Hamnet: To Judge Or Not To Judge

Indira GhoseTIMESOFINDIA.COM
Feb 26, 2026 | 22:07 IST

The film raises the question, should we separate the artist from the art. Should we really let artists’ tarnished personal records disqualify their achievements?

Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao, is a strong contender at this year’s Oscars. It is a heart-wrenching fiction about Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes (or Anne), and the event that allegedly inspired the play Hamlet: the loss of their only son, Hamnet, at the age of eleven.

Agnes never forgives her husband for being absent at their child’s death. Years later, she attends a performance of Hamlet and realises that he has transmuted his grief for a dead child into the grief of a Danish prince for a dead father.
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