“He is himself, not a play.”
- Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020)
I mean, I knew what I was getting into, a fantasy “What if” Juliet hadn’t died, laced with Max Martin’s greatest hits. I just didn’t know HE was going to be a part of it. Because he’s not a character in his Romeo & Juliet.
As it happened, I really enjoyed & Juliet (so did my 96 year old aunt) and so much more than Something’s Rotten, which I really do not like. The former is a celebration of queer empowerment, the latter a middling 21st century meta-musical that still manages to be as hokey and immersed in the patriarchy as The Producers, which it so hard is trying to be,
But why, I asked, even as I was bopping along to "Backstreet’s Back" and "Oops …", why do we do this, and by we I am absolutely including me, why do we, why are we compelled to participate in the Shakespeare Industrial Complex (SIC) not content to merely overproduce his work (which is itself a problem and basis for another discussion) but to contribute to the lore, to expand upon the characters, the plots – and the man himself.
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| Corey Mach as William Shakespeare "& Juliet" Broadway Tour (2025) |
Since I first picked up and then put down the novel Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, over three years ago, I have read two other historical fictions about Tudor-Stewart era playhouses, Jinny Webber’s Bedtrick and Mat Osman’s The Ghost Theatre. But this one, Hamnet, kept reemerging in conversation. “Have you read ..?” All the recommendations, all the references, the book itself, staring at me from a shelf, a table, the floor, a pile of other books.
I finally read it: difficult to get into, then for the past week impossible to put down, only to conclude poorly, as this achingly well-told story of a mother’s grief was in the end contrived merely to connect the lost boy to the famous play. I felt cheated. I got angry. I still am.
This novel is inspired by the life and untimely death of Hamnet Shakespeare, the playwright’s only son, fraternal twin to Judith, younger sibling to Susanna.
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| Stephen Greenblatt |
Where there are gaps in the historical record (or perhaps I should say gap, one big, fact-free gap) it is Agnes who acts, who has agency in spite of familial oppression and public scrutiny. It is she who decides that if they are to be together, she must become pregnant. Later, to realize his independence from his family – and from Stratford, where she can see he is unhappy – it is she who convinces him to follow his bliss to London.
There is even the suggestion that she wanted the second-best bed left to her in his will, because, after all, it was her bed! The one available fact that folks have used to divine the unhappiness of their union, in this telling he was merely serving her desire, and put it in writing.
Then, the plague. She saves (or believes she saved) Judith, but loses the boy. And she suffers, so deeply. It was unbearable. I put the book down. I picked it up again. Because I was made to care about this woman, and I wanted to see her make her way through her grief, and to reunite with her estranged husband, the one who made a successful living in a playhouse, far from home.
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| Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth "The Norseman" (2022) A film directed by Robert Eggers |
Time and again, folks have strained to tie the name of Shakespeare’s son to that of his most famous play. Stephen Greenblatt made note – and O’Farrell echoes in her prescript – in the article, “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet,” (link) that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable in the 1500s, which is far too easy an explanation.
My wife’s name is Toni. Tori is also a name and only one letter different from hers but if I called her “Tori” she would say, “that’s not my name.” And Greenblatt has been criticized for just making shit up.
Hamlet and Hamnet are similar names. But apart from that uninteresting detail, there is nothing to suggest Hamnet's death in any way inspired the composition of Hamlet.
Because the play Hamlet has nothing to do with a dead child.
Because there are no twins in Hamlet. And though he did write a few plays that did feature twin, none are named Hamnet, nor Judith (there are no Shakespearean characters named Judith at all, nor for that matter, Susanna). And twins used for the purpose of comic mistaken identity was and remains a common trope.
Because Shakespeare didn’t choose to name his main character Hamlet for this particular revenge tragedy; it is based on an ancient myth about a Norseman named “Amleth” – which would be a terrible name to have to say upon an English stage, you couldn't finish a sentence.
Because the play Hamlet has nothing to do with a dead child.
Because there are no twins in Hamlet. And though he did write a few plays that did feature twin, none are named Hamnet, nor Judith (there are no Shakespearean characters named Judith at all, nor for that matter, Susanna). And twins used for the purpose of comic mistaken identity was and remains a common trope.
Because Shakespeare didn’t choose to name his main character Hamlet for this particular revenge tragedy; it is based on an ancient myth about a Norseman named “Amleth” – which would be a terrible name to have to say upon an English stage, you couldn't finish a sentence.
