Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell transports the reader to Stratford-Upon-Avon in late sixteenth-century Elizabethan England at the time of the Black Death. In this brilliant work of historical fiction, O’Farrell imagines William and Agnes Shakespeare’s only son, eleven-year-old Hamnet, as dying of the bubonic plague in 1596. In painstaking detail, she describes the impact of the boy’s death on his grieving parents.
According to O’Farrell’s extensive research, Shakespeare’s wife is named Agnes in her father’s will. To retain her focus on Agnes and Hamnet, O’Farrell never refers to William Shakespeare by name. He is identified by his relationship to others—as the glover’s son, as Agnes’ husband, as Hamnet’s father; or by his profession—as the Latin tutor, as the playwright.
The novel initially unfolds by alternating between two timelines: the day Hamnet’s twin sister, Judith, contracts the plague; and fifteen years earlier when Hamnet’s parents first meet and have a passionate courtship that culminates in a pregnancy and marriage. O’Farrell interrupts the narrative of the two timelines with a fascinating passage charting the course of a disease-carrying flea and its progeny from a bead-maker in Murano, Italy, to young Judith Shakespeare in Stratford as she eagerly unpacks the box of colorful, glass beads.
Hamnet is depicted as a beautiful, precocious, intelligent, articulate young boy, brimming with life and energy. The tension is palpable as the panic-stricken boy desperately searches home and streets for his mother and grandmother when his sister first contracts illness. By the time his mother returns home, Judith’s condition has deteriorated.
After Hamnet’s death, the focus shifts to Agnes, a free-spirited and independent woman with her mother’s gift for healing. She is at once feared and sought after for her knowledge of the medicinal properties of various plants and herbs. Powerful, strong, and beautiful, Agnes becomes a shadow of her former self with the death of her son. She experiences insurmountable grief and self-blame. The tenderness with which she touches her son’s fingers and strokes his hair in an effort to will him back to life is described in devastating detail.
Hamnet’s father returns to London to continue his work. Four years after the tragic death of their son, Agnes watches his production of Hamlet on the stage. Since the young actor playing Hamlet has been trained to mimic Hamnet’s mannerisms, Agnes realizes her husband’s grief has taken the form of breathing life back into their son through the play. The ensuing reconciliation is a testament to the healing power of art.
O’Farrell’s brilliant tale is full of atmospheric detail and immersive diction. She floods our senses with the daily grind of activities involved in running a household; the intimacy of living in close quarters; and the sights, sounds, smells, and texture of humans and animals populating the domestic and public spheres of Elizabethan England. Her characters are well-rounded, recognizable human beings, with Agnes emerging as the most compelling and sympathetic. O’Farrell is especially effective in depicting the powerful bond between siblings—Agnes’ bond with her brother, Bartholomew; and Hamnet with his identical twin sister, Judith. Hamnet and Judith’s childhood game of blurring genders by exchanging places to fool their parents is particularly poignant in light of his death and in light of the gender blurring in Shakespeare’s plays.
The novel is a masterpiece, vast in scope, with vivid characters and a captivating story line that grips the reader from the first page to the last. It is a testament to O’Farrell’s spell-binding ability to weave magic with words.
Very highly recommended.