The annual Murray Shakespeare Festival returns to Lovett Auditorium this March with performances from traveling companies from Kentucky Shakespeare and Tennessee Shakespeare, as well as other events celebrating the famous playwright, poet and actor.
This year’s festivities will begin on March 3 with an exploration of a recent work on the Bard, Maggie O’Farrell’s novel “Hamnet” and the Academy Award-nominated film of the same name from director Chloe Zhao.
Both the film and the novel dramatize the playwright’s life, taking what is known about Shakespeare’s life with his wife Anne Hathaway – called Agnes in the film – and their children around the time that he wrote “Hamlet,” one of his most celebrated works.
“Hamnet: Fact or Fiction,” a talk led by Murray State University professor and chair of the Murray Shakespeare Festival Rusty Jones, will try to separate what’s really known about Shakespeare’s life and what’s been invented.
Jones said, that while there are some historical inaccuracies or creative liberties taken, he thinks people should go see it.
“I think it's lyrical and beautiful and heartbreaking, and people should definitely seek it out,” he said. “I think it's beautiful.”
Jones said the film largely focuses on the domestic life of Shakespeare and his family, focusing on Hathaway, the death of one their children from the Bubonic plague and the heartbreak that moves him to write “Hamlet.” His talk will discuss the plot of both works in-depth, drilling down into what’s believed to be known about the real Shakespeare and contemporary history during his life.
Jones said not much is known about the private, day-to-day life of Hathaway – who did go by two names, he said – or her children, so he does not criticize the filmmakers for being speculative.
“We don't know that much about Anne Hathaway, so it's taking a kind of speculative turn on what her life could have been like being on her own so much in a rural town, with such a problematic life surrounding her with the plague and with the economic conditions,” said Jones. “We hear a fair amount of the despair of Shakespeare on the death of Hamnet. We don't hear that much about his wife's despair. And I think that's a really interesting thing to look into.”
Jones said one of the more interesting things the film depicts is a reconstruction of a 17th century production of “Hamlet.”
“They get the experience in London of playgoing very right,” he said. “[Agnes] comes to a production of ‘Hamlet’ at the Globe somewhere around the year 1600 or so.”
Jones said he felt that the film wanted to show Shakespeare using the play “Hamlet” to process the death of his own child, a narrative he’s a little suspect of.
“I think that the play that I see more Shakespeare working through the death of his child is ‘Twelfth Night,’ where twins – [like] Judith and Hamnet were twins – are separated. They think the other one is dead, and they come back together again at the end of ‘Twelfth Night’ for a beautiful reunion that I think Shakespeare wishes his twins could have had.”
Jones will host “Hamnet: Fact or Fiction” on Tuesday, March 3rd, at 6 p.m. in the Calloway County Public Library.
Later in the week, the festival will host a Tennessee Shakespeare production of “Romeo and Juliet” and a Kentucky Shakespeare production of “The Tempest.”
“Romeo and Juliet” can be seen on Wednesday, March 4, and Thursday, March 5, at 10 a.m. “The Tempest” will take the stage on Friday, March 7, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, March 8, at 2 p.m.
Both plays, to be produced onstage at Lovett Auditorium on the main campus of Murray State University, will be free and open to the public.
