“What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any time, like a thief or brigand.”

From the moment I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it and I was not disappointed. Hamnet follows the Shakespeare family, specifically William Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes*, and the circumstances surrounding the death of their son Hamnet from the plague. The narrative divides between the present day – the days leading up to, and the aftermath of, Hamnet’s death – and the story of their family, from the romance between Agnes and her husband to the birth and childhood of their children.


Read this and more reviews on my blog!

It took me a little while to settle into the writing style, but once I did I was completely hooked. The book was so atmospheric that you believed you were in Elizabethan Stratford, in amongst the busy lives of the extended Shakespeare family. Although we began from Hamnet’s perspective, the shift to Agnes’ perspective was seamless and allowed us to see her first through her family’s eyes before we get to know her ourselves.

Agnes herself was quite a mysterious figure to begin with, as we were presented with her as both the practical mother and the mysterious forest figure. We began to understand her, and how she sees the world, more as we a slowly let inside her head, as if she was letting us in on her own terms. There were elements of magical realism to her character, which not only added to the atmosphere of the story, but helped us position ourselves in a pre-modern-medicine plague. The characters don’t know what is causing the sickness, or how to cure it, or even why some recover and others don’t. By giving us this tiny drop of magical realism we too were left in the unknown, unsure as to what was really happening and why.

Even though there is never a moments’ doubt who the father in this family is, the name ‘William Shakespeare’ (or even ‘William’ or ‘Shakespeare’ is never mentioned once. Instead, he is ‘her husband’, or ‘the boy’s father’, or ‘John’s eldest son’, or even ‘the Latin tutor’. First and foremost this is a relief; a name like ‘William Shakespeare’, for a principal character in a delicately written prose, is about as subtle as a klaxon in a library. Over time, we come to see him not as the Bard who has some family we’re reading about, but rather as a composite of the relationships he has with his friends, his family, his community, and with the world around him. For much of the book his family aren’t truly aware of his success, or the monetary gains that come with it, but are instead frustrated that he is away so much. We are much more sympathetic to him and his fraught relationship with his father because we see him as a character and a person, not as a historical icon thrown in for good measure. And the moments when the true ‘Shakespeare’ shines through, we are all the more grateful for it.

This book is a snapshot of a life, about the moments big and small, the actions that lead up to them and the ripples that are caused by them. It’s beautifully written, and it makes your heart ache. I absolutely loved it, and I would highly recommend it.

*In the Tudor era, ‘Anne’ and ‘Agnes’ were often used interchangeably, and Anna Hathaway has been referred to as both in legal documents of the time.