Hamnet as Hamlet? Gadzooks!

 

HAMNET: A NOVEL OF THE PLAGUE (2020/21)

By Maggie O’Farrell

Alfred Knopf, 384 pages.

★★

 

 

Hamnet is an imaginative but historically suspect look at what inspired William Shakespeare to write “Hamlet.” In Maggie O'Farrell’s retelling, “Hamlet”–a recognized alternative spelling of Hamnet–was Shakespeare's attempt to expiate his guilt over the death of his 11-year-old son and his dereliction of family duties. In essence, his grief over young Hamnet’s demise was projected upon Prince Hamlet, with William playing the role of the paternal ghost. Some of Shakespeare's dysfunctional birth family dynamics were similarly transferred to the play.

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I remind readers that I am no fan of the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon. I find Shakespeare stilted, overly wordy, and long to see his plays rewritten in modern English. I did, however, hold high hope that the novel would pique my interest. Had it truly been a plague novel, that might've been the case. Instead, Hamnet is an anachronistic feminist tale glued onto dodgy psychology.

 

Here's what we know. The historical Hamnet died in 1596, though the cause of death isn’t listed in any known records. He could have died of the plague, as the Black Death still flared in the late 16th century. It’s equally plausible, though, that Hamnet died of something completely different. Sadly, the death of children was commonplace in an age when the average lifespan was just 43. (Shakespeare was a relative elder when he died in 1616, at the age of 52.)

 

We also know that Shakespeare’s parents were severe people and that his glovemaker father John was reputed to be a harsh and bigoted man. Not much is known of William’s wife Agnes Hathaway–often known as “Anne” Hathaway–other than she was the daughter of a yeoman and his first wife. In Hamnet, Shakespeare's family are uppity tyrants and that of Agnes a template for simple rural virtues. Both family portraits are feasible, though speculative.

 

It is also factual that as Shakespeare rose in renown, he spent less time in Stratford and more in London. O’Farrell’s take is that his fine Stratford home–by 16th century standards–was more for show than his personal comfort. That too is within the realm of possibility. Such homes were markers of bourgeois respectability.

 

O’Farrell’s greatest strength lies with her command of the details of everyday life in the late 16th century. We learn a lot about tending gardens, wildcrafting, the din of the marketplace, what it was like to prepare food in Shakespeare’s day, and even the social role of cats in Elizabethan England. There's also a succinct and believable account of how plague fleas traveled from monkeys to Alexandria and made their way to Warwickshire via Venice, Cadiz, and London.

 

O’Farrell is a novelist, and we expect her to take liberty with some details. This comes with risks when applied to a figure as revered as William Shakespeare, but there are enough holes in his biography to allow for invention. It's tricky, though, to write 21st century-style feminism into a novel set more than three centuries earlier. Moreover, the title is a misnomer, as it’s more about Agnes and Hamnet’s twin Judith than either the namesake character or the plague. O’Farrell would have it that Hamnet made a bargain with God to take him rather than his beloved sister, and that Agnes was driven first to madness and then to deep resentment toward her husband. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows?

 

I was wholly unconvinced by O’Farrell’s plot device of having Agnes make a secretive journey from Stratford to London to watch “Hamlet,” and conclude that grief triggered in William a dual psychological transference. She allegedly sees, “her Hamnet as he might have been, had he lived, and the ghost, who has her husband's hands, her husband’s beard, who speaks her husband's voice." Methinks O’Farrell hath gotten too modern, a problem that also emerges in Agnes’ newfound but non-16th century independence.

 

Shakespeare aficionados will like this book. So too will those who engage in the Shakespeare-denier cottage industry and long to see him taken him down a few cloak pegs. If you are neither, you can join me in the shrug brigade.

 

Rob Weir