Hamnet (2025)

Based on the 2020 historical fiction novel by Maggie O’Farrell, this award-winning drama tells the story of a young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his marriage to Agnes (Jessie Buckley), the daughter of a forest witch that he meets while serving as the Latin tutor for her half-brothers (the sons of her now-deceased father and his second wife, who Agnes now lives with). The lovestruck couple start a family of their own, with three children: Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and twins Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lynes), but because Agnes was foretold to only have two kids, she becomes convinced that Judith will die. While William is away working at the theater in London, Judith catches the Plague, but Hamnet begs for her to be spared and ends up dying instead before William can make it home. Both William and Agnes deal with the overwhelming grief of losing a child separately. William ends up channeling it into writing the tragedy of Hamlet, a process Agnes doesn’t understand until she sees it on the stage. But before things get sad, they get sexy. Paul bangs Jessie on a table, and later when she’s giving birth, Jessie’s nipples slip out of her nightgown and we get a quick peek at the her period-appropriate merkin. To be hard or not to be hard, that is the question!