Does “Hamlet” Need a Backstory?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Critics at Large | The New Yorker

Episode: Does “Hamlet” Need a Backstory?
Date: December 4, 2025
Hosts: Alex Schwartz, Nomi Fry, Vincent Cunningham

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, the Critics at Large team takes a critical, engaging dive into the Oscar-hopeful film Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao, and its relationship to the enduring power of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The hosts explore not just the film’s merits as a meditation on grief, art, and nature, but also debate whether providing a fictionalized backstory for Hamlet deepens or cheapens Shakespeare’s original work. The conversation opens out into larger questions: Why does Hamlet continue to captivate, and what does the character say about masculinity, grief, and interpretation in our current cultural moment? Through a mix of fresh analysis, personal anecdotes, and a look at various adaptive versions of Hamlet, the critics interrogate what these 400-year-old stories mean for us today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. First Impressions of "Hamnet" (02:34–03:02)

• Alex Schwartz: “Hated it.”
  • Found the film’s take on Agnes (Shakespeare's wife) overly romanticized and the overall effect shallow, lamenting what felt like forced modern iconography in a historical tale.
• Nomi Fry: Surprisingly enjoyed it, finding the film’s restraint, atmosphere, and “pastoral” beauty appealing, though felt the second half faltered.
• Vincent Cunningham: “Loved it.”
  • Praised the performances (especially Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal) and the film's dual focus on nature and artifice as larger meditations on grief and creation.

2. Plot and Themes in "Hamnet" (04:38–08:13)

• Setup Recap (Nomi Fry):
  • Shakespeare depicted more as a man than genius.
  • Agnes’ "witchy" background; romance with Shakespeare; heavy focus on nature and wordless moments.
  • Family tragedy struck by plague; son Hamnet dies; Shakespeare supposedly processes grief by writing Hamlet.
• Nomi’s Take:
  • Enjoyed the subtle and visual storytelling: “As I get older, I find myself more in touch with a pastoral.”
  • Liked the Scandinavian, evocative qualities before the film’s explicit turn to Shakespearean drama.

3. Critical Reactions and Riffs on "Hamnet" (08:53–15:36)

• Alex’s Main Critique:
  • The film is “romantasy adjacent”; “strong, noble heroine” trope feels forced.
  • Problem with presenting Hamlet-the-play as mere art therapy for Shakespeare; the play’s complexities are reduced:
    “Hamlet is art therapy is what this movie says.” (15:36, Alex)
  • Argues the real play’s dark edges (Ophelia’s fate, Hamlet’s mother) are ignored or overwritten.
• Vincent’s Defense:
  • Sees the film less as an attempt to explain Hamlet and more as an exploration of art’s consoling or meaning-making place in life.
  • Sees the “two act system”—nature and artifice—as intellectually stimulating and sensitively drawn.
  • Admits the film’s direct use of Hamlet’s lines occasionally falters.

4. Art and Manipulation (14:30–15:29)

• The group briefly discusses whether Hamnet is “manipulative” art (a critique circulating in reviews).
  • Alex: “Well, art—duh. It’s supposed to manipulate.”
  • Yet she didn’t feel emotionally drawn in, despite the explicit grief.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Vincent: “Hamlet, to me, is all about how the common difficulties of life...strike each of us with a unique and particular pain.” (03:02)
• Nomi, on the rural beauty of Hamnet:
  “As I get older, I find myself more in touch with a pastoral...this is like some Scandinavian movie from the 80s.” (08:13)
• Alex, critiquing tropes:
  “God forbid she’s an ordinary woman… she’s gotta be someone who modern women look at and think, if I had lived in 1595, I would have been her.” (09:29)
• Vincent: “There’s a moment where [Agnes’] mother-in-law...has an almost direct to camera monologue...that it can go away any moment and therefore...maybe the connection between love and nature, that we are not in control over those items which we love.” (12:40–12:49)
• Alex, on the film’s ambitions:
  “I don’t understand what is concretely being said anyway. Go ahead, charge at me.” (17:05)

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Deep Dive: What’s Our Relationship to Hamlet?

“Our first Hamlets” (19:28–22:13)

• Alex: First encountered Hamlet via reading in high school; treasures her annotated copy.
• Vincent: Learned poetic structure and literary devices through studying Hamlet in school.
• Nomi: Her primary memory is the 1996 Kenneth Branagh film: “...I remember dragging my feet through it because I was like, this is important. You know what I’m saying?”

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Our Favorite Hamlets: (22:30–34:35)

Vincent: “Hamlet 2000”

• Michael Almereyda’s 2000 film with Ethan Hawke as a mopey film student, packed with meta-cinematic touches.
  • Memorable: “His to be or not to Be occurs in a Blockbuster Video. He’s walking down the aisles and every single one of the little genre markers says ‘action’ on it.” (24:36)

Nomi: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”

• Tom Stoppard’s play/film, focusing on minor Hamlet characters.
  • “It really makes you think about life and death.” (28:21)
  • Enjoys the shift from tragedy to comedy and the minor to major.

