SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

In Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare counsels the audience to embrace life without fear: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

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Here, the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon heeds his own iambic pentameter in director Chloé Zhao’s exquisitely moving drama, adapted for screen by Zhao and author Maggie O'Farrell from her novel about Shakespeare’s descent into grief with wife Agnes after the death of their beloved 11-year-old son.The picture opens in pastoral bliss with Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) falling under the spell of Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), rumoured to be the daughter of a forest witch. “I would rather you went to sea than marry this wench,” spits William's disapproving mother, Mary (Emily Watson).