“This gentle and unforced accord of Amleth thith thmiling to my heart.”“Lord Amleth ith a printh out of thy thtar.”“Come hither, my dear Amleth, shit by me.”
And tho on.
And because Shakespeare himself did not even choose to change the name Amleth to Hamlet, someone else did that, writing a different revenge tragedy that included a protagonist named Hamlet in 1585, which was a few years before Shakespeare even started writing plays, and fifteen years before he wrote Hamlet.
Here’s the thing. The reason many have sought evidence that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is because there remains scant evidence of who the man was, so they try to draw connections from the text to his contemporaries, those about whom much is known. And while these “Adventures in Authorship” may be harmful, so is drawing bogus connections between the text and what very little we do know about the man himself.
Speculation, for the purpose of fiction, is all well and good, but we must cleave to the facts as we know them, because these speculations, very often stated as fact, become accepted as fact. The Queen never asked for a play about Falstaff in love. Shakespeare never said “William the Conqueror came before Richard the Third!”
And Hamlet was not written for Hamnet, which is unfortunately the climax of O’Farrell’s book. And her depiction of Agnes witnessing a performance is perplexing, because it is in witnessing the scene between Hamlet and the ghost of his father (performed, as has been often suggested, by Shakespeare himself) that she comes to understand her husband’s grief – but it’s not there, not on the page, not on the stage. She describes a young boy playing Hamlet, which is absurd on a couple levels – Hamlet isn’t a boy, he was probably played by Burbage, how the hell could a boy player carry the rest of the show, etc. etc.
Why does it matter, you may ask? Why does it make me, as I have said, angry? Because. I didn’t want to read it. Then I was glad I was reading it. Now I am unhappy that I read it.
Agnes was beside herself to learn that her husband had written a play using their son’s name (even if it’s not really his name) and made the journey, for the first time in her life, out of Stratford and all the way to London. London! Can you imagine? To see a play! She’d never seen a play! Most people those days never had!
And what would she have actually seen? A fully grown male actor, upon a stage before a rowdy, packed audience, playing a Danish prince, who is by turns mopey, arrogant, somewhat creepy, pretentious, passive-aggressive, misogynist, murderous who is ultimately killed in a duel, the stage littered with the bodies of many other characters whose deaths this Hamlet character was directly responsible for.
Honestly? He should have invited her to see Twelfth Night. Agnes may have found that one much more relevant and affecting. It has much more to say about grief and acceptance, and it has twins in it.
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| Ed Frascino The New Yorker (1991) |
Here’s the thing. The reason many have sought evidence that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is because there remains scant evidence of who the man was, so they try to draw connections from the text to his contemporaries, those about whom much is known. And while these “Adventures in Authorship” may be harmful, so is drawing bogus connections between the text and what very little we do know about the man himself.
Speculation, for the purpose of fiction, is all well and good, but we must cleave to the facts as we know them, because these speculations, very often stated as fact, become accepted as fact. The Queen never asked for a play about Falstaff in love. Shakespeare never said “William the Conqueror came before Richard the Third!”
And Hamlet was not written for Hamnet, which is unfortunately the climax of O’Farrell’s book. And her depiction of Agnes witnessing a performance is perplexing, because it is in witnessing the scene between Hamlet and the ghost of his father (performed, as has been often suggested, by Shakespeare himself) that she comes to understand her husband’s grief – but it’s not there, not on the page, not on the stage. She describes a young boy playing Hamlet, which is absurd on a couple levels – Hamlet isn’t a boy, he was probably played by Burbage, how the hell could a boy player carry the rest of the show, etc. etc.
Why does it matter, you may ask? Why does it make me, as I have said, angry? Because. I didn’t want to read it. Then I was glad I was reading it. Now I am unhappy that I read it.
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| Greyson Heyl and Nic Scott Hermick "Twelfth Night (Or What You Will)" Great Lakes Theater (2025) Photo by Roger Mastroianni |
And what would she have actually seen? A fully grown male actor, upon a stage before a rowdy, packed audience, playing a Danish prince, who is by turns mopey, arrogant, somewhat creepy, pretentious, passive-aggressive, misogynist, murderous who is ultimately killed in a duel, the stage littered with the bodies of many other characters whose deaths this Hamlet character was directly responsible for.
Honestly? He should have invited her to see Twelfth Night. Agnes may have found that one much more relevant and affecting. It has much more to say about grief and acceptance, and it has twins in it.