Alex: Stage Versions

• Richard Burton’s 1964 Broadway performance, described as “hot-blooded Hamlet” (30:05), and two British stage versions with Andrew Scott and Alex Lawther—especially highlighting the difficulty of making Hamlet’s dithering and thought processes feel fresh and alive on stage.
• On Lawther as a very young Hamlet:
  “Wiry, fidgety quality that reminds you that Hamlet is a college student… It just reminded me of how messed up stuff is when you’re in your early 20s.” (33:24–34:17)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Critics’ First Reactions to “Hamnet”: 02:34–03:02
• Detailed Plot Setup (Hamnet): 04:38–08:13
• Critiquing Modern Tropes in Hamnet: 09:15–11:01
• The Nature vs. Artifice Theme: 12:13–13:31
• Debating Emotional Manipulation in Art: 14:30–15:29
• Core Criticisms of the Hamlet-Hamnet Connection: 15:36–17:05
• Favorite Hamlets (Almereyda, Stoppard, British Stage): 22:30–34:35
• Discussion of Hamlet’s Enduring Appeal and Masculinity: 35:51–44:50
• On Generational Crisis and Hamlet as “Man’s Play”: 39:21–44:50
• Transformation and Resolution in Hamlet: 45:28–47:39

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Broader Themes and Final Insights

1. Hamlet as an Endless Mirror

• The group underscores how Hamlet absorbs and reflects the anxieties, cultural obsessions, and crises of each era.
  • Vincent: “Every generation has its version of the incomprehensible… everybody has to deal with their own version of ‘this does not make sense, and yet it is.’” (38:45)

2. Masculinity & Identity

• Alex: “Hamlet is talking to Horatio... He was a man. Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again, he was a man.” (39:35–40:10)
  • They note the contemporary crisis of masculinity finds a clear echo in Hamlet’s uncertainty, sense of inadequacy, and mythical nostalgia for a lost generation of “real men.”
  • Nomi: “Men, not just men, women too. But the question of like man making the world and whether that ability...is slipping...is a determining question as to how the world looks.” (41:40)

3. The Redemptive Power of Telling

• Alex on Hamlet’s ending: “I know who I am. My father was Hamlet the Dane. He was king of Denmark. I am Hamlet the Dane. I am taking my rightful place. I am coming to bear accountability.” (46:35)
• Vincent: “He also asks Horatio to tell us that...art making itself is a guide through life...the telling is the thing, maybe.” (47:05–47:39)

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Concluding Thoughts

Critics at Large closes with a recognition of Hamlet as not just a play but a touchstone for grappling with meaning, grief, gender, action, and the place of art—no matter the century. Their sharp differences on Hamnet show how live and personal these texts remain. As ever, Hamlet becomes what each age, and each critic, needs it to be.

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Selected Quotes with Timestamps

• “Hated it.” —Alex Schwartz (02:39)
• “As I get older, I find myself more in touch with a pastoral.” —Nomi Fry (08:13)
• “Hamlet is art therapy is what this movie says.” —Alex Schwartz (15:36)
• “The interpretation is part of the greatness of the play.” —Vincent Cunningham (38:32)
• “There is an era of manhood that has passed.” —Vincent Cunningham (42:09)
• “He also asks Horatio to tell us...the telling is the thing, maybe.” —Vincent Cunningham (47:05–47:39)

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Transcript

[Alex Schwartz]

Can anyone do the speech?

[Nomi Fry]

No, but I can just say, to be or not to be.

And then say, like, battle of. I can't even remember.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No, I'm not a memorizer, unfortunately.

[Nomi Fry]

God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Whether tis nobler and then I'm like.

[Alex Schwartz]

To be or not to be. That is the question. I'm not gonna get far. Very ashamed. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or. Or one.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. Take arms against the sea of troubles.

[Nomi Fry]

Thank you, sea.

[Alex Schwartz]

And by opposing, end them. To die. To sleep. Go, Vincent.

[Nomi Fry]

Per chance to dream.

[Alex Schwartz]

Not yet. Oops. No more.

This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Nomi Fry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. How you guys doing? Turkey Day. How was it?

[Alex Schwartz]

It was good.

[Nomi Fry]

It was really nice, actually.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It was nice. I saw my family. I ate. They're still stuffing in my fridge.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Which for me is a little bit.

[Nomi Fry]

I thought you were gonna say there's still stuffing in my belly. I'm stuffed like a Christmas goose.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Like a prized turkey. Yeah, I did have a lot of stuffing. It's my favorite food of Thanksgiving by far. Anyway, that done, it's December, and that means we're officially in Oscar movie season. So, you know, just get ready for some real cinema on this podcast. So recently the three of us saw Hamnet, which I'm sure will feature in a lot of these Oscar races. It's a fictionalized story about the writing of, of course, Hamlet, the beloved Shakespeare play directed by Chloe Zhao. The movie stars Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes. He's got more inside of him than.

[Nomi Fry]

Any man I've ever met.

[Alex Schwartz]

Who are you looking for?

[Vincent Cunningham]

William Shakespeare.

I have no talent awaiting.

[Alex Schwartz]

The women in my family see things.

[Vincent Cunningham]

What do you see?

It's a really interesting, complicated movie. I think on the one hand, there's this really loose biographical element about Shakespeare's perhaps most famous play, but on the other hand, it's a story about intense grief and, I guess, how to move through it. Of course, we're gonna hear everything about how you guys thought about it in the course of the show, but first impressions.

[Alex Schwartz]

Do you wanna know my first impressions?

[Vincent Cunningham]

First impressions.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay. I have a sense. What else?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Couple words each. Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hated it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Hated it. Oh, God, I can't wait to talk about this.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay, so shockingly, did not hate it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Good.

