Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

 Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet (Tinder)

I came into possession of this book unexpectedly. Even though it is ostensibly relevant to a specific area of interest, I hadn't intended to read it but when the opportunity presented itself, I gave it a go. 

Biography and fiction are two quite different things but in the case of Shakespeare biography, the line between them becomes blurred. Shakespeare's life provides some solid facts but plenty of room for his many biographers to fill in the detail as they see fit with their imaginings and suppositions. Some do it more convincingly than others. In Hamnet, though, Maggie O'Farrell is writing fiction and making no claim to historical accuracy. While it is generally thought that the boy attributed to Shakespeare as one of twins born to Ann Hathaway died of plague there is no forensic evidence that shows he did. Published in 2020 and thus presumably conceived and begun before the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, Maggie found herself inadvertently the author of a best-selling plague novel in times of plague.

Shakespeare isn't named as such in the book but almost ghosts his way through it as 'the Latin tutor', the absent husband and father and such in the same way that it has been said that there is a Shakespeare-shaped hole at the centre of his own biography. As a winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction it is possible to read it as a female book, written as much from the points of view of Agnes, as Ann is known, and the other twin, Judith. Agnes is from the country, witchy and mystically possessed of intuitive knowledge. John Shakespeare, the father of the dramatist and poet, is unsympathetic and boorish. Shakespeare is impractical, a bit dreamy and not regarded as fit for much responsibility in the artisan, provinicial trades of Stratford.

One of several things that are less easy to equate with what is known of Shakespeare's life is his devotion to Agnes. That is difficult to read into the accounts of the writer who needs to get away from Stratford and family life to make his name and fortune as the Greatest Writer of All Time in London. Agnes doesn't believe it, either, and is suspicious that there is 'another woman' in London. In this account there isn't but in real life it's hard to believe there weren't other people or else where did the Sonnets come from.

In a brilliant passage in the middle of the book the progress of the plague from Africa via Italy by boat, carried by fleas from monkeys, rats and cats is traced in fine detail that evokes a wider trading world at the end of the C16th. It is Judith that first catches it, given a much more kindly portrait here that she is allowed in most accounts, but Hamnet that dies of it as a result of their close bond as twins that share so many things.

Having been on tour with the actors in Kent due to the closure of the theatres in London, Shakespeare returns to Stratford just too late after which Maggie O'Farrell provides a moving 'poetry of absence' that one might think echoes several highlights in Shakespeare's writing. In a short Author's Note at the end of the book Maggie points out that,

The Black Death or 'pestilence', as it would have been known in the late sixteenth century, is not mentioned once by Shakespeare, in any of his plays or poetry,

and wonders about its possible significance, as if it was taboo or too painful to mention. But what about Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2,

Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world;   

which looks to melike a mention without needing to give it any more thought.

The stresses in a long-distance marriage with Shakespeare away, devoted to his theatre work and Agnes left with the children in Stratford are easy to accept but, to much local surprise, he buys New Place back at home for them to live in. The ne'er-do-well has apparently done very well and the only partially-literate locals can barely credit it.

It makes for a good story but highly unlikely that Agnes makes the trip to London with her reliable yeoman brother, Batholomew, to find him but find him she does, first seeing him on stage in the play that so heartlessly took the dead boy's name for use in an entertainment, playing the ghost. Not much of that is the point according to my preferred account of the life but it is all very much the point in how Maggie makes such an impressive story from the template of the biography as we have it. I had thought that perhaps she could have woven an equally good novel on the same themes without it being based on Shakespeare but the horse comes before the cart and it gains immensely more for being what it is.

If we say it's 'convincing', it convinces as art, by its imagination, its technique, its humanity and conception. It's not the first and won't be the last thing to take liberties with what really might have been. John Shakespeare has generally had a bad press and isn't spared here. Judith, the state of the marriage and Agnes herself can be grateful for being presented more positively than they are accustomed to. But, with Coleridge, we 'suspend our disbelief' and the measure of good writing is is how far it allows us to.

It's great that books like this, and the likes of the recent Ishiguro, can spend so long in the Top 10 Bestsellers, showing that a significant number of people are reading books that are worth reading. My own prejudice against it made me not want to but one doesn't know until one's tried and I am most grateful for being so unwontedly given the chance. I'm never more delighted than when being proved wrong in happy circumstances. It makes one think that more Maggie O'Farrell ought to be worth looking at but the rest of her work will need to look sharp to be this good and I'm a bit occupied with Tolstoy for the time being so I hope she can wait.