A movie about Shakespeare and a musical piece by Bach started me thinking about how much better the world is today than it was not so long ago. Who would want to return to the days of routinely high childhood mortality and ubiquitous elderly blindness? How lucky we are to live in the modern world!
If you see the current movie “Hamnet” be prepared to cry. Peter DeBruge of Variety described the film as “so emotionally raw as to be almost excruciating at times.” Here art refuses to look away from grief.
The film dramatizes the family life of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway (in the film called Agnes) as they deal with the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet to bubonic plague.
As Hamnet dies, Shakespeare’s mother who herself lost a child says, “What is given may be taken away, at any time. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children’s hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play.
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