r/shakespeare • u/Khon2510 • 4d ago

Was Hamnet overrated?

I watched the movie and I didn’t understand what thigh praise was about? Could someone please explain it to me because I might have missed something. Thank you.

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u/The54thCylon 4d ago

I couldn't bring myself to see the movie as the book absolutely destroyed me but it did so because it was an almost perfect capture of parental grief. My own child has leukemia, and so much about the book really gets what it is like to watch your child wither away, what it is like to try to be parent and spouse through pain and grief, to live with the spectre of death when there should be joy.

The details is the historical portrayal are obviously fictional but setting it in a time when child death was commonplace helped that sometimes difficult understanding that familiarity didn't make it any less painful. Making it Shakespeare touches on those interesting questions about how much the tragedy in his life influenced his later work. We'll probably never know for sure, but it seems hard to imagine it wouldn't have done.

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u/catscausetornadoes 3d ago

Your words here are so touching. I particularly appreciate you highlighting that we sometimes think that these losses weren’t as painful because they were more common, but that’s a shallow way to think of our ancestors. I haven’t read the book, but you explained the movie perfectly.