[Nomi Fry]

Was sure I'm making progress. Was sure I was gonna hate it, but enjoyed it and thought it had a bunch of things going for it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Cool. We got the whole gamut. Because over here. Loved it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wow.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So today we're gonna talk about Hamnet and about Hamlet, of course. The play itself, Hamlet has never not been popular, Right. It's been in production almost constantly since it was written over 400 years ago. And in that time, it's undergone all manner of revisions, updates, adaptations, reimaginings. Hamlet, to me, is all about how the common difficulties of life, grief, betrayal, loneliness, indecision, strike each of us with a unique and particular pain. It's also about how all of this lands specifically on a troubled young man in 2025. We hear a lot about the plight of young men, economic, interpersonal, on and on, their propensity to shoot people, all that stuff. And I want to know what is Hamlet's hold on us now? And does this contemporary narrative about men have anything to do with. So that's today on critics at large. Who is Hamlet today?

All right, all right, let's start with Hamnet. The film came out in select theaters during Thanksgiving week. It's going into wide release later this month. I saw it in the great big cavernous Theater three at bam, which I love. It's directed by Chloe Zhao, adapted from a novel of the same name by Maggie o', Farrell, who was sort of the co screenwriter with Chloe Zhao. Can somebody lay out the premise before we jump upon it?

[Nomi Fry]

I can try.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Please.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay, so we're seeing William Will Shakespeare behind the scenes.

As a man rather than a playwright. And he meets a girl, a woman who is said to be the daughter of a witch, kind of like a wild girl, a girl of the woods. They live on the edge of a forest. And the movie opens, you know, with this vista, this beautiful vista where she's kind of like she's seen from above, kind of curled up in the roots of an old oak tree or something. I don't know if it's oak, actually, but, you know, and Shakespeare, whose name isn't mentioned for almost the entirety of the movie. We're meant to know, of course, that it is Shakespeare, but he's just kind of like a hot guy with like facial hair who sort of skulks around.

Is very taken with this woman, Agnes. And they kind of have this almost wordless courtship agnies.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Wait.

I know who you are.

[Nomi Fry]

Who am I? Why, I don't know you, but I've.

[Alex Schwartz]

Heard I'm the daughter of a forest witch.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes, people say that, but that's.

[Alex Schwartz]

I am my mother's daughter. I've learned many things from her.

What are you looking at?

[Vincent Cunningham]

You.

[Nomi Fry]

Why?

They make love and she.

[Vincent Cunningham]

They do.

[Nomi Fry]

They do. They make love on a table that is laden with fruits.

[Alex Schwartz]

With, significantly, apples.

[Nomi Fry]

With apples. And she gets pregnant. They get married. She has first a girl, and then a little bit later gets pregnant again and has twins. Meanwhile, it suddenly emerges that Will Shakespeare is Shakespeare.

That is. It emerges suddenly about mid movie that he's a writer and that he is kind of stagnating in the countryside and must go to London. Anya stays home with the kids. But then the plague comes. What ends up happening is that one of the twins is named Hamnet dies. And then grief comes, horrible grief. And Agnes sort of, you know, almost loses her mind from this grief. Towards the end of the movie, we, for the first time are in London with Shakespeare, who, it emerges, has written a play. The play is Hamlet, and the implication is that he was deeply affected by the death of Hamnet, his son, and in response to it, has written this play about Prince Hamlet in Denmark, the play that we know as Hamlet. I will say that what I liked about this movie and surprised me is there's no volubility in it, right? It's quite wordless. There's long stretches of silence and a lot of focus on nature and kind of the lived environment that these characters are in. And this is before, again, it is revealed that Shakespeare is Shakespeare. I really enjoyed that. I thought it was beautiful.

As I get older, I'm kind of like. I find myself more in touch with a pastoral. I'm like, oh, I'm like, enjoying these wooded scenes of, like, whatever mushrooms being dug from the earth. I was like, this is like some Scandinavian movie from the 80s. Like, I really like this. You know, this is all before the whole, like, Hamlet, Hamnet playwriting thing happened. And later I liked it less, although I didn't hate it, but I also didn't think it totally worked. Okay, now I'll shut up.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Alex. I mean, I know we know what.

[Nomi Fry]

You think, we know what you thought, but we're eager to hear. And I bet I'll also, like, agree with you.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, here's what I want to say to start. If you love this movie, I'm really glad you love this movie. And I don't mean to say that in a condescending way. I wanted to love this movie. It sounds like such a.

[Vincent Cunningham]

If you like it, I love it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Right. Yeah. I'm sorry. Maybe I just Made it all worse. I know you didn't. I didn't know I rubbed salt in the movie.

I understand. There's this hamnet is sweeping the nation. All I hear is not a dry eye is to be seen like a baby.

[Nomi Fry]

You did cry like a baby.

[Alex Schwartz]

Good. You know, and that's great. I wish I had cried. I wish I had had.

[Nomi Fry]

Your heart is made of stone, Alex.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, no, but I wish I had felt. I wish I had had these feelings this. Been moved by this grief. And instead I have quibbles. And I have bigger problems with the movie Hamnet. Mm. So I have read the novel Hamnet, on which the movie is based. Maggie o' Farrell's novel, the Stuff youf Love Know Me, is stuff I really didn't like in this movie. To me, this movie felt romantasy adjacent. We have the strong, noble heroine, who is, of course, iconoclastic. God forbid she's an ordinary woman. No, she has to be singular. She's gotta be someone who modern women look at and think, if I had lived in 1595, I wouldn't have been an ordinary hausfrau. I would have been her. I would have been Agnes, barefoot, wandering into the forest with my kestrel above me because I'm cool and free. I would have had my hair down once. My mother died in front of me in childbirth. I, too, would have renounced the church because I'm a free thinker.

[Nomi Fry]

Can I just say something?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, of course.

