Hamnet

By Maggie O’Farrell

Little is known about William Shakespeare and every theater major I’ve known has had some opinion about what truth is known. Even saying “who cares?” implies that someone else does. Hamnet is a beautiful book whether you’re approaching it as one of the preeminent Shakespearean scholars, who knows exactly what his second best bed is, or that he was just some guy that wrote the play your kid was in, about the Danish prince. Maggie O’Farrell could have written about an entirely fictional family who happened to live through the plague; it would still trace lyrical pathways through the lives of her story. Her inspiration to borrow from the Bard and make his theoretical life historical fiction, grounds the characters into meaning that those who know a little about him can take extra delight in. 

It is no spoiler that the title character of Hamnet dies. The book begins with a historical note, saying just that. Many readers may know this already, that he had a twin named Judith, that his mother’s name was Anne Hathaway, or that his grandfather was a disgraced glove maker. To O’Farrell’s credit, there is no need to go into Hamnet with any of that knowledge. She lays out everything as you would find it in a regular fiction book, and the historical note feels more reference to what knowledge we have, like the prophecy of a witch beginning a play. For a book about his most famous child, the name William Shakespeare isn’t found on any page. He is referred to as “the latin tutor”, “her husband”, or “the playwright” depending on context, allowing the book to remain unconsumed by his household name. He is a love interest to his wife Agnes and parent to his children, but lives most of his life in London, away from his family in Stratford. What references to him there are, always feel earned. Agnes’ garden of herbs resembles those Ophelia soliloquizes, there is no doubt about why his father left public office in disgrace, and she gives his second best bed a loving care that matches Agnes and Will’s marriage in the book. 

Shakespeare and allusions to him aside, Hamnet is a remarkable book about health, grief, and the complicated relationships within a family unit. There is no simplicity for the sake of squeezing an inside joke with the audience into a scene. Everything has purchase and no relationship should be taken for granted. Maggie O’Farrell consistently took my breath away, referring to the loss characters would soon experience within the moment they might have done something to prevent it. Of course, there is rarely anything you can do. Loss is as natural in life as death, each individual’s response to it as unique as the lines on their thumb. O’Farrell captures that for this family, who loved the young Hamnet, their grief bringing me to tears in public spaces, surprising me with the weight this story holds when I was expecting no more than a rip off of the play. Whether you care for theater or not, Hamnet is a book best described as Shakespeare might, with a beauty that tumbles through your mind, remembered forever.