Shadowing Practice: The Hidden GENIUS Of Hamnet - Learn English Speaking with Video
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What if I told you that Hamnet is genius, not just for the story, but for the hidden details that director Chloe Zhao carefully put into every scene?
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For instance, how Agnes wears red throughout the entire film, setting her apart from the black and white costumes worn by the common folk,
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signifying how different she is from everybody else, and how, after Hamnet's death, her costume changes to a brown one,
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signifying her grief and despair before changing back to red at the climax of the film
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when she regains her hope once again.
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These touches are deliberately placed by the filmmakers, and once you see them, you can't unsee them.
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And once you notice them, you can't help but wonder why.
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What are the filmmakers trying to say with these touches?
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Let's dive into the deeper meaning of Hamnet together.
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First off, Hamnet features lots of scenes set around tables, like this table in Agnes's house, which she returns to after meeting William for the first time.
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We see it again in a flashback Agnes has of her mother teaching her and her brother how to work with plants.
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Then this table at William's house, where he has dinner with his family and later tells them of his love for Agnes.
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Then we have this table here with pitchforks above the fireplace that's featured when Shakespeare goes to London for the first time,
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and then when Hammett and Judith trade places for a day, and then when William goes back to London after Hamnet's death.
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One detail I love about this set is how the pitchforks above the fireplace reinforce themes from the story.
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Chloe Zhao uses this set a lot for scenes where Shakespeare must leave his family and go back to London.
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It's almost like William and Agnes represent the pitchforks here.
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Agnes wants to stay close to her family and the forest, and William has to go to London to pursue his theater career.
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William exits stage left in both scenes where he leaves for London, and Agnes seems to move right in both of these scenes.
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They're moving in opposite directions, and it becomes a source of conflict when William's not there for Hamnet's death later on.
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Speaking of tables, it is a table where Agnes and Shakespeare have sex for the first time.
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Why not out in the woods?
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Why a table of all places?
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Then we have the scenes where Shakespeare sits at a table and writes his plays.
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In one early scene, we watch him write the famous second scene in Act II of Romeo and Juliet.
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Then this scene where William unravels in front of Agnes, featuring one long take that goes on for almost three whole minutes with no cuts.
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I started my video talking about tables because I think it touches on one of the core messages of the film.
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Hamnet is about so many things, but one theme that seems to come up over and over again is one of legacy, particularly what gets passed down from parent to child.
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For example, when Agnes comes back into her house after meeting William, we see Joan swimming with the girls at the table,
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while the boys write on parchment paper, perhaps practicing their Latin.
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This scene has a stark contrast between a flashback Agnes has
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of her mother sitting at the same table with Bartholomew and her teaching them how to make medicine from plants.
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There's love and tenderness in that scene, which is so different from the cold, detached feel of this earlier scene with Joan.
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Now, look at this dinner scene with William's family.
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His father hits him and berates him, despite the fact William works to pay off his debts.
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Contrast that scene with this one of William and his family sitting at the table preparing apples, possibly, for some sort of delightful pastry.
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There's love and playfulness and color in this scene.
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The contrast could not be more stark.
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Finally, when Hamden and Judith trade places for the day, they come downstairs and see their grandmother polishing silver plates, cups, and candle holders at the table.
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She tells them to calm down and behave like gentlewomen and gentlemen.
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They then burst into laughter and join their mother and sister at the table in the other room to start peeling apples.
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Why isn't their grandmother with her daughter-in-law or granddaughter here?
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She's alone at the table in darkness polishing silverware.
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Meanwhile, Agnes and Susanna sit in a bright room making delicious pastries.
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It seems like Chloe's using tables to show what parents pass on to their children and how this shapes who they are.
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One tangible example of this is the connection between the scene where Agnes
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and William get busy and the scene with their children gathering around the table.
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What's on the table and surrounding surfaces as Agnes and William start to, you know, apples.
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Cool.
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Now what is William's family preparing at the table later in the movie?
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Apples again.
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Rewind a little and we see apples again on the table when William first leaves for London and says goodbye to Agnes.
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Also, apples tie into Hamlet the play in an important sense as the king is poisoned while sleeping in his orchard.
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After William and Agnes consummate their love on this apple-ridden table, she gets pregnant.
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This is the start of their family right here.
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To me, it almost seems like Chloe's using apples as a metaphor for legacy as well.
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We've all heard the phrase, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, signifying how children can be very much like their parents.
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This is one of the central themes of the film.
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William, right after he has his first child, experiences a profound sadness that's connected to his father.
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This scene where he makes gloves with his dad
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and the one after where he writes over candlelight in distress showcases this well.
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He takes some abuse from his dad in this early scene before deciding, you know what, I'm stronger and younger than this idiot and I'm gonna leave because I can.
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The following scene where William gets drunk while writing is one of the best in the film.
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He talks about how he is a violent and dangerous man.
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He says this right after he puts his father up against a wall and tells him to never hit him again.
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I read this scene as he's afraid that he's just like his father, who hits him many times in the film.
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The wound we see on William's head at the start of the film is from his father most likely as well.
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So when he has this outburst, I feel like he scares himself and questions whether he's actually a good man.
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questions whether he's just like his father.
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Chloe puts even more emphasis on this theme with all the childbirth scenes she puts in the film.
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One where Agnes goes into the woods to give birth to Susanna
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and another very intense scene where she gives birth to twins in her new house.
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Agnes in this scene struggles with the idea that she will be just like her mother as well who died in childbirth.
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She, for a moment, believes she's going to die
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while giving birth Just like her mom it's funny
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because running parallel to this theme of children trying to be
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different from their parents Runs one of kids turning out exactly like them we see this in William
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and Agnes's children They are 100% their parents children
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We see the girls captivated at their mothers teaching them how to work with plants to create medicine and Hamnet
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Captivated at the idea of working at the theater with his father.
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They're joyful kids We see this again with Agnes, Bartholomew, and their mother, who teaches them how to make medicine from plants as well.
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Agnes' mother is a beautiful soul who lives a lot differently from the people of her time.
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Agnes ends up becoming just like her, a forest witch, as William's mom calls her.
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Ironically, it seems Agnes, Bartholomew, and her mother are happier than everybody else of that time.
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William's parents and Agnes's mother represent two polar opposite worldviews.
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For example, after Agnes and Bartholomew visit William and his parents for the first time, they have this exchange.
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What would our mother say to us if we were afraid or uncertain?
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To live with our hearts open.
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To shut it not in the dark, but to turn it to the sun.
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This exchange happens right after Bartholomew expresses fear about William's upbringing, saying, He's dead quiet in that. In where?
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The house.
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It's clear that William's family is not a family of love or hope.
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His father constantly berates him, telling him he's useless and a waste of space.
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His mother takes one look at Agnes and says she's a forest witch, and that I'd rather you went to sea than marry this witch.
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We later find out that William's mother lost a few children to the plague.
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Two babies and one seven-year-old.
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We understand how someone like her could, to use Agnes's words, shut her heart in the dark.
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Hamnet takes place in a dark time.
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The plague is everywhere in London in the film, as seen by the carts full of body bags that William walks past in certain scenes.
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You can understand why people living amongst so much death could feel such despair.
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Remember, it's only when William meets Agnes that his life starts to change.
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Why is he attracted to her?
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I think it's because she's so different from everybody else.
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Let's talk about costume design throughout the film.
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If you didn't already notice, Agnes wears a red dress in basically every scene.
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After Hamna dies though, she wears a brown dress for about 15 minutes of the film, until she follows William to London to see his play.
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I think Agnes' red dress ties into what she says about turning your heart to the sun, in moments of fear or uncertainty.
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It's my strong feeling that Agnes' red costume design is meant to represent her as the sun itself.
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When William tells Agnes he wants to marry her, he walks around her in a circle multiple times, touching her shoulder as he walks past.
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The first thing
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that came to mind watching this is how this choreography makes it seem like Agnes is the sun that William orbits around.
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William's seen writing Romeo and Juliet while falling in love with Agnes, and in that famous play,
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Romeo calls Juliet the sun and tells her to arise and kill the envious moon.
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The famous phrase from Hamnet is that we must turn our hearts towards the sun, right?
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Well, right before William and Agnes get married, she tells him Look at me.
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what she does, turning around to do so.
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At the end of the film, during the play, as William walks toward the side of the stage, she tells him to Look at me.
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So he literally turns to look at her, the sun of his life, which directly ties into this famous phrase we hear in the movie.
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Let's compare Agnes' costume design with William's parents and family.
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His family doesn't wear any color at all, opting instead for black and white clothing.
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The village they live in is pretty colorless as well, which contrasts sharply with the bright colors of the forest and gardens around Agnes' family home.
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It feels like we're comparing something that's alive with Agnes and her family with something that's dead with William's family.
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One last thing about costumes.
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William wears this jacket here that has all these perforations in it, almost like someone's poked holes in his jacket with a sword.
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We see him practicing the sword a lot with his son Hamnet, and we see a big sword fight later in the play that's very important.
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I got the sense that it might signify how much people have cut William in his life, poking him full of holes, trying to bring him down.
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William is a wounded man in the film.
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He literally has a wound on his forehead when we first see him teaching the boys Latin.
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It's a wound that Agnes helps him mend with herbal medicine.
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I believe this is a metaphor for what Agnes does to William in general.
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She mends him, changing his life.
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Hamnet may be about legacy, yes, but it's also about change and how art and love can catalyze change in people.
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It's also about radical hope in a dark, dark world and how being hopeful can be a rebellious act in and of itself.
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It's interesting because just like Agnes saves William, he saves her in her moment of deepest despair at the climax of the film.
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Throughout the movie, Chloe plays around with imagery of darkness and abyss.
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In the first few shots of the film, Agnes sleeps next to a dark hole in the ground in the forest.
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After Susanna is born, there's a scene where William swims in the nearby river, and in one shot, he sinks down into the dark abyss below.
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In another scene, when William visits Agnes in the woods, He stops right in front of this big dark hole in the ground
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while talking to her a piece of scene Choreography and camera framing that I don't think was unintentional
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Not to mention what Agnes tells William she sees when she touches his hand.
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I saw landscape, tunnels and oceans, this deep dark black void.
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Many scenes in Hamnet are very dark as well, like when William sits down to write his plays, or after Hamnet's death as the family has dinner around the table,
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or when William speaks with Agnes here in their room, or when William ponders suicide
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and stands over the dark ocean below him reciting the famous to be or not to be speech.
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Then finally we have the deep dark black doorway that's cut in the middle of this beautiful set dressing in Hamlet,
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a visual callback to the deep dark black void in the forest that Agnes sleeps next to.
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Earlier in the movie Agnes, I think, falls in love with William after tells her the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
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There are many callbacks to this story throughout Hamnet.
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In the story, Orpheus loses his wife Eurydice to a snakebite on their wedding day
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and journeys to the underworld to save her and bring her back to the surface.
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Hades allows it on the condition that she must follow behind him
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and he must not look back or else she'll be trapped in the underworld forever.
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At the end of the film, much like Eurydice, Agnes follows William to London for the first time.
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When she sees him on stage and he turns to walk to the back, she tells him to look at me, and he does,
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which I think is a callback to Orpheus turning around to look at his wife while journeying to the surface.
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So, what saves Agnes in the end?
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I believe the same things many others have expressed about the ending.
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The fact that William uses this play to process his own grief, and that this play ensures Hamnet lives on in some way and honors his memory.
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She appreciates that, but I also think
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that somehow she remembers what her mother told her to do when she feels afraid or uncertain.
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To live with our hearts open, to shut it not in the dark, but to turn it to the sun.
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She motions to her heart as she sees Hammond walk through the dark door, a reference, I think, to this beautiful phrase from her mother about living with our hearts open.
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This creed describes our world.
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It is a brutal, unforgiving world, filled with pain.
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Most people shut their heart in this darkness, becoming bitter.
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I believe Hamlet has a motif of sheep that it uses to express this point.
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William's mother says this at the start of the film.
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Latin for boys who will be naught but sheep farmers.
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It is the putting on a bed.
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Joan asks Agnes where she was at the start of the movie and she says, Where have you been?
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I was in the field helping Bartholomew, newborn lamb is unwell.
