Chinese filmmaker for Shakespeare adaptation only understood a third of 'to be or not to be' speech

The Chinese director of the Shakespeare adaptation Hamnet has admitted she only understood a third of the famous ‘to be or not to be’ speech – insisting it is more important to ‘feel’ the lines.

Chloé Zhao, who ‘did not speak English at school’, spoke about the upcoming film which is scheduled for release next month.

The blockbuster is based on a bestselling book about Shakespeare and his wife who become consumed with grief after losing their 11-year-old son.

But the Oscar-wining Nomadland filmmaker told the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast that most of lead actor Paul Mescal’s speech did not make sense to her.

She said: ‘I didn’t speak English [at school], so when you don’t speak English and you have Romeo and Juliet in front of you in the equivalent of the ninth grade… still when I was on set of Hamnet, when Paul was delivering his speech I only understand a third of it, technically, because I don’t understand what those words mean.’

Ms Zhao went on to recall how Mr Mescal had told her she should ‘feel’ the lines rather than understanding them in the new film about the British playwright and his wife, Agnes.

Born and raised in Beijing before later studying in the US and UK, Ms Zhao added: ‘Look, I can study it and translate it and understand what it all means, but Paul said to me, “Listen, if Shakespeare is performed right, you don’t have to understand what they’re saying.

‘You feel it in the body, the language is written like that”. And so in a way, me and Łukasz [Żal] – who also doesn’t speak much English – we sat there and we watched Paul’s performance and in a way we kind of embodied Agnes, who doesn’t quite understand everything, but we feel it.’

The ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy makes an appearance in Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Throughout the play the writer grapples with themes of suffering, death, existence and a fear of the unknown.

Probed on how she approached writing Shakespeare’s lines for the screenplay adaptation with Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell, Ms Zhao admitted the reason producers chose here is probably because she ‘doesn’t feel the same way about William Shakespeare’ as other people.

She added: ‘I don’t have the same reverence. I do have reverence intellectually, but I don’t have the burden on my shoulders as many people in the West do.’

Ms Zhao added she had made Mr Mescal’s Shakespeare ‘less expressive’ and talkative than the one portrayed in O’Farrell’s 2020 novel.

She said: ‘I find a lot of male artists get into expressing themselves in their arts because they never felt safe to express their emotions in real life.

‘I didn’t come [to the project] feeling that he’s any different than a man who fell in love with a woman and couldn’t quite express his feelings.’

The director added her lack of reverence for Shakespeare was fine as the ‘pressure’ to perform was ‘on the actors’ – and specifically on Mr Mescal who ‘does have a lot of reverence’.

On filming in the Globe theatre, she said: ‘We didn’t even have to understand every word, which is really magical. It’s made me think about Shakespeare completely different [sic].’

Hamnet is scheduled for release in early January.

The adaptation stars Gladiator II’s Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as Agnes.

Ireland-born Buckley, 45, has been widely tipped by critics as an Oscar frontrunner for her perfoemcance.

The star-studded cast also features Taylor Swift’s ex Joe Alwyn, 34, alongside Oscar nominee Emily Watson and Alien Earth’s David Wylmot.

Brian Viner, the Daily’s Mail film critic, previously praised the adaptation and ‘how much of herself’ Ms Zhao had put into the film.

He described the blockbuster as a ‘deeply soulful, altogether intoxicating tearjerker’.

Shakespeare’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, as spoken by Hamlet

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

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