[Nomi Fry]

I think we found my romantasy.

[Alex Schwartz]

We found your romantasy, panelists.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This is it.

[Alex Schwartz]

We found it.

[Nomi Fry]

I think we found at least that aspect of it. You know, how I was like the.

[Alex Schwartz]

Latin suitor with a single earring arrives to teach Latin. And by the way, the movie doesn't make this totally clear, but both in life, in the real, we know very, very little about Shakespeare's life and the life of Anne Hathaway, his wife. But one thing we do know is that he was 18 when they got married. She was 26, and she was pregnant. So something had gone down. Right, Vincent, defend this movie.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, here's the thing. Nomi's point about the Pastoral. I think, first of all, I deeply relate to about sort of, as life goes on, being more attracted to.

Sort of nature as an object of observation and study. I guess I've always had that. But I do feel that it has grown in this movie, though. I think it is important. And I don't think it's just about the affect of the character being sort of. She's A woodsy woman against the people of. Or, you know, she's a witchy person against the church and the church and etc. But I think much more importantly, the work with landscape is so good. I think there are so many beautiful images of the huge tree and this little cave under the root system and bodies being very small against the sort of grandeur of the landscape. There's a scene where a childbirth scene actually there's a big storm and the river water is seeping into the room where Aeneas is giving birth. And she can sort of. She connects this to William's on his way somewhere. He's on a boat. Like the panic of that. All of that to me makes the first half of the movie very clearly about nature, about all of our frailty, our sort of how subject we are to forces outside of ourselves, how much we are out of control, et cetera, et cetera. There's a moment where Ennis, mother in law, William's mother, has an almost direct to camera monologue. It's the only real monologue in the movie. And she's saying you have to know that.

Things can go wrong. It's in the middle of this sort of plague scene. She's like, you can't take it for granted that your child lives and breathes and the heart is beating in their chest.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think she says you have to always keep your guard up.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, it's basically that it can go away any moment and therefore. And it's like a disquisition on maybe the connection between love and nature, that we are not in control over those items which we love. And therefore we have to sort of surrender the second half of the film, which there's a huge shot of the globe, all of its sort of first of all its exterior and then inside all of its ropes and pulleys and the background sort of scene painting, which is a painting of a forest not unlike the real forest, the real forest that we've been looking at sort of cinematically.

It's really a two act system in this movie. Nature on the one hand, artifice on the other. And how our lives as people who are human animals, but also making things. People that are attracted to art creators and people who receive creations, deal with artifice mostly to negotiate our relationships to nature. So that all I found really intellectually stimulating. Yes, I did cry in the middle of the movie. And I also just thought the performances were incredible. Yeah, I wanted Jesse Buckley does amazing. Paul Mescal is just like fucking batting a thousand in the thing there's one moment when it doesn't work, when he's, like, looking over the Thames and says the to be or not to be speech. I was like, jesus fucking Christ, stop. And I was like, thank you. So that was flawed, that moment. It did not work. But he could have just stood there looking at us with his eyes, and I'm like, God damn. They're both, to me, just out of control in this movie. I just.

[Alex Schwartz]

Jessie Buckley is very good, you know, this movie. I think we should raise the issue here that one critique of this movie that's going around is that Hamnet is that it pulls at the heartstrings the movie. I think what that critique is supposed to mean is that it really delves into the particulars of the way that this child dies. You see a very horrible death of a kid. It's not glossed over. It's you're with Agnes as she screams in the room as her son dies. And it's a little bit like the critique that art is manipulative. I've also seen this movie called Manipulative. Well, art, duh. It's supposed to manipulate duh. So that's okay. But what I. But, I mean, guys, it didn't get me. This movie didn't get me at all. Like, the grief parts of it didn't. I felt. Yes, I felt that much like Hamlet, you know, that. That Chloe Zhao would like to play upon me as a pawn of pipe, you know, which is what Hamlet says to Rosencrans and children.

[Nomi Fry]

She tried to play you like a fiddle.

[Alex Schwartz]

She tried to play upon me. And I did not feel played upon. And I think a big part of why is that.

I could not connect because I love Hamlet. The much bigger issue I have with all of this with Hamnet as a book and also as a film, is that I don't find it illuminates anything about Hamlet the play. In fact, I don't understand it as a reading of Hamlet, period. The raison d' etre for this whole thing is to say this is the origin of this work of art. This work of art came around so that as a way for Shakespeare to deal with his own feelings of grief and sorrow, and also to address. Literally address his wife, who communication completely cracks between them after the death of their son, and it's repaired. It's a very modern, like, therapeutic process. It's art therapy. Hamlet is art therapy is what this movie says. And of course, what can be presented on stage in the film is very, very little of the play. Because it makes no sense with the actual play Hamlet. Like, I'm watching this thinking, oh, I wonder what Agnes, who's standing in the theater, thinks about Hamlet's absolute hatred for his mother and his fury at his mother. I'm wondering about that. I'm wondering what she thinks about the character of Ophelia, who in turn is set up and betrayed by Hamlet and driven mad and driven to death by what Hamlet does. And so the complexity and the intensity and all the many hundreds of meanings that are in the play Hamlet, boiled down to this. It just breaks the illusion to me. And I don't understand what is concretely being said anyway. Go ahead, charge at me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No, I don't. No, no, no. I just don't. Maybe the movie purports to do that, but I don't think the movie's trying to explain Hamlet at all. I think it's trying to show. It's almost like Hamlet. And maybe I could see this as a critique of the movie. And I like what you said about, like, if you are gonna invoke Hamlet, all of a sudden all of Hamlet comes to someone who has read the play. I think that's a really good critique. But to me, what is good about the movie is that Hamlet is almost just like capital A artwork in this movie. It's a kind of theorem about the place of art in our otherwise unartful lives.

