Hamnet

“Shakespeare is never named. He’s the slightly miserable and then absent husband. He’s a loving dad, but he doesn’t know what to do. I just loved that. It’s beautifully evoked. It makes his working life as a writer both ordinary and extraordinary. Obviously, someone with the talent that he has is frustrated and unhappy when he can’t express it. So it’s her idea that he goes off to London. She knows he’ll be more fulfilled in the biggest city, and that’s where he started writing plays. But you don’t see much of that. You mainly see the domestic life around Stratford. At the climax she goes to London, angry that he has written this play. She’s thinking: is he writing about our son? But, of course, it’s Hamlet. Writing Hamlet is sort of giving Hamnet his life back. I puzzled over it a bit. I think that, in creating a character who is the most psychologically rounded character in Shakespeare, an extraordinary character, he has almost given Hamnet his adulthood. Hamlet the adult man makes choices that Hamnet the child didn’t get to make.” Read more...

Retellings of Shakespeare

Sally O'Reilly, Novelist

“Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, a fictionalised account of the short life of Shakespeare’s son, is read beautifully as an audiobook by British actor and writer Ell Potter. Listening time is 12 hours and 42 minutes” Read more...

Great Actors Read Great Novels

“It reexamines the life and legacy of Shakespeare’s wife Agnes. O’Farrell has spoken about how Shakespeare’s many historians have, in the past, ridiculed Agnes. She’s been much maligned. O’Farrell’s book is all from Agnes’s perspective. It’s about her life as a woman and her particular skillset. I mean, she’s illiterate, but she has extraordinary gifts that her husband cannot understand. It also examines her as a mother—the title, is derived from the name of her and Shakespeare’s only son, who died from the plague. O’Farrell writes so deeply movingly about grief.” Read more...

Five of the Best Feminist Historical Novels

Flora Carr, Novelist

“It’s a great story, and beautifully told…see how she ensures that Shakespeare’s wife and children are never overshadowed by their father. In less skilled hands, not naming Shakespeare would grate and fail. With Maggie O’Farrell, this not-naming seems effortless and natural. As we said in our judge’s quote, a bravura performance.” Read more...

The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist

Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist