. She showed the vitality and importance of inner life with the way she showed the little boy's thoughts about the monkey. She gave the hawk a point of view. She gave 2-year-old Susanna, when she's playing a point of view, she gave the little boy who couldn't read, but looked at the letter, was like, oh, that's cool. You know, with the ink and all that, you know, that took the letter to, to Shakespeare.

Micah Leydorf 24:13

It's got interesting now, when we hear from like agents or whatnot, that it has to be in first person these days that nobody wants the third person, well, here we

Laurel Thomas 24:20

go. Oh, no, no. Here you can go deep in third person.

Micah Leydorf 24:23

Yes.

Laurel Thomas 24:24

And she did, she proved it.

Kat Lewis 24:25

It felt omniscient in the multiple perspectives of even like micro characters. True. But it was a traditional third person. And once we got into a micro character's perspective, it was third person. It, it,

Melissa Grace 24:37

She might have been just knowing the rule and breaking it but it wasn't like, oh, in this chapter we are completely in Agnes's head and in this chapter we're completely in Mary's head.

Kat Lewis 24:48

I wonder if she was doing that to show how interconnected everybody's world is. I don't know that I've really read a novel that made me understand how devastating the plague was. Mm-hmm. But in this context, I really, really felt it. It just wasn't some rat, it was like, if y'all put some rat killer out, you know? Mm-hmm. This wouldn't have happened. I really, really felt that. And I really felt Mary's story of, how do different people protect themselves? Some people just blow themselves wide open and they let grief terrorize their life. And other people just become hard, and they just say, it's another blow, but I'm alive. And Mary did say something really beautiful in the movie and she was like, you have to essentially treasure every moment, right? There's no wasted moments. And I thought, what a beautiful message for a modern audience that is sometimes so changed to our devices that we forget to look up.

Laurel Thomas 25:41

I think it's written almost in a dickens tone.

Kat Lewis 25:45

Oh, okay.

Laurel Thomas 25:45

Which is so artful because it doesn't read to me like a modern novel.

Micah Leydorf 25:52

I didn't get any of this, this lyric, you know, that, that the beauty of the la

Laurel Thomas 25:57

I called the

Micah Leydorf 25:58

Agnes, I did it again. Maybe I just needed to listen to the audio book, but I didn't pick up on any of that.

Kat Lewis 26:04

I will say, without the help of the audio book,'cause I started to read the novel. I jumped to the audio book and I came back to the novel and I think I felt like you, Micah, in the initial, probably first 50 pages is I was like, I'm gonna need some help. Because it felt basic, right? Yes. It, it felt basic. It

Micah Leydorf 26:21

feels very basic. The dialogue feels basic.

Kat Lewis 26:23

Dialogue is a little tricky in this Maggie because there's sometimes when you're like. Is that character thinking? Are they speaking to themselves? Are they speaking to another person? You don't use a lot of quotation marks in this book, Maggie. And sometimes I did struggle to figure out who's talking to who and where is the conversation being directed. But, she uses this linguistic repetition in a way that I think adds to that leisurely nature that maybe when you're reading it, it isn't quite hit the way that it does when you're actually listening to the novel. So again, that could be a potential flaw of this novel. It's like if I have to go and get an audio book versus being able to enjoy it. I think many people enjoyed reading this novel, but I think that if you can access an audio version, you should.'cause it's well worth the wait. Okay, ladies, what social commentary has transcended the life of the book? This is the question I am excited about every time, but particularly for this. You know, novel Play Well,

Micah Leydorf 27:21

hasn't really been out long enough to transcend the life of the book.

Kat Lewis 27:25

I, I agree. But I do think that there are,

Micah Leydorf 27:27

Shakespeare has

Kat Lewis 27:28

Definitely, I think Shakespeare has, and she was bringing to light some things about the creative process and the creative's life that I think are worthy of conversation.

Micah Leydorf 27:36

So along those lines, like I already alluded to the last two words of the book, which of course are very thematic of, remember Me, of this was a way of giving life to their son who passed away. That has transcended the years that we still know the name of Hamlet, that we still say the name of Hamlet, that it's like, oh, this is a way of making him live on, and I thought the movie communicate that possibly even better with that imagery of like actually seeing her son. the movie had like very little soundtrack. It was a lot of silence. But I think it, like you say, it was to all, to emphasize and heighten it whenever it all those crescendos come at the end.

Melissa Grace 28:18

Yes.

Micah Leydorf 28:19

But we're all kind of have different views here, different ages, different genres. We also go to different churches and I go to a Catholic church and one of the things that I love about the Catholic church is the mysticism. And the belief that, that scripture that says that we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses and that this isn't the end. And they keep on talking in the novel about where is he? He can't just be gone. Like, he's not gone. He can see you, you can talk to him. And like he lives on and like this life is only the beginning. So I love that message. And art is a way of doing that.

Laurel Thomas 28:56

That's what I loved. That Agnes didn't recognize in her husband until she saw the tragedy. But it was through art that healing came not just for their family, but for everyone.

Kat Lewis 29:09

Oh my gosh. I couldn't in so many ways with that ending sequence because she could appreciate her husband, but she couldn't understand her husband until she was actually until

Micah Leydorf 29:19

she saw his art.

Kat Lewis 29:19

Until she saw his art.

Micah Leydorf 29:20

And isn't that a thought like that? She never got to see his plays. He just goes off into the void and he's gone. And then she finally gets to see what his passion is and what he does.

Kat Lewis 29:29

They did so many things so freaking well in this movie. For both of them, to relive the death of Hamnet. For the death of Hamlet on stage to be, they portray it Shakespeare being present where he wasn't present in real life. He was present for the death on stage, and he grieves in the back in that same way. But for Agnes who has been really trapped in her own grief, to feel the grief of all these people. And it feels like they're grieving her son, but really they're grieving everybody that they've lost,

Melissa Grace 29:59

they're grieving their sons and, and their daughters and their just so, and, and the people who write the stories, it's because we write things down so that we can all look at them and say, oh. I feel the same way. And it was just really was a powerful moment when I just saw all those mama faces reaching toward the, and again, that's

Micah Leydorf 30:22

why the movie was better than the book that in the book,

Melissa Grace 30:26

that part, okay, I'll give you that. But, um, but it just was like, okay, this is why he wrote this. This is what is powerful about this book.

Kat Lewis 30:39

But, you know, Melissa,, he wrote it for himself. I think that's what I have, I took away from that film and this book is, he didn't write it for any grand message. He wrote it as a.

Micah Leydorf 30:52

Way to process his grief

Kat Lewis 30:53

as a way to process, process as a way,

Melissa Grace 30:54

but even his way of processing his, it's still a gift.

Kat Lewis 30:57

It was still a gift. It's a gift. No, it, it is a gift. This is why we, we are students of the craft. It's why we read great books. It's why we analyze literature, because when it comes time to depict our own whatever, whether it's joy, whether it's confusion, whether it's anger or, you know, whatever, when the craft is in you, the craft is gonna flow through you and propel that message to do what it does for the masses. So this idea of like, I don't have to fabricate something that's sexy and will sell. And it's like you already have your deep losses or your moments of triumph or in victory that it's like I don't have to pretend

Laurel Thomas 31:37

I will say in the book that once Hamnet dies, it's agonizing and it stays agonizing. You have such a strong sense that she is totally encapsulated in grief. And that doesn't get resolved until she sees the tragedy. It's hard to get that in the movie because it's just in the book, it has so many poignant details. You are totally convinced this woman, her life has ended.

Kat Lewis 32:06

I would agree that it's visceral in the book. I do think that they do a good job of portraying that.

Micah Leydorf 32:11

I think I, from the movie,

Kat Lewis 32:13

I think I got it from the movie. And one of the things that both the book and the movie do really well is this idea of, um, how, you know, women in a different age, in a different time that left at home thing, what that does to the soul.

Micah Leydorf 32:28

I think that is the gift of this novel is kind of brings to life a period of history that we don't really have fleshed out for us of what Shakespeare in England looked like, which was different than the Middle Ages in medieval times. But

Kat Lewis 32:42

I can tell you for 72% of the audience that we think we're in the Middle Ages. Let's move on to our fourth and final question. Name a character that had a high impact on the story. This could refer to character arc, moving the plot forward, theme, and symbolism. And I am going to take Hamnet off the table.

Micah Leydorf 33:05

I think you touched on it already, but in Judith, it was so smart of her to create a twin for Hamnet. Yes. We don't know that that's fiction. We know so little about Shakespeare's life. So pretty much all of this is just her imagination and her conjecture, but that's what she did, is she imagined such an amazing story. With kind of reverence for the things we do know about shakespeare. And so to imagine a twin, and again, that he would sacrifice his life in some ways for his twin. So I think Judith like adds so much depth to this story.

Kat Lewis 33:39

I know I said we we're not talking about hamnet, but making Hamnet a a hero of the plague and not a victim to the plague.

Micah Leydorf 33:44

But he's not the main character. Shakespeare and Agnes, Agnes is really the main character.

Melissa Grace 33:49

Oh, I was just I think that the high impact character is Shakespeare. He is not the main character.

Micah Leydorf 33:55

No, he's not.

Melissa Grace 33:55

He is a contributing character.

Micah Leydorf 33:58

Mm-hmm.

Melissa Grace 33:59

It is Agnes's story. And his history gives its shape and context and all that. But it is Agnes's story and I just thought that was brilliant of her to make him an undercurrent. And not the main focus,

Kat Lewis 34:14

that actually gave her more creative freedom to make him a foil and to make him the side character versus the main character. Because if it was Shakespeare as the main character, I do think she'd be criticized for, oh, that's not historically correct, and that doesn't match this journal entry. But with it being Agnes, I think it gives her a lot more permission, to fill in the gaps. But also to explore the life of the creative in this time period from an auxiliary perspective.

Micah Leydorf 34:40

The book is deep in the perspective of Agnes, so it's almost a little bit forgivable on the not quite, that there's no hints of like, Shakespeare's brilliance in it because it's Agnes. So in the movie, he's like writing, you know, oh, you know what? Light through yonder window breaks. And it's like, where was that in the book? It wasn't, but in the movie you could show that like a little hints here and there, or the kids, you know, doing the little play. You get these hints, which there's none of that. I would've liked some hint.

Melissa Grace 35:08

Well, but I thought that that made how she handled it even more powerful when she showed Agnes knowing what was in him as far as just other worlds like that landscape that she talked about. And even though she never saw it from our perspective, looking at his finished work,

Laurel Thomas 35:29

Agnes is heroic. I mean, she's a great main character because if you, I mean, if we're gonna go with the fictionalized story. What would he have been if he had stayed in that home

Melissa Grace 35:41

a drunk? He would've continued

Laurel Thomas 35:43

to

Melissa Grace 35:44

drink too much.

Laurel Thomas 35:44

Crazy violent.

Melissa Grace 35:45

Yeah.

Laurel Thomas 35:45

He might have become like his dad. he wouldn't have produced what he produced. It was Agnes who released him. Actually, if you look at Agnes, she releases her children to fly. She was raised that way by her mother. I love the little vignettes in the movie with the moms and the kids, but it's actually, they're also in the story. But, you know, I think she's definitely heroic.

Micah Leydorf 36:09

I do love painting pictures of marriage that don't look like traditional romances to like recognize there are other ways to love people than, oh, you have to be with me all the time. There's sometimes the way to love somebody is to recognize what they need and to give it to them. It's like, yes, this is what you need. Go, and we're not gonna join you because that's not what's best for our children. And that doesn't mean that we don't love each other, and that doesn't mean that we don't have a romance for the ages. Our marriage isn't a good and loving one. It's just different.

