Hamnet vs Shakespeare in Love

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What if adaptation isn’t about preserving everything from the source material—but about choosing where the story actually lives?

In this episode of the podcast, Jake explores adaptation through three different lenses, all drawn from the same historical material: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, its film adaptation by O’Farrell and Chloé Zhao, and Shakespeare in Love by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.

Rather than treating adaptation as an exercise in compression, Jake introduces a core concept: choosing the location of your adaptation. Stories, he explains, are expansive and multifaceted—but screenplays must be focused, precise, and unified around one central idea. Successful adaptations don’t try to translate the whole story; they dig deeply into a single, meaningful slice of it.

Through close analysis, Jake shows how the novel Hamnet locates its story in absence—shifting focus away from Shakespeare himself and toward his wife, his children, and the emotional aftermath of loss. That choice reshapes everything: structure, chronology, point of view, and theme. When the story is adapted for film, the location subtly shifts again—toward presence, love, and magic—producing a profoundly different emotional experience.

Jake then contrasts both versions of Hamnet with Shakespeare in Love, which finds its location not in grief or family, but in a blocked writer discovering his voice through love. Using the same historical puzzle pieces, screenwriters Norman and Stoppard built a comedy that carries tragedy inside it—demonstrating how radically different stories can emerge from the same material when the location changes.

Through all three works, Jake reveals a crucial lesson for writers: changing the location of your adaptation changes what must be amplified—and what must be cut. Moments that were powerful in one version may no longer serve the story in another. Clarity requires laser focus and conscious intention.

By the end of the episode, you’ll see adaptation not as an act of preservation, but as an act of meaning-making—choosing what matters most and committing to it fully.

You’ll Learn

- What Jacob means by “the location of your adaptation”
- Why stories are expansive, but screenplays must be precise
- How Hamnet shifts focus away from Shakespeare to tell a story about absence and grief
- Why the film adaptation of Hamnet finds a different emotional center than the novel
- How Shakespeare in Love transforms the same historical material into a romantic comedy
- Why structure, character, and theme all grow out of the chosen location
- How changing your location changes what you must amplify—and what you must cut