The characters in William Shakespeare’s plays are known throughout the world. They’re so embedded in popular culture that even people who’ve never read his plays, or seen them performed, know a good deal about their lives: that Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed lovers, for instance, and that the angst-ridden Prince Hamlet sought revenge for the murder of his father. Much of Shakespeare’s own life story, however, remains a mystery.

We know, for example, that he married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior, after she became pregnant, but there are few other details about their relationship. They had three children, and one, a boy named Hamnet, died very young—but we don’t know how or why he passed on, or anything about the pain his parents experienced. Such gaps in the historical record have allowed authors and screenwriters to make up whatever appeals to them—after all, there’s no way of disproving anything. In the Oscar-winning 1993 film Shakespeare in Love, the playwright has this to say about his relationship with his spouse, whom he left back in Stratford, 100 miles away from London: “A cold bed…since the twins were born. Banishment was a blessing.”

By contrast, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet—a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and one of Kirkus’ Best Books of 2020—portrays William and his wife as having a passionate and loving relationship. At one point, he tells her that she and their family are all he lives for: “Nothing else matters.” O’Farrell’s imagining of the marriage ultimately makes this work of historical fiction all the more tragic—but not, in the end, hopeless. It’s the basis for a faithful film adaptation, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao and starring The Lost Daughter’s Jessie Buckley and Normal People’s Paul Mescal. It premieres on Nov. 26.

O’Farrell’s approach to her tale of Shakespeare, his wife, and their children takes full advantage of their enigmatic history—starting with Anne’s name, which the author changes to Agnes because that’s how the name was spelled once in a legal document. Agnes, as the novelist portrays her, is a local healer in Stratford, England, and she may well have magical powers; by pinching the area between person’s thumb and index finger, for instance, she can apparently “see into [their] souls.” This, suffice to say, is not in the actual historical record. Nor are the circumstances of her marriage to Shakespeare, which is portrayed here as a love match—a relatively rare thing in the Elizabethan era, and, again, neither supported nor disproved by the historical record. Shakespeare later moves alone to London, where he pursues his calling as a dramatist; it’s framed as Agnes’ idea, because her melancholic husband has such “a heaviness of spirit.” Again, this is not supported by—well, you get the idea.

The Shakespeares have three children, including fraternal twins, Hamnet and Judith, who, per O’Farrell, look similar and enjoy dressing up as each other to create mistaken-identity mix-ups—a fun nod to several of the playwright’s comedies. The real Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11; O’Farrell posits that the bubonic plague took him—a likely assumption, as the disease was tearing through England at the time. She also asserts that his early demise inspired elements of his father’s play Hamlet, whose main character’s name is a common variation of his son’s.

This is a common theory in Shakespeare scholarship—and the play certainly does address familial grief, in its own gory way—but it does feel like a bit of reach. (One wonders if Shakespeare scholars would be so eager to make the connection if the play had been called, say, The Tragedy of Nigel: Prince of Denmark.) O’Farrell runs with it, though, to fine effect, culminating in a moving performance of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre, with Agnes in the audience. It’s a powerful scene—made more so by the fact that O’Farrell has largely avoided mentioning William’s legendary plays in the text, up to that point—indeed, she doesn’t even use his name. (He’s mainly called  “her husband.”) Hamlet, in all its glory, is used to resolve the story of the couple’s desolation at losing a child, not simply to glorify the greatness of the Bard, who was, first and foremost, a husband and a father.

The film, co-written by O’Farrell and director Zhao, offers up an extremely faithful adaptation, scene for scene, but Buckley’s and Mescal’s committed performances imbue the story with even more intensity, which is saying something in a novel that rarely stays far from its characters’ inner lives; the portrayal of the couple’s grief, especially, is heartrending. This will come as little surprise to fans of both actors, who are known for their nuanced and affecting performances; Noah Jupe, who plays the unnamed actor performing the role of Prince Hamlet onstage, is also remarkable—a true one-scene wonder. Zhao and O’Farrell wisely expand on the novel’s ending to take advantage of their players’ incredible skills, and it results in a scene so striking, so deeply felt, that it’s breathtaking to watch.

Here O’Farrell’s and Zhao’s intentions become clear: Everything up to this point—all the conjured history, all the nods to Shakespearean literary theory, all the heartbreak that Agnes and William experience—has led to this one moment of grace. It’s a tribute to the power of theater—of all fiction—to get at profound, unspoken truths. In the end, the play’s the thing.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.