Mariam-Supplemental: Hamnet

 It's been a couple of weeks since I watched Hamnet and a lot of it has faded into images flashing in my memory, but here goes the review. 

First, I went with Kelsey to the theater with the heated recliner seat and the good food. Here are my nachos:

I also copied Kelsey and brought a blanket which is genius. The row ahead of us was booked from one end to the other with older ladies. Our guess was that it was a book club. The rest of the theater was empty.

This book/movie is really about the wife of Shakespeare, Anne Shakespeare  nee Anne Hathaway or Agnes Shakespeare, pronounced Ahn-yis in the movie. It's highly speculative around the reasons why she didn't live in London with her husband and the death of her son Hamnet. Please see Kelsey's post for a summary of those events. 

It is very easy to get swept away in the narrative of the movie with its modern romantic concepts, the tragedy, and the amazing visuals. I had to remind myself afterwards that it was fiction and that this story could be about any couple and the death of their child and not actually based on reality. Anyway, there was audible sniffling through the second half of the movie and I think both of us and the whole book club cried. 

Afterwards, I was so emotional about the whole story that I did a bit of research and it relieved me to learn a few of these things:

Hamlet, the play is based off of an old legend that floated around history for a long time prior to it landing under Shakespeare's pen. Thus it is not about his son. Hamnet Shakespeare could have been named after the hero of that old legend or maybe not, since it was a common-ish name back then. But the play was not named after Hamnet Shakespeare.

Agnes actually probably did live shortly for a while with Shakespeare in London.

A handfast was really a real thing back then and so perhaps the marriage wasn't as shotgun as it feels to us now. 

I won't go into the explanation for why Shakespeare's marriage was estranged or not because there's not a lot of evidence, too much modern perspective, and many possible explanations. But here's one theory about that "second best bed" he willed her that turned my assumptions on its head. The second best bed was probably the marriage bed as the first best bed would have been traditionally the guest bed. It is possible he was being sweet and sentimental. Well. Who would have thought old Bill had it in him?

We are far adrift from the movie, which I guess is the point I'm making. 

But back to the movie. Parts I liked:

The visuals: the movie opens with the forests of England and then zooms down into the roots of those gigantic old trees in which Agnes is curled up and it just went from there. Beautiful. 

Shakespeare having artistic genius frustrations was great. I'm not genius but I am a bit artistic and gosh I've felt that way so many times although I don't indulge in it--most likely because my problems couldn't be fixed by moving to London and I know it.  (Credits to Kelsey for the movie pictures. Thank you!)

Kelsey wanted to see the flea but I reallllyyy wanted to see the blue beads the flea travelled on. I don't know why that is so vivid in my memory. Here's what we got:

The part about Hamnet's afterlife being the stage set for Hamlet tore at me. This kid in this everlasting play, again and again, alone.

I think it tells you something that I can feel the weight of the sadness of the movie again just by writing this post. 

In summary, this movie was not really about Shakespeare or his wife and I bet he would have approved. 

Kelsey - Hamnet movie adaptation

 

Hi! My name is Kelsey and being the next guest blogger after Donnie is intimidating.

 

I have a long history of saying I hate Shakespeare. And I stand by that claim…with two exceptions.

 

1.      Sleep No More. An immersive theater experience loosely based on Macbeth. I could write several blog posts on that alone.

2.      Works ABOUT Shakespeare. I’ll be honest I can only think of two but I enjoyed both. I read Will in the World a few years ago on Missy’s recommendation. And Hamnet.

I read Hamnet a few years ago as well because I was running a bookstagram at the time and the book was very popular. I loved it. But the reason we are here today is because the movie came out. I also reread the book to prepare.

Mariam and I snuck out of work early the week before Christmas so we could go see it. The theater was mostly empty except for a handful of retired women who had their tissues ready to go. We did not which was a mistake for sure.

 

We’ve got Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare. I could just tell he was going to be perfect and he was.

And Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway. I don’t think I have ever seen her in anything before so I had few expectations but I do think she blew it away.

Let me say that Hamnet (especially the book but also the movie) is actually mostly Agnes’ story. In the book Shakespeare is never named and the movie for the most part stuck with that except for twice. Agnes calls him Will once and her brother asks where William Shakespeare lives. I was a little disappointed especially because they made it until the last 30 or so minutes.

