Hamnet is a hauntingly beautiful novel capturing the beauty of the English language and telling the tale of the lost son of Shakespeare. The book focuses on the relationship between the famed wife of Shakespeare, Agnes (usually known as Anne) and the playwright himself, William. Their story takes us on a historical journey through the streets of Stratford and daily life in the Elizabethan era.
The author, Maggie O’Farrell, sprinkles thought-provoking musings throughout the novel, making it a work of philosophy which would rival any works by Plato and Aristotle. One of the burning questions a budding writer always asks of themselves is where do seasoned writers get their ideas from? In this case it was the wife and children of the leading playwright Shakespeare. Very little is known about his wife and children as they have been almost erased from Shakespeare’s life.
In Hamnet, we are presented with a feminist text with a female character at its center. Not only is she a future playwright’s wife, but she is an older woman who does not conform to a traditional gender pattern: “So many graves to walk past, so many sad and angry ghost tugging at her skirts, touching her with their cold fingers, pulling at her, naggingly, piteously, saying, Don’t go, wait for us, don’t leave us here”.
O’Farrell has well-researched the times in which Hamnet is set. In Elizabethan times, women who were deemed to be different were seen as dangerous to society. It was a very misogynistic society which saw women as something to be hated and blamed for all the ills of society; they were often seen as witches and viewed as scapegoats with all that was wrong with the world.
The story is told in a series of flashbacks, as the reader is transported on a merry-go-round between the past and the present. The novel opens with Agnes’s daughter Judith becoming gravely ill with only her brother Hamnet at her side. On page 1, the story begins, ‘A boy is coming down a flight of stairs’, but it is not until page 123 that we revisit the opening scene.
The writer has chosen to show Shakespeare’s wife as a formidable character who is more than his equal. She is seen as a source of stability who allowed his true genius to flourish; not his agent, not his father, not his fellow writers, but Agnes his wife.
One of the most haunting aspects to the writing is the way that O’Farrell captures the sense of loss and grief in her writing; she makes it almost impossible to read without the reader recalling their own loss. At one point in the novel, Agnes is about to get married and she imagines seeing her mother: “She senses, too somewhere off to the left, her own mother. She would be here with her had life taken a different turn…” The idea that loss stays with a person for many years – and this sense is intensified at important stages of your life – is movingly expressed here. Moments of loss are embedded within this narrative and the story of Agnes, endearing her to the reader in leaps and bounds.
The very real feelings of loss and grief are focused upon and revisited time and time again, making this novel seem almost like a love song to loss.
Then comes Hamnet’s death, which is beautifully written and tells the reader about the physical comfort of death to Hamnet. O’Farrell describes what happens to Hamnet’s body at the moment of death. The way that he crosses the veil between life and death is described and written in prose presenting emotive language and imagery. Crossing over from life to the moment of death may be fictional, but it is grounded in the reality of grief. O’Farrell continues describing how the death of Hamnet has impacted on his family, not only adding to the characters but it also drives the narrative along.
The novel ends with Agnes watching Hamlet, the play, being staged in front of a live audience. The play ends with Agnes thinking her husband has betrayed the memory of their son, only to realize that he has in fact done the opposite and immortalized him. Hamnet the novel ends with the ghost of the boy looking at Agnes and saying the words ‘Remember Me’. The poignancy of the last words of the novel are laden with emotion for the modern reader, especially one familiar with the story of Hamlet, perhaps the greatest Shakespearean play.
Hamnet is a masterclass in how to craft a novel. It uses a context that readers are familiar with; we have a pandemic and we have a playwright’s ‘mad’ wife which all create a beautiful story arc. All this is combined with carefully chosen words and poetry mixed with an overarching emotion of loss and grief. During these times, the book’s heartbreaking descriptions of death and loss, and its impact on loved ones creates a powerful effect.
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