London, GB – The legacy of William Shakespeare remains a perennial source of fascination for filmmakers, yet how the Bard of Avon is translated to the screen often sparks intense debate among critics. Recent interpretations, particularly the portrayal by Paul Mescal in the film Hamnet, have prompted a critical reassessment of whether modern cinema captures the true breadth of Shakespeare’s genius or reduces him to a singular emotional narrative.
The 'Hamnet' Interpretation: Grief Over Genius
The film Hamnet, centred on the profound sorrow experienced by Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (portrayed by Golden Globe winner Jessie Buckley), casts Paul Mescal’s William Shakespeare in a surprisingly muted role. According to recent critical reviews, Mescal’s interpretation often presents the playwright as a recessive cipher, his creative output seemingly explained away entirely as a sublimation of paternal grief following the death of his son, Hamnet.
The Danger of Reductionism
The central critique is that by tying the creation of Hamlet directly and solely to the loss of Hamnet, the film risks reducing Shakespeare’s vast, riotous 38-play canon to a single emotional key: sorrow. As one prominent commentator noted, this approach ignores the sharp intelligence, biting irony, and sheer mischief that permeate his comedies and histories.
The issue is not that Shakespeare felt grief—a universal human experience—but that the narrative framework positions genius as something that happens to the man, rather than something he actively constructs through labour and wit. This modern tendency to treat literature primarily as autobiography or consolation, where a therapist’s couch seems perpetually implied, evacuates the dynamism of the creative process.
Samuel Johnson’s Insight: Comedy as Instinct
To understand what might be missing in these solemn portrayals, it is worth revisiting the insightful critiques of the 18th century. Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the great early readers of the plays, posited that Shakespeare’s natural disposition leaned toward comedy, not tragedy. Johnson argued that in his comedic scenes, Shakespeare produced excellence without apparent effort, suggesting comedy was ‘congenial to his nature’.
“In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire… His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct,” Johnson observed. This perspective suggests that any definitive cinematic portrayal of Shakespeare must capture this inherent capacity for levity and energetic transformation, not just the weight of tragedy.
The Energetic Improviser: 'Shakespeare in Love' Revisited
In contrast to the hushed, grief-stricken close-ups, the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, which featured a script transformed by the late Tom Stoppard, offers a compelling counter-narrative. This film grasped what theatrical genius demands: visibility of the work itself.
Shakespeare in Love brilliantly suggested that genius looks less like solemn inspiration and more like energetic improvisation under immense pressure—deadlines, rivals, financial worries, and romantic entanglements all fueling the creative furnace. Seeing Joseph Fiennes’s Will test terrible ideas (“Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter”) and then scribble desperately after a night of inspiration captures the sweat and grind of creation.
The film’s central conceit—that Romeo and Juliet emerges from chaos and misunderstanding—feels remarkably true to the historical reality of a working playwright. This Shakespeare steals plots, borrows phrases overheard in taverns, and transforms raw experience through rigorous craft. Wit, as Stoppard understood, was the primary instrument; Shakespeare was funny and erotic before he was purely elegiac.
The Modern Dilemma: Authenticity vs. Accessibility
The modern cinematic dilemma appears to be a trade-off between emotional accessibility and intellectual complexity. While films like Hamnet offer powerful emotional resonance, they risk flattening the subject. The audience is presented with the effect of genius (the resulting sorrowful play) without witnessing the process—the intellectual mischief, the linguistic playfulness, and the sheer narrative dexterity that defined the Elizabethan stage.
As the cultural conversation continues, there is a clear appetite for interpretations that honour the man’s full spectrum: the sorrowful father, yes, but equally the brilliant comedian, the sharp political observer, and the relentless theatrical innovator who worked constantly to fill the Globe stage. The true genius of Shakespeare, it seems, lies not in what he suffered, but in how he worked that suffering—and everything else—into enduring art.