The movie goes chronologically unlike the book so it starts with Shakespeare and Agnes meeting. He’s immediately enthralled. And honestly, she kind of is too.

There is a scene where he is working up the courage to propose they be handfast and it’s so funny and sweet. He nervously paces in circles around her and a pile of manure. She ends up pregnant and his family is very upset but obviously they have to get married.

 

It was around this point during the movie that I realized I should take pictures for Mariam for the blog. And then I took so many because the movie was just so beautiful. Every shot was perfect. I think the director and the cinematographer need to work together forever.

 

The next few years of their lives are sped through fairly quickly. They have their first daughter, Susanna. Shakespeare starts feeling unfulfilled with his work.

 

Agnes is pregnant again but she realizes he needs to be in London. So she sends him off with the plan being that they will join him eventually. She is surprised when she has twins, Hamnet and Judith, because she has always seen herself on her death bed with two children standing next to her. Judith almost doesn’t survive at birth but she pulls through.

 

We then jump to when the twins are 11 years old. They are so cute.

 

Shakespeare is home infrequently but for the most part everyone seems happy. He wants them to move to London with him but Agnes is concerned about Judith as she has always been sickly.

 

In the book, there is an entire chapter where you follow a flea that brings the plague to the UK. I was so curious if they were going to incorporate this into the movie. They did, in probably the best way they could. Unfortunately, the only picture I have is blurry lol.

 

They did it with a puppet show that Shakespeare sees while he is in London. Oh, this is one of the main differences between the book and movie. We follow Shakespeare a bit more. We see him in London twice. We see a bit of him dealing with his grief. Which leads you to probably guess where this is going. Judith gets sick. Agnes works tirelessly to save her. Hamnet switches places in bed to trick death to take him instead.

It’s heartbreaking. I probably cried before this moment but I think this really was the start of the pretty steady stream of tears. At some point in all of this someone sends word to London that Judith is dying and Shakespeare is rushing home. He runs in and sees Judith up and about and is so thrilled. Then he turns and sees his boy is dead. More tears.

 

The movie showed Hamnet dying by having him on his fathers stage for Hamlet. It comes back into play later. But he is alone and scared and calling for mama and I hate it.

More time passes. I was a little unclear of how much but enough for Shakespeare to have had a huge house built. But he comes home. I think him and Agnes have their first real conversation since Hamnet’s death.

He wants her and their daughters to move into the new house but thinks they won’t want to because this is the last place Hamnet was alive. She tells him she knows he is thinking that but also says something like “He isn’t here. I’ve looked. We will both probably spend the rest of our lives looking for him.” Seeing these two broken people and their almost broken marriage was hard. The misplaced anger she has was very well done and I think often accurate.

Something I haven’t really mentioned (except for one brief hint) is that this story has an element of magical realism. Agnes has kind of premonitions. Or inklings of the future. I’m not totally sure, it’s never fleshed out in any way. But when she touches someone’s hand she gets images or visions or something. When she first meets Shakespeare I think she says she sees fields.

 

At this point in the movie he puts his hand into hers and asks “What do you see now?” and she looks at him and says “Nothing.” More tears. Obviously.

More time jumps. He’s in London and basically never comes home. Agnes finds out he wrote a tragedy named Hamlet. She is upset and goes to London with her brother to find him and to see it.

 

She starts out angry about the whole thing. Then Shakespeare comes out as the ghost and suddenly she gets it.

They kept doing this shot of her in the front of the crowd and she is often turned a different way than everyone else.

Oh, the actor that was playing Hamlet was the real life brother of the actor playing Hamnet. Brilliant move. As he is dying she reaches out to hold his hand.

 Then everyone else does as well.

 

Hamlet dies and she looks at Shakespeare.

Remember how when Hamnet was dying he was on that stage? He’s back.

And this time his mama is there with him. Remember how before she moved to the new house she says “he isn’t here”? In the book, as she watches the play she keeps repeating “He is here. He is here.” Both are brutal and I think the movie did it well without having her internal dialogue.

Literally crying again. I did not expect this post to be this long. The movie is so good. If you are okay with sad movies I definitely think you should see this. Okay goodbye, thank you got hosting me Missy and Mariam 😊. 

 

 

Mariam-Henry IV Part I-⭐⭐⭐

This story is the sequel to Richard II. Remember, Henry Bolingbroke the cousin of King Richard who accidentally started a rebellion and became king?

Well he's old now and known as Henry IV. 

He has an adult son named Henry, who we call Hal because that's way different than Henry, and who is squandering his uneasily acquired prince-hood away in lower class bars and inns. Sometimes for fun, he robs his friends in the middle of the night.  

Henry Percy, is the Earl of Northumberland. He's this guy from Richard II, who was a friend of Henry IV, and helped get rid of Richard II:

Henry Percy has an adult son named Harry Percy, who Shakespeare nicknamed Hotstuff, I mean Hotspur, because Henry Percy and Harry Percy would be SO confusing. All the dads have eyes on Hotspur. Henry IV is worried Hotspur is a better potential monarch than his own son Hal and Henry Percy is hopeful that his son could be a potential next monarch. 

Meanwhile Hotspur:

He's rolling around in the rushes with his wife. But this is WAY better than Hal who is rolling around with...not his wife. 

I'm convinced. Make Hotspur king.

Anyway, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland USED to be friends with Henry IV and helped him become king but Henry IV is apparently not grateful enough. Among many things, Henry IV didn't ransom a kidnapped Edmund Mortimer, brother-in-law of Hotspur, from the Welsh so the Welsh forced him to marry the daughter of the rebel leader. 

The daughter of the rebel leader speaks only Welsh and Mortimer only English. They were forced to marry but instantly found true love. Love needs no language. 

So like, Edmund seems really happy to have been kidnapped and forced into wedlock:

but Hotspur and dad are outraged. Down with the king. 

Hal meanwhile is at the pub.

I'm not entirely certain what happens, but Hal has a wake up call and suddenly realizes Hotspur is going take the crown and he arms up, also arms up his old friend Falstaff and leads the army out to put down the new rebellion. 

Hotspur realizes he actually just wants to go home and asks his uncle to negotiate. Uncle knows he at the very least would be executed if they try to negotiate out of this. Hotspur asks bravely, "Have you considered begging?" Hehehehe

Hal kills Hotspur and long live the king. 

At the end Henry IV exclaims, "Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke" which made me laugh. A little rich of him, no? But also he's gotten old trying to cement the legitimacy of his crown so I guess he couldn't resist. Then he offs the heads of all of his old friends.

And so continues the saga of the War of the Roses. Shakespeare wrote at least 7 more plays about this 100 year long war so stay tuned.

Oh yeah, note about Falstaff. He was old and lost and the butt of a prince's pranks. He should have been funny and outrageous, enjoying life. He was a fan favorite in Shakespeare's time but I think Hollow Crown missed the mark on this one. One joke of his did land: "Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life." I cackled. 

We're going chronologically straight into Henry IV Part II next. 

Mariam-Supplemental: Onion Pottage

 I set the bar extremely low for my first Shakespeare dish. Pottage is a soup or stew, extremely versatile, and the kind of recipe that's really just "this and that". My favorite kind of recipe. 

I also have a copy of Dining with Shakespeare that Missy got for me and I have been a little intimidated. Between the sometimes unfamiliar ingredients and the recipes often including cooking an entire animal, I just couldn't get started. The vegetable dishes often seemed like sides not mains and bread was a project I wasn't ready to take on. 

But soup I can do and calling it pottage it gave it Elizabethan authenticity. Plus, I think it has been like 23 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

It starts with browning onions in butter. I don't have a picture of the browned onions because they were beautiful and I walked away for one second and then they weren't. But it still tasted fine.

Then you add beef broth. I didn't have that so I added vegetarian bouillon and water. Boil for a bit. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

Serve over bread. It should have been French bread but I didn't have any, so I toasted some pita bread and crumbled it into the soup like crackers. It soaked it up and made it kind of stew-y. Missy said that during Elizabethan times, there was a type of unleavened, cracker type of bread that was used like a plate for thick stews or pretty much anything else. I felt like pita bread was close enough.

It was a good nice pottage. Hot and filling especially with the bread. 

I may try mince pie next. The real stuff with mince meat and orange peel. I am brave and adventurous. Perhaps.

Missy - Supplemental - Mushrooms

I quite like cooking. I also am into history and experimental archeology and historical reenactment. I therefore have a few historically themed cookbooks. 

Apropos of this project is my Dining With William Shakespeare by Madge Lorain. 

This is a cookbook featuring a number of feast menus containing dishes recipes and ingredients mentioned or eaten in the works of Shakespeare. 

It grew out of a theatrical dinner party and turned into a very nicely researched historical cookbook anthology. 

I am vegetarian and that makes a great deal of the book merely academically interesting BUT not all of it. 

Last week I made pickled mushrooms. These were used as pickles are now-a-days, and also as a salad during the winter when fresh vegetables were tricky. 

For the menu I referenced they were in the first appetizer spot. 

It wanted fresh mushroom picked under a certain moon phase, and I very much doubt theses were that, but I did find them easily and felt safe eating them.  

They get cut up and boiled in salty water then quickly rinsed.

I’m very happy to get to use my long pepper here. 

Normally when I make pickled anything I start with a premade pickling spice mix, but this time I had a very specific and historical mix to create. 

It was mostly made up of pumpkin pie spices like nutmeg and mace and cloves. 

It also called for black pepper corns. 

I however have long pepper. 

Long pepper was the pepper of Europe from the time of Rome on down. 

It’s a little hotter and a lot more flavorful. It reminds me of nutmeg(ish) so imagine black pepper and allspice had a baby that leaned spicy. It’s great!

By the 1600s this was considered an old fashioned and out of favor staple, having been replaced by modern black pepper. 

I far prefer the flavor of long pepper however so in it went. 

This part of the process filled me with hope and optimism. This spice mix smelled so good. It’s the best smelling pickling spice I have ever encountered. 

The next part was weird for me. 

These are pickled in white wine. I normally pickle in vinegar and don’t drink alcohol so I didn’t even have any white wine. 

Happily my mom had some so I used hers and then let the whole concoction sit in the basement near the washing machine for a week. 

Then I opened them up and took a piece for me and a piece for my husband and gave it a go. 

Hmmmm

Very wine-y and almost squeaky. 

Lots of spice but mostly sour wine-y spices. 

Meh

They are edible and might even appeal to someone who likes pickles and mushrooms and wine. If you are that person let me know. I’d like a 3rd opinion here. 

I will be trying that spice mix next time I pickle red onions but definitely I will go back to vinegar. 

I’m going keep trying some of the Shakespeare recipes here for supplemental entries. 

UPDATE 

Important updates from the field: my friend Matt (who likes pickles/mushrooms/wine) tried them and said they were good. 

Woo!

Keep an eye out for those fairies y’all.

 

"You demi-puppets that by moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms."

The Tempest

Missy- Henry IV pt 1 ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

 This play for me is a bridge play. The next one is also a bridge play. They are useful connectors between Richard II which I love and Henry V which I love. 

They don’t have a ton going for them except for some fun characters like Falstaff and Henry Percy. 

In this play we see the old and insecure Henry IV, who in the last play was Bolingbrook,  struggle with national insecurity and a disappointing heir. 

His disappointing heir Henry V, here called Princess Hal, hangs out with a bad crowd and gets up to lawless self indulgence. Hal says this is so that when later he ‘reforms’ the world will stand amazed. Henry IV sees too much deposed Richard in his son.

King Henry IV admires young Henry Percy, called hotspur,  and wishes that his Henry were more like that Henry. 

Unfortunately Henry Percy does what Henry Bolingbrook did and throws a rebellion. So the King has to put him down. 

To prove himself an honorable heir, prince Hal takes on his rival and kills him. 

Henry IV pt 1 is a pretty light-on-plot play with some great characters and good lines. 

Henry Percy, when played well, is engaging and hot headed and captivating. 

Some of the wives and women are interesting. 

But really this play is all about Falstaff. 

Falstaff is irredeemable and funny. He’s full of drunken failure and cowardice and lovability. 

I’ve seen him played funny and I’ve seen him played risible but in the Hollow Crown he is pitiable. 

He is old and fat and corrupt and a tragic father figure for Hal who mostly has inward focused Bolingbrook and his disappointment to contend with.

Hal knows he’s about to leave the world of frivolity behind and regrets it. You always feel that.

Hiddleston does a wonderful job of portraying it.

Inevitably everyone winds up on the battlefield to move into their next incarnations. 

Henry IV is frail and sick. 

Hotspur is noble and mislead. 

Falstaff lies to gain rewards. 

They Hal proves he’s got some Henry in him as the battle of Shrewsberry is won. 

Henry IV pt 1 3.5 stars for being a bridge

Mom score - 0 for no moms