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Hamnet

Writer's picture: CroneCrone

Maggie O'Farrell's latest novel is an imagining of the life of Shakespeare's wife and family in Stratford-upon-Avon, focusing on the death of the fraternal twin, Hamnet. I've been listening to it as I walk and run and drive up and down the motorway to work. It is good - I loved O'Farrell's first book, After You'd Gone, which was also about grief. O'Farrell herself has had an unexpectedly traumatic life, that has involved all too frequent brushes with death.


This novel took me a while to get into, and it it most definitely a work of fiction. We know very little about Shakespeare's own life let alone that of his family, but this is an emotionally rich rendering and I love the sense of inhabiting a different era.


One of the aspects that's fun for me is that the action of Hamnet takes place only 60 odd years after the events in my Hilary Mantel trilogy. And there are some quirky connections. For example, one of Thomas Cromwell's proteges was Thomas Wriothesley (referred to as 'Call-Me' as he had to tell people to 'Call me Risley' so they'd know how to pronounce his surname). He was the grandfather of the Henry Wriothesley to whom two early Shakespeare poems were dedicated. this Henry is also thought by some to be the young man of the sonnets. Call-Me is described as very handsome, by Mantel, and it appears his grandson was equally blessed.


Cromwell sponsored a playwright - actually a former monk - to write plays supporting the reformation and in the novel various groups of actors are mentioned - including Lord Cromwell's Men and Queen Jane's Men (they were disbanded after her death). Shakespeare's company, which became the King's Men when James I ascended the throne, was originally the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The Lord Chamberlain was Henry Carey, son of Mary Boleyn (Anne's sister), who plays a notable role in Wolf Hall especially.


The death of Hamnet does make me consider Shakespeare's plays again too. I don't really like to read too much autobiography into texts. And I don't think there is anything specifically autobiographical in the plays. Much is made in the novel of Shakespeare's wife's distress at learning that he's written a play called Hamlet just a few years after their son's death. It's interesting that the play features an intense family dynamic; that is considers bereavement and loss. How does one live on after a death? How do we cope with mortality? Can we condemn others for not seeming to feel so deeply? Life experiences may not be played out, but the deepened awareness of issues may offer more fertile ground for an active imagination.


I can only think of one dead boy child - Mamillius in The Winter's Tale. I have written before about how a scene in that play was a profound moment of insight for me. I wonder now if the emotional content of that scene, which reminded me of an earlier work by Marlowe, might not also have had its roots in his home?


In contrast, there are many incredible, almost idealised, daughters in Shakespeare's plays. He had two daughters - Susanna and Judith - and I am interested to consider how his love for them might inform not just Cordelia, Desdemona and Ophelia but Marina, Perdita, Imogen and Miranda from the Late Plays. In these cases, the dominant relationship is that between father and daughter. Prospero the creator does seem like a version of the dramatist - about to give up his craft. In the other plays, the father has to learn to love and love rightly, while the daughter, a vision of the good and the true (especially with Marina and Imogen) acts as a kind of spiritual guide.


This it seems to me is Shakespeare's version of a metaphysics as a guide to morals.

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