Hamnet is undoubtedly one of the best books I’ve read in a long while. And I read a lot of books. I’ve also read other great books by the author Maggie O’Farrell. But with Hamnet, a fictional retelling of the tragic death of William Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son, I think she’s excelled herself.
The death of the Bard’s child, Hamnet, in 1596 is a fact. The circumstances and the impact of his death on the family are not known. But it seems very likely that it inspired Shakespeare’s most celebrated play, Hamlet. As with many names of the time, the two versions were interchangeable.
That is also true of the playwright’s wife, known to many as Anne Hathaway but named by her father in his will as Agnes. And despite the novel being called Hamnet, it is Agnes who is the character at the heart of Hamnet. The man she married is never referred to by name. He’s alternately called her husband, a son, the father, or the Latin tutor.
It was performing this latter role for Agnes’s stepbrothers that led to the couple meeting. Albeit when he first spots her striding out of the forest with a kestrel on her wrist, he thinks she’s a boy. Sound familiar? Yes, there are a variety of subtle references in Hamnet to themes that showed up in the Latin tutor’s plays.
In Stratford-upon-Avon, Agnes is more of a celebrity than her husband, the son of a glover maker who no one really expects to amount to much. Agnes, by contrast, is unconventional, a woman with a gift for using herbs to heal people. As a result, the townsfolk admire her but are also wary. Not least because Agnes reads people. Her husband says it’s both a joy and a curse to be married to someone who knows everything about you and can ‘divine your deepest secrets, just with a glance’.
The book opens with young Hamnet trying to find his mother because his twin sister Judith is sick. It then alternates chapters between this scenario (and what follows) and the backstory of Agnes’s life with the Latin tutor. Including an explanation of why she and the children remained in Stratford while he lived a very different life in London.
For me, O’Farrell’s writing was totally captivating, slowly pulling me into the universe of this family. And even though I knew it was coming, the death of Hamnet still packed an emotional punch. The description of Agnes’s grief is raw, written in short, sharp sections, sometimes three or four on a page. Each one punctuated with the huge sense of loss she is enduring.
A loss which is, of course, also brutal for Judith. At one stage, she asks her mother what the name is for a person who was a twin but is no longer a twin. A wife becomes a widow, a child an orphan. With her mother unable to provide an answer, Judith concludes there is no word for the loss of a twin. For the devastating loss of her beloved other half, Hamnet.
Meanwhile, Agnes’s husband writes from London to say he has written a comedy. “A comedy?” she asks when her older daughter Susanna, reads the letter to her. But when we hear his perspective, he says he can only write histories and comedies. ‘Only with them can he forget who he is and what has happened.’ He doesn’t return to the family for a year.
Of course, eventually Hamnet’s father finds a way to bring his dead son to life with his words and a stage. And Agnes finds her way to London. The vivid description of the capital in 1600 is both evocative and disturbing. A very different place from the London I know, but this was towards the end of the novel, so despite that, I didn’t want it to end. I had become immersed in the world of Agnes and her family. And while it might be a work of fiction, I think Maggie O’Farrell’s detailed research and imagination have done the family justice.
I was inspired to read Hamnet because a film of the book is being released in January 2026. My preference is always to read a book before seeing a film. And I’m always a bit dubious about how well it will translate onto the screen! However, Maggie O’Farrell has co-written the screenplay, so I’m reasonably optimistic. But, if you want to read Hamnet before seeing the movie, I’m sure you’ll find a copy in your local library, Oxfam shop or in the charity’s online store.
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