Like, if it were trying to be a one to one, here's Hamlet, here's this autobiographical thing. I wouldn't like it either, but I just didn't read it that way at all.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I'm happy for you because it's pretty hard when a text precedes a movie saying that Hamlet and Hamnet are the same name and the whole thing is hammered on your head. And as hard as possible that this is why Hamlet came to be to ignore it.

Didn't the scenery totally remind you of the background home screen for macOS Sequoia? We're all looking at it, baby. Minimize your browser windows and you'll be in Hamnet.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, that's so funny. That tree is so much more gnarly than that. It looks like that looks like the scenery in the play.

[Alex Schwartz]

Nothing wrong with that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

In a minute. It's our favorite Hamlets on Critics at Large from the New Yorker.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong. I know there's going to be A.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Twist one day, a massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice.

[Alex Schwartz]

System, there's been a cover up in this case. I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from in the Dark and the New Yorker. Find it now in the in the Dark podcast feed.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Do you guys remember the first Hamlet that you ever saw or the first time you read it? Whatever. And did that, like, make a deep impression on you?

[Alex Schwartz]

I love this question because I was gonna say, for me, it wasn't seeing, it was reading.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Same deal.

[Alex Schwartz]

Absolutely reading. And not only do I remember it, I have my first original copy of Hamlet that I read in high school. I have my little Alex Schwartz grade 12 thing in there, but the Roman numeral for 12 and all of my notes just to give you a sense of how advanced my thinking about this was. So when Hamlet first appears, the king, the new King Claudius, who is of course brother to Hamlet's father, old King Hamlet has married Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, two months after. Nary, two months after Hamlet's father was buried.

[Nomi Fry]

The body not yet warm.

[Alex Schwartz]

Cold.

[Nomi Fry]

The body not yet cold.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yep. The king says, but now my cousin Hamlet and my son. And Hamlet says, a little more than kin and less than kind. And I just wrote brilliant.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Which you were right about brilliant.

[Alex Schwartz]

Gotta just hand it to that Shakespeare. He can do it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No, yeah. To me, Hamlet was hugely important. I did also encounter it in school. Reading Hamlet was the way I learned a lot else. So, you know, I was taught iambic pentameter and how to scan poetry via Hamlet. Like the study of literary devices, alliteration, anaphora, the beginning of a line in the same way over and over. And so, yeah, it couldn't be more formative. How about you, Naomi?

[Nomi Fry]

I never studied it. I mean, I remember the Kenneth Branagh adaptation from the mid-90s, from 1996, I believe.

[Vincent Cunningham]

To be.

Or not to be.

That is the question.

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the same.

[Nomi Fry]

I remember it in the context more of Kenneth Branagh than of Hamlet.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's fair.

[Nomi Fry]

You know that period where he was like, he was doing Shakespeare and everybody was like, he is the second coming of, you know, whatever. Like the genius of Kenneth Branagh. You know, his. His coupledom with Emma Thompson before they separated. That is my context for Hamlet because I'm an idiot and it's like four hours long. And I remember. I'm sorry, I'm such a philistine. I remember nod being extremely. I remember dragging my feet through it because I was like, this is important. You know what I'm saying?

[Alex Schwartz]

Of course I know what you're saying. And I think to insult yourself as a philistine is just. It's wrong headed, wrong. I think it's Kenneth Branagh who's to blame.

[Nomi Fry]

It might be Kenneth Branagh.

[Alex Schwartz]

Let's just blame him.

[Nomi Fry]

And so I am looking forward to our discussion today because we each brought a little bit of Hamlet to the table. Right. Little versions. We each have our little thing that we're gonna talk about. Right?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. I will happily start the sort of show and tell portion.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes, please do. Because I'm looking forward to.

What you're gonna share with us. I will just say that I watched the trailer for it. I've never watched it and I was like, God, I have to watch it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You do. This is Hamlet, or as it is sometimes known, Hamlet 2000. My father. I see my father, the king. Your father In My Mind's Eye.

Directed and adapted by the filmmaker Michael Almereda. It stars Ethan Hawke as Hamlet, who is a film student who's back from college because of the death of his father, who was the CEO of the Denmark Corporation, played by Sam Shepard. Sam Shepard is the ghost. His first time appearing to Hamlet is through a CCTV camera. Kyle MacLachlan is Uncle Claudius, which I love. McLachlan is like the most sinister looking. We've talked about him on our David lynch episode. He's the perfect guy to be Uncle Claudius. Diane Vanora as Gertrude. Liev Schreiber as Laertes. Very good. Julia Stiles, beautiful as Ophelia. And it's got so much going on. First of all, the choice of Hamlet as a film student corresponds a little bit to what I was saying about Chloe Zhao, which is that it really takes seriously cinema as medium. And Hamlet is always looking at screens. Whether it is the information from the ghost, the way he finds out certain key plot points is all through this sort of mechanisms of surveillance. So it's very contemporary in this way. His to be or not to Be occurs in a Blockbuster video. He's walking down the aisles and the funniest thing is that every single one of the little genre markers says action on it. Here's the rub. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must get a just pause.

And he's just going through the aisle. Sort of incredible. Sometimes it's in voiceover, sometimes he's sort of muttering to himself for who would bear the whips and scorns of time. He's wearing a little snow cap with flaps over the ears.

[Nomi Fry]

It's one of those Guatemalan hats. Woolen Guatemalan.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Big ear flaps with the strings coming down from each flap. And he just has that wounded, angry indecision. He's a perfect Hamlet. And Almureda, at every step, is kind of choreographing these wonderful set pieces. Whether it's in a fancy Manhattan apartment or sort of walking down a glass hallway. Everything is just so downbeat, evocative. It is easily, easily. And I really like Hamlet. It is easily my favorite Hamlet. Michael Almareda, you will always be famous to me.

[Alex Schwartz]

I saw it. I just haven't seen it in many, many years. But I remember being very into it. There's a scene in the Guggenheim. Yeah, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Naomi, do you have a favorite?

[Nomi Fry]

I do. Well, so I.

Was wondering which.

Version of Hamlet I should rewatch. And then Tom Stoppard died. My husband said, why don't you watch? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. It's some version of Hamlet, the play written by Stoppard and frist, staged in 1966, but then, of course, was made by Stoppard as well, directed by Stoppard as a movie in 1990. Now, the Stoppard play, which I've never seen it staged but I rewatched the movie, is a classic postmodern gambit, right? It's kind of switching the focus, kind of like turning the dial on Hamlet to these side characters, right? Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are the friends of Hamlet who are used by King Claudius to help conspire against Hamlet and take him off to England to be killed. Minor characters. And so it's turning the dial on them from minor to major. And it's also turning the dial from tragedy to comedy. And I remember watching this movie when it came out again, the 90s, being like, oh, this is smart. You know, this is like, I want to be smart. This is like, oh, it's postmodernism. It's like it's quoting the play, but it's actually about, you know, it's kind of like shifting the stakes of it, et cetera, et cetera. And then I, like, was like, okay, I guess I'll watch it. It'll probably be annoying. And I was like, okay, I love this.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Beautiful.

[Alex Schwartz]

There's nothing better than that.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes. First of all, Tim Roth, we love.

[Alex Schwartz]

To love, as we say frequently.

[Nomi Fry]

And Gary Oldman, so good in this movie. So charming, so funny. There is a scene where they talk about death and they're like, okay, what does it mean to be, to be dead? Basically?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? Nope. Nor do I. Really.

Silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead. Which should make all the difference.

Shouldn't.

[Nomi Fry]

Really. This is a stupid thing to say, but it really makes you think about the stakes of Hamlet.

By the stakes of what it means to be alive by kind of like shifting the perspective of it. Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Because why is that a stupid thing to say? No, it's like let's go big or go home. No, but it's like that's what it's all about on the pod.

[Nomi Fry]

It really makes you think about life and death.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay. Nomi.

[Nomi Fry]

No, I just think that it's like it's nice to think of the minor as major.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Mm. Alex, I know you kind of wanted to talk about some stage adaptations.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I mean, Hamlet is the most theatrical play ever written. It is a play that is obsessed with theater, that has theater at its very heart and center. The play that Hamlet stages, the mousetrap to catch the conscience of the king. Hamlet is constantly talking about acting. This is a play that is meant to be performed and indeed has been since it came out. You know, I would have loved to see 55 year old Sarah Bernhardt performing this thing in the 19th century in pantaloons. Exactly. What a scandal. That is exciting just to think about. But we do have some little gifties from the Past on YouTube. Here we have Richard Burton, who some people believe to have been the greatest Hamlet on stage. I mean, you know, let's just say in the 20th century. And this was a very famous production of Hamlet that was on Broadway in 1964. It was the longest running Hamlet in Broadway history and it was directed by the eminent Sir John Gielgud. So here's Richard Burton doing to be or not to be.

[Vincent Cunningham]

To be or not to be.

[Alex Schwartz]

That is the question whether it is.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

[Nomi Fry]

Or.

[Vincent Cunningham]

To take arms against a sea of.

[Alex Schwartz]

Troubles and by opposing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

End.

To die.

[Alex Schwartz]

To sleep no more, and by a.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks.

[Alex Schwartz]

So I really recommend checking this out on YouTube. There are many more clips. It's very beautiful and it also is exciting. This is a hot blooded Hamlet and I like that. One of the challenges, I think. Yes, Nomi, go for It I should.

[Nomi Fry]

Note, by the way, since this is an auditory medium rather than a visual medium, that Richard Burton is wearing a black V neck sweater with nothing on underneath.

[Alex Schwartz]

Tell him, Nomi.

[Nomi Fry]

Much like Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There'S a sound I haven't heard. Delta Burke on Designing Women. I swear to God, that's such a good one.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's a V necked Richard Burton giving it his all. You know, the thing that is, there's so many things that are brilliant about Hamlet, but one of the things that's brilliant about it, that's really, I would imagine, a challenge for an actor is that you have to convey thought as it moves. And that, you know, of course, Shakespeare is externalizing thought in this completely world shaking, amazing, brilliant way where Hamlet is deliberating and considering from the moment he knows and understands from his father's ghost that he's supposed to kill his uncle and take revenge, he's deliberating how to do it, what to do if the ghost is real, if it's just a phantasm meant to trick him. And then, of course, he's contemplating a different kind of action, whether or not to go on living and to be or not to be the most famous words in the English language and have to seem fresh and original. So I'm always interested when I see productions of Hamlet in how an actor makes that thought move. So there was a recent production of Hamlet I saw that really got me in that way that I really enjoyed. It's the director, Robert Icke, the English director, who's in his 30s, and he had mounted a production of Hamlet in England with Andrew Scott. So Andrew Scott was 40 when he played this role. He is magnetic in his intensity.

[Vincent Cunningham]

To be.

Or not to be.

That is the question.

Whether tis nobler in the mind.

To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing.

End them.

[Alex Schwartz]

And then what happened was the pandemic, our pandemic of 2020. And when the production came back and when it transferred to the United States, Ike made a decision to cast a much younger Hamlet. The actor, Alex Lothar, who's a really young guy, he seems young, he's in his early 20s. And he has this wiry, fidgety quality that reminds you that Hamlet is a college student.

[Nomi Fry]

So was he just like literally fidgety or like. I mean.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, it was. Yeah. He had a kind of kinetic quality, you know, and he's dealing with the death of his dad at this extremely tender age. And one huge problem for me with Hamlet. Always, always, always not a problem in a bad way, in a good way. Is the Ophelia character and his treatment of Ophelia. Why does this young woman get sacrificed for the sake of this greater scheme that doesn't involve her at all? Does it have to do with Hamlet's deep anger and distrust with women? Is Hamlet intending for this to happen? Did he love Ophelia? What is going on? And in the Alex Lothar version, there's sex on stage, you know, like there's some fire there. There's a real sense of attraction there. And there's also, it just reminded me of how messed up stuff is when you're in your early 20s. It's messed up.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

You can burn really hot and then go really cold even if your dad doesn't die in this crazy, terrible way. And what I liked about the Lothar production was just seeing a very young man wrestle with these questions and feeling him again to be human.

[Vincent Cunningham]

When we're back, is this 400 year old play more relevant now than ever? That's in a minute on Critics at Large from the New Yorker.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, global director of Vogue Runway and Vogue Business and host of the Run through podcast. Every Tuesday, join me for the latest fashion news like the shakeups of Balenciaga and Dior and what's trending in Paris and Milan. You'll also hear interviews with top designers from Marc Jacobs and and Rick Owens to Daniel Roseberry, Sarah Burton and many more. On Thursdays, Chloe Maul, editor of Vogue.com and Choma Nadi, head of editorial content at British Vogue, take you behind the scenes at Vogue and share their thoughts on fashion through the lens of culture. You'll hear interviews with some of your favorite stars like Julianne Moore, Pharrell Williams and celebrity stylist Law Roach. Join us to get your fashion and culture news twice a week. Listen to the Run through with Vogue every Tuesday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Among the many responses to Hamnet that have appeared and there have been truly many kind of all around the gamut, there was an op ed in the New York Times. The upshot of it was in the course of calling it like a Hamlet for the TikTok generation. It says every generation gets the Shakespeare it deserves. This op ed is by Drew Lichtenberg. I wonder whether that thing just about this generational analysis of Hamlet, does that speak to you and does it have anything to do with why we're so captivated by this? Again, very Old story.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, tell me if I'm wrong, Vincent, because I also read this op ed and my sense of it was that of course the implication that every generation gets the Shakespeare deserves is that the current generation does not deserve a very shape. Yeah, there's the image that accompanies this op ed is Shakespeare being rained upon by a kind of crown of rain clouds.

[Nomi Fry]

Poor Shakespeare.

[Alex Schwartz]

Poor Shakespeare. And the writer Drew Lichtenberg is annoyed. I think it's fair to say that Paul Mescal, as he says, grunts wordlessly, mopes sad eyed and sighs with inexpressible longing. That he's kind of this inarticulate, which is a surprising choice, gloomy, beefcakey guy. And he's not into it. And he's not into the biographical reading.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He calls it Mumblecore Shakespeare.

I saw this movie with my friend John Pilsen. He's a great photographer. He's also one of the best people to watch a movie with. And he brought to my recollection the essay by T.S. eliot. It's called Hamlet and His Problems.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And it's Eliot saying, you know, Hamlet's actually a failed artwork. And I won't recapitulate his arguments, most of which I disagree with. But it is a really good. The beginning is really interesting. Cause he's saying it's been kept alive, this play. And it has an inflated reputation because in the person of Hamlet, certain kinds of creatively minded critics are always writing themselves into it. You know that no matter who's reading it, they're reading themselves into it. And therefore it becomes better in their minds than it really is on the page. I disagree with the sort of end diagnosis of the play, but I think that's like. It's not just critics who do this. All of us do this. And that's actually why the play is good. The interpretation is part of the greatness of the play. So why is it that Hamlet is still relevant today?

[Nomi Fry]

I think it is about ambivalence and ambiguity. Like I don't think there is one way to read it. And I think that's why it's productive for reinterpretation.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, no, that why I think it endures is because every generation has its version of the incomprehensible. Like every. It's not just that death is always eluding us and ruining our consciousnesses and all these. But it's not just death. It's politics, it's society. Everybody has to deal with their own version of.

This does not make sense. And yet it Is one thing I've been wanting to ask you about is whether Hamlet is itself about a sort of crisis of masculinity.

And it just so happens that we are in 2025, in the middle of another crisis of masculinity on a totally societal scale. Does Hamlet speak to that for you at least today?

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, as directly as if it had been written into our times.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Like which I think is kind of crazy. Hamlet is talking to Horatio. We're in act one. We're very, very early in the play. He's talking to Horatio and Horatio is about to tell him that he saw the ghost of his father. And Horatio says, I saw him once. He was a goodly king. And Hamlet says he was a man. Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again, he was a man. This question of what is a man? What makes a man? What makes. It's said in the play like it's he was a king. No, what's better than a king is to be a man.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And all we hear about these days, I feel we hear about other things too. But a great deal of what we hear about is no one knowing what a man should be. And here is Hamlet. Who does know what a man should be. It's my dad. But he's gone. And now he doesn't know how to embody that for himself. That is why I see Hamlet in our times. I don't know if this strikes you guys as like totally off the mark or too cute and neat.

