Book· 2020· Historical

Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

Hamnet: 1 recorded work traces back to it, and it draws on 1 recorded source.

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Hamlet

Book · 1603

InfluenceHIGH

The novel is built on the play: Maggie O'Farrell's premise is that Shakespeare's son Hamnet, whose name was interchangeable with Hamlet in the records of the time, died at eleven and that the play written a few years later carries that grief. It ends at the Globe's Hamlet, where Agnes sees the Ghost and the son.

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About the work

Hamnet

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet. Drawing on her long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, Maggie O'Farrell writes Hamnet as a luminous portrait of a marriage and at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

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