Arts & Culture

'Hamnet' is a Shakespearean tearjerker that pulls no punches

WSHU | By Stephen Thompson,

Published December 3, 2025 at 7:46 AM EST

Hamnet tells the fictionalized account of the lives of William Shakespeare and his wife, played by Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. They fall in love, have children, suffer an unspeakable tragedy. When their only son dies, it creates a rift in their marriage and inspires Will to write one of his greatest works–Hamlet. Directed by Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), it does everything it can to make you cry a whole lot.

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Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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Aisha Harris

Aisha Harris is a host of Pop Culture Happy Hour.

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Bob Mondello

Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.

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