If there was any sure thing going into tonight's ceremony, it was that the Best Actress Oscar would be handed to Jessie Buckley. This makes her the first Irish actress to receive the coveted Academy Award.

"Hamnet" is making audiences break down in tears -- and upending beliefs about male grief. The Oscar-nominated film stars Paul Mescal as Shakespeare.

Image Credit: Hamnet (Image: Focus Features) If you’re still not over the lyrical storytelling of ‘Hamnet‘ and its exploration of Shakespeare as a father, husband, and writer, then you’ve come to the right place.

The award-winning novel and Oscar-nominated film examine how grief can affect a family

The Shakespearean story of family and grief earned eight Oscar nods this year.

Hamnet, the Universal Pictures period drama widely tipped to take top honors at tonight's Academy Awards, had a blockbuster budget, despite lacking lavish effects.

In Hamnet, grief refuses to remain private. What begins as one family’s loss becomes something shared, rippling outward from Shakespeare’s play to the audience watching it centuries later.

More recently, the Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt gave it publicity in a 2004 essay whose title makes the causal link clear: ‘The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet’. Greenblatt is even quoted at the start of the film Hamnet. He made a claim that I would dispute: