Maggie O’Farrell said at this screening that adapting her novel for the screen was akin to watching the sand flow through an hour glass. She started with something extensive, whittled it down to 90-odd pages and then gave it to a director (Chloé Zhao) who frilled it all out again to make a couple of hours for the screen that is somewhat different from the original. I reckon that’s the perfect way to describe just how this story of a part of Shakespeare's life comes across, and at last - I have seen something from Paul Mescal that isn’t just hype. He is the bard, before he was the bard. He taught Latin to uninterested children so he could pay of his father’s debt, and was bored. Then he encounters “Agnes” (Jessie Buckley) and it’s love at first sight - despite some family reservations. After the birth of their first child, he concludes that he can make a better living in London and so heads off in best Dick Whittington style to make his fortune. He finds writing work with some theatrical players, and from now on divides his time between his wife in Warwickshire and his increasingly successful career. Then come the twins, “Judith” and “Hamnet”. Both parents understand the necessity of his being away, but their children - upon whom they both dote - miss their father, and when the plague visits their town a tragedy ensues. Devastated, the couple must deal with this in their own way, and it’s the premise of the novel that it was this grief that inspired Shakespeare to write his “Hamlet”. You can tell that loads of research has gone into this project, and from the production design through to the last twenty minutes in which this most famous of plays is presented in an abridged fashion, the film is engaging, entertaining and really quite a poignant exponent of sixteenth century English life. Mescal’s portrayal starts off with a glint in his eye, but as the plot thickens his character displays a depth to it that mixes joy, frustration and remorse in what I think is his best effort yet. On the other side of this coin, we have a Buckley who has come a long way since I first saw her in “Wild Rose” (2018). Her efforts here border on the visceral, especially when childbearing and parenting. Both Joe Alwyn and Emily Watson add some gravitas as brother and mother, respectively, and not for the first time in their careers, both Jacobi and Noah Jupe stand out, the latter quite literally bringing the house down at the end. Speculative? Well of course it is, but it's still a story that pulls at the heart strings, and leaves precious little room for sentimentality at a time in history when mortality was all too often writ large for all, rich or poor. A love story, a grief story and what’s also rewarding is that we don’t get a rose-tinted conclusion, either. You don’t need to be a period drama fan, nor a lover of complex and wordy prose, to enjoy this. It’s some people at the top of their craft delivering really quite compellingly a story that’s just as relatable now.