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In her profound study of grief and love, longlisted for the Women’s prize, O’Farrell explores the lives of the playwright’s family and the death of his only son
In Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell has placed the bit players of the Shakespeare story centre stage, while the dramatist himself is never even named. This is primarily a portrait of a woman and her three children.
In her foreword, O’Farrell explains that ever since she first heard Shakespeare’s only son mentioned at school more than three decades ago, she has wanted to write about him. Hamnet died at the age of 11, four years before Hamlet was written. The two names are interchangeable in Stratford records from the time, and the link made here between the two tragedies is persuasive. Continue reading...