It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single film in possession of a good literary pedigree must be in want of a tourist trail. The machinery, once set in motion, is as predictable as an iambic pentameter: the press junkets, the location scouts, the sudden, profound interest in a patch of mud that once, gloriously, bore the weight of a period-accurate boot. Now, with the release of ‘Hamnet’, the quiet, cider-coloured counties of Herefordshire and the West Midlands find themselves playing the latest understudy to the great, grizzled star that is William Shakespeare. The air, once thick with the scent of damp earth and nostalgia, is now faintly tinged with the aroma of artisan flat whites and the soft, digital chime of contactless payments.

One observes this cultural repurposing with a kind of detached fascination. The film, a spectral narrative weaving through the grief of a genius, acts not as a mere entertainment but as a particularly effective marketing brochure. Visitors, their imaginations tenderised by cinematic melancholy, now pilgrimage not just to Stratford’s well-trodden shrines, but to the film’s own hallowed grounds—a manor house here, a riverbank there. These locations, having briefly held the fictional weight of Shakespeare’s personal tragedy, are now deemed more ‘authentic’, more ‘connected’, than the actual, brick-and-mortar history that has stood for centuries. The irony is exquisite: we seek the shadow of a fiction about a historical figure to feel closer to the history itself. The past, it seems, must now be mediated through a lens filter to be truly visible.

Local enterprises, of course, perform their own swift, pragmatic sonnet. The café that once served builders’ tea now offers ‘Will’s Walnut Cake’. The pub menu acquires a ‘Shakespeare’s Ploughman’s’. It is not exploitation, but alchemy—the transmutation of cultural capital into the hard currency of a thriving till. Who could begrudge them? In an age where high streets wither, this cinematic afterglow is a lifeline, a welcome, unlooked-for solstice. Yet, watching a coach party disgorge its contents onto a village green, one cannot help but feel the peculiar modern vertigo of it all. We have become connoisseurs of the echo, chasing the reverberation of a story long after the original sound has faded into the air of a 16th-century afternoon.

This phenomenon, let us be clear, is not a peculiarly English madness. It is a global liturgy, recited from New Zealand to Croatia. The ‘Lord of the Rings’ effect turned the sheep-dotted plains of the South Island into Middle-earth’s economic engine. Dubrovnik, having played King’s Landing, now manages a delicate dance between preserving its medieval self and accommodating the endless tide of Lannister-wannabes. In Savannah, the bench from *Forrest Gump

• is a shrine. We are a species desperate for narrative coordinates, using the maps drawn by filmmakers to navigate the often confusing terrain of heritage. The location becomes a tangible token, a proof of purchase for an emotional experience originally had in a dark cinema or on a sofa. We stand on the spot, snap the photo, and for a moment, the fiction feels less like a story and more like a place we might have lived.

But beneath this sparkling commerce of borrowed sentiment lies a quieter, more melancholic truth. This rush to filming locations speaks of a deeper, more pervasive anxiety: a fear that our own unmediated experiences are insufficient. That our own history, unadorned by celebrity or cinematic gloss, is somehow lacking in drama. We require the validation of the screen to certify a site’s importance. The quiet, profound tragedy of the historical Hamnet Shakespeare is suddenly legible to thousands because it has been framed, scored, and performed by famous faces. The real, silent grief of a father in a small Warwickshire town centuries ago needed a multi-million-pound production to be deemed a worthy destination.

So, come to the West Midlands. By all means, come. Walk the paths the cameras walked. Drink the themed ale. Feel the pleasant shiver of standing where a actor, for a few weeks, pretended to be a bereaved bard. It is a perfectly lovely way to spend a day. Yet, as you do, spare a thought for the strange alchemy at work. You are participating in a very modern ritual: the worship of the simulacrum. We are not visiting history, but the *idea

• of history as seen through a very contemporary, beautifully lit lens. The ghost of Shakespeare, that ultimate creator of realities, must surely be amused by this latest act—where the fictions he spawned are now repackaged to draw crowds, who in their search for his essence, happily consume the delightful, ironic fiction of it all. The play’s the thing, indeed. And the merchandise, and the tour, and the five-pound commemorative pencil. The rest, as they say, is not silence, but the gentle, incessant hum of commerce.