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Many times in frames of certain shots we see sheep and people working with sheepskin around Williams house
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Not to mention that gloves and glove making the type of business
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that Williams father has were made out of sheepskin in these days We know
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that sheep are often used as a metaphor for people following the herd
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and being like everybody else I think Chloe is trying to
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show just how common shutting your heart in the dark really is how easy it is to be the person
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that society expects you to be.
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At the end of the film, a banner unravels outside Shakespeare's theater.
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It reads, A Latin phrase meaning,
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Meaning that many human beings act how society expects them to act.
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We're all actors at the end of the day.
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Someone who's very much not concerned with what society thinks of her is Agnes.
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She, for most of the movie, decides to not live how the people of that time lived.
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She also, with help from her mother, decides to not shut her heart in darkness and keep her heart open instead.
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Chloe Zhao, I think, is trying to show just how unique it really is to have hope in a dark world and keep your heart open.
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And finally, she shows how this rule can transform us in moments of intense grief and despair if we simply remember it.
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Thanks so much for watching.
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What did you notice in Hamnet?
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Let me know in the comments below.
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And if you want more film analysis like this, consider subscribing to my channel.
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I publish new videos every week covering quality films and TV shows.
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I'll see you next time.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Hidden GENIUS Of Hamnet”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Agnes, William, scene, table, film. This video has 193 sentences and 3026 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:06. The speaker talks at a natural 177 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| costume noun | /ˈkɑsˌt(j)um/ | A style of dress, including garments, accessories and hairstyle, especially as characteristic of a particular country, period or people. |
| despair noun | /dɪˈspɛə(ɹ)/ | Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency. |
| sheep noun | /ˈʃiːp/ | A woolly ruminant of the genus Ovis. |
| callback noun | The return of a situation to a previous position or state; a reference to such a position or state. | |
| pitchfork noun | /ˈpɪt͡ʃˌfɔɹk/ | An agricultural hand tool comprising a fork with sparse, light tines, attached to a long handle, used for pitching hay (especially loose hay) high up onto a… |
| signify verb | /ˈsɪɡnɪfaɪ/ | To create a sign out of something. |
| metaphor noun | /ˈmɛt.ə.fɚ/ | The use of a word, phrase, concept, or set of concepts to refer to something other than its literal meaning, invoking an implicit similarity between the thing… |
| glove noun | /ɡlʌv/ | An item of clothing, covering all or part of the hand and fingers, but usually allowing independent movement of the fingers. |
| grief noun | /ɡɹiːf/ | Suffering, hardship. |
| abyss noun | /əˈbɪs/ | Hell; the bottomless pit; primeval chaos; a confined subterranean ocean. |
| berate verb | /bɪˈɹeɪt/ | To chide or scold vehemently. |
| captivate verb | /ˈkæptəˌveɪt/ | To attract and hold (someone's) attention and interest; to charm, to entrance, to fascinate, to enchain. |
| childbirth noun | /ˈt͡ʃaɪldˌbɝθ/ | The fact or action of giving birth to a child, as the culmination of pregnancy; the process by which it happens. |
| choreography noun | /ˌkɔɹiˈɑɡɹəfi/ | The art of creating, arranging and recording the dance movements of a work, such as a ballet. |
| flashback noun | /ˈflæʃ.bæk/ | A dramatic device in which an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronological flow of a narrative. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| calm down verb | To become less excited, intense, or angry. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). |
| make out of verb | To construct from; to create (something) using (a material or substance). |
| pay off verb | To bribe, especially to deter oversight. |
| stand over verb | To be very watchful of. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Let's talk about costume design throughout the film.
- We're all actors at the end of the day.
- I'll see you next time.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is poisoned · is meant · is born |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have cut · have expressed · have you been |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 18 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, doesn't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: childbirth /ˈt͡ʃaɪldˌbɝθ/, grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: sheep /ˈʃiːp/, flashback /ˈflæʃ.bæk/, perforation /ˌpɚfəˈreɪʃən/, sharply /ˈʃɑɹpli/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: choreography /ˌkɔɹiˈɑɡɹəfi/, gentlewoman /ˈd͡ʒɛn.təlˌwʊm.ən/, perforation /ˌpɚfəˈreɪʃən/, ironically /aɪˈɹɑnɪkli/, deliberately /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like costume, despair, sheep.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.