[Nomi Fry]

No, I mean, I think obviously like any kind of. It's not like a one to one. You're not saying this. You know, Shakespeare was talking about the manosphere like 400 years ago or whatever. I'm kind of saying that. But. Yes, but I do think there are resonances. The idea of not measuring up. Right. The idea of we used to have a sense back in the whatever are the good old days. Whether it's like when daddy was alive or when the make America great again of it. All. Right. Of we knew what men were. Men were men, women were women. You know, we weren't walking around bemoaning, you know, being fail sons essentially. Right. And I think to that the question of what is a man? That is an issue that we find endlessly fascinating and endlessly important. Because.

Men, not just men, women too. But the question of like man making the world and whether that ability to make the world is slipping or ascendant or whatever it may be, is a determining question how the world looks and so being given a text that we can look at, to think of the variety of ways it. It can go, that question can go is still more important than ever.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah. There is that generational thing of. That's how I've always read the shall not see his like again, like, there is an era of manhood that has passed. And like, you know, we talk about these statistics. Female students outnumbering male students at colleges and universities by like 3 to 2 these days. Men are more likely to lose, live with their parents, et cetera. Men die by suicide by increasing, increasing amounts. I will just say anecdotally, men don't even know how to dress anymore.

It's a mess out there.

[Alex Schwartz]

Just look at Richard Burton in his V neck for inspiration.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, that's right. And there is this dialectic when you talk about the grimmest things, even political assassination, there is this sense of where it's like, in the absence of any positive guidance about how to be a man, the imperative is just to act. You just gotta do stuff. You know, Laertes is more of a man of action than Hamlet. And Hamlet's thinking and moping is sort of feminized. In the text of the play, Claudius tells Hamlet that his grief is an unmanly grief. Right. That you gotta move on and you have to act. And we see all this sort of, that Today's conversations about violence seem so much to be about sort of misplaced action. In the absence of positive ways to be. In the absence of establishing a household or being able to find a first job, there are just these spasms of violence which we think of as maybe uniquely American, but we can also think about in this as a kind of lacking a ladder to manhood. All one can do is kind of act out.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. In that sense, I think Hamnet is a very liberal movie. Like, it's an answer to kind of the misplaced action. It's the idea of let us heal.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, feel sad and pick up your pen.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, pick up your pen and come to terms. Embrace your grief. Right. Embrace your grief. Instead of kind of like just striking out willy nilly at all directions, you know, just act without thinking. Think, write, reflect and feel better.

[Alex Schwartz]

And this is everything I hate about the movie.

[Nomi Fry]

Right. I'm not. This is not a value judgment.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm just saying I just wanted, in case anyone forgot, this is what it's.

[Nomi Fry]

Saying, you know, Instead, this is the. It's like a new man vibe. Right. It's not like, let's go back to toughing it Out.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. I guess I would say, you know, I find it comforting that this kind of nostalgist take on a man's place is at least as old as 1601, which is our. I think, our first known date of the performance of Hamlet. The deep misogyny in Hamlet 2, which is something that is. It's fascinating to contend with just the anger, the anger, the anger. And to let the anger play out and express itself and come to this resolution as it does, this very, very bloody resolution where no one can survive this situation.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

I do think. I really don't want to be like the story of Hamlet is the story of moving from darkness to light, you know, but there is something that happens in Hamlet that I do think is relevant to this. There is an absolute movement of the character and a transformation of the character that happens over the course of the five acts. And so you begin with a young man who's in turmoil and chaos. And by the end of the play, a transformation has taken place that allows Hamlet to achieve what I think we would call in modern terms, a real sense of self and a sense of cosmic order. That he is a part of the world that he had felt was turned upside down. And there was a moment in the final act of the play, in Act 5, Scene 1, Laertes arrives. There's about to be a big conflict. Hamlet has killed Polonius, Laertes father, Laertes sister Ophelia has drowned herself out of grief for Hamlet. And Hamlet identifies himself and he says, this is I, Hamlet the Dane. And I think if you're just seeing this play, you're like, yeah, we know, like, got it by now.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Thank you.

[Alex Schwartz]

But what he's really saying is, I know who I am. My father was Hamlet the Dane. He was king of Denmark. I am Hamlet the Dane. I am taking my rightful place. I am coming to bear accountability. And I think very consequently, when the play ends, these two men kill each other's enemies and then forgive each other. There is a sense of completion, of not letting these cycles continue. That is really something. And that is.

Like. Talk about a weeper. Hey.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And sort of maybe it's meta, too. It's like. He also asks Horatio to tell us that even a cautionary tale, that communication, that art making itself, is a guide through life. I know we, like, you know, most of us feel a certain way about the didactic, but Hamlet seems to see his own life at the end of it as a kind of guide to others.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He says, in this harsh world, draw thy breath in pain. To tell my story. And so the telling is another one of the is the thing, maybe.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, your telling is the thing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] critics. We'll see you next week.

[Alex Schwartz]

Famous Amos. It's a brand synonymous with chocolate chip cookies. It's also the creation of my dad, Wally Amos. When he passed away last year, I set out to understand how he became one of the most famous black men in America and how his life and our family unraveled. From Vanity Fair, this is Tough Cookie, the Wally Famous Amos Story, available wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nomi Fry]

From PRX.