The jury is still out on the merits of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which arrives in cinemas next month, but there is no arguing with the quality of the source material. Maggie O’Farrell’s lyrical and immersive novel, which won the Women’s prize in 2020, imagines the relationship between William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway, and their grief over the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, from the plague in 1596. The book opens with the young Hamnet realising his twin sister Judith is unwell and searching for an adult to attend to her, while unaware that he is the one who is fatally ill.
Shakespeare – who is never named and instead referred to as “the husband” or “the father” – is depicted not as a literary superstar but a flawed man who is rarely home. The focus is on Hathaway, a free-spirited woman with deep connections to the landscape. The narrative shifts between her childhood, the early years of her marriage and the aftermath of Hamnet’s death, during which Shakespeare writes one of his greatest plays, Hamlet (records state that the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable in those days).