Kat Lewis 36:40

I would echo that in that the romance is so understated. Real life tends not to be flashy. It's funny, be with me always as is a quote from Weathering Heights that the ghost is telling him, be with me always, you know, Heath cliff to the dead cap.

Micah Leydorf 36:55

So toxic and

Kat Lewis 36:56

This is the exact opposite. You couldn't get two different

Micah Leydorf 36:59

pictures. What a contrast, what a good example of like, like, oh, you went off and you didn't stay therefore I hate you, but I love you and you know, it's just like you couldn't be what I wanted and it wouldn't mean and

Melissa Grace 37:09

nasty everybody, it fit the characters. It wouldn't have worked with Heathcliff and Catherine. But it worked with Agnes and Shakespeare, it was a good example of your story and your characters have to work together.

Kat Lewis 37:26

I am gonna create a parallel between Hamnet and Jane Austen's persuasion, particularly the film adaptation that was done in 1995. In the sense of both of these stories really represent quiet, subtle romances. However, I find that in the film adaptation specifically, the lack of a clear and driving antagonist really was a detriment to the film. We talk about how it's slow and there's no tension and there's no suspense. Even if they had just woven in more of the suspense of the plague, so the audience is sitting here waiting for the, to hit and waiting for this family to be devastated. I think the film could have used that to help drive and keep the audience more engaged. I do think that the father is a clear antagonist and he really is what drives us through at least the first plot point. But in the movie, the movie really needed.

Micah Leydorf 38:14

So is the father when you're choosing as the side character that drives the novel?

Kat Lewis 38:18

I, I would say so because he's kind of the sinister presence all throughout

Laurel Thomas 38:23

He's so sinister. In the novel. It's very clear. That dad sits down Hamnet and says, you be careful. And that whole time that Hamnet is there alone and he pulls him to him and he hits him. You know, that's, it's right before Judith gets sick. Yeah. So, I mean, he's a clear antagonist.

Micah Leydorf 38:44

We're not afraid of the plague anymore. But do we understand abusive parental figures or being in a home where there's tension and you can't get out? Like, yes, we definitely understand that.

Melissa Grace 38:56

I agree. But also just back to the structure of the book. we start with Hamnet before he's sick, we go back to their courtship. That was another tool that she used to keep the pacing going. Like you said with Hamilton, you know what's coming. But just showing him as this beloved, you know, wonderful child, developing his character and all the time we've got, he's gonna die. He's gonna die, hovering as the way she structured it, that to me, not all novels can get away with that.

Laurel Thomas 39:31

Someone told me though, when I was getting some feedback on a novel and she said this novel is not going to be gripping action right at the very beginning. So you have got to create an immersive experience. And it has to be highly emotional. Since that time I've seen it's a different style of a story. There's not wrong or right, but if there's not a lot of action, then it has to be highly immersive, which I feel like this one was.

Kat Lewis 40:00

Well, I know we didn't really touch on the play of Hamlet that's been around you guys. So, I definitely recommend listening to the the audio book of the play. But what a genuinely delightful novel. If you need a break from your thrillers, from your horror murder, death kill books, this is a great one to just pick up and cleanse the palette. And the movie is well, well, well worth it. This is really just superbly done and I definitely encourage that you guys pick up the book and read it. Go watch the movie. And join us for the conversation on Instagram because we do wanna hear your thoughts about the novel and the movie. And did you think that the movie adaptation was worthy of the novel? We'll also be doing a little series of movie adaptations that have come out recently that we'll see if they stand the test of time. But thank you ladies so much for joining us for this episode of Stories That Change Us, and we will see you guys next time.

Laurel Thomas 40:56

Yay. Bye

Kat Lewis 40:57

bye.

41:00

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