He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass green turf,
At his heels a stone. Hamlet, Act IV, scene v
“A wonderful book”; “I absolutely loved it”; “I started to re-read it immediately” – these were some of the book club’s comments on this month’s book ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell which has just won this year’s Women’s prize for Fiction.
Hamnet (another way of spelling Hamlet) was Shakespeare’s son, one of a twin with his sister Judith. Little is known of him but he died in 1596 aged 11, and four year’s later his father wrote ‘Hamlet’. This is a fictionalized account of what might have happened.The title of the novel is misleading, since it is Hamnet’s mother Agnes who is at its heart – we know her as Anne Hathaway but her Father refers to her as Agnes in his will. She is a free-spirited, unconventional woman, a gifted herbalist with a talent for reading character and foreseeing the future. She is at one with the world of nature, creeping into the forest to have her first baby as did her mother before her. The book is lyrical in its description of Agnes with her plants, and her bees, placing her in a tradition of English folklore with its deep connections between humans and landscape. When Shakespeare first sees her, he thinks she is a boy as she strides out of the forest with a falcon on her wrist.
The story moves seamlessly between past and present. We see Hamnet desperately looking for help for Judith who has suddenly contracted a severe fever and then the events leading to his own death but this is interspersed with the courtship and early married life of Agnes and her husband. When they met, she was twenty-six but he was eighteen and in this account she becomes pregnant out of wedlock as the only way to force their overbearing families to consent to a marriage. Shakespeare is never referred to by name, he is always ‘the Latin teacher’ and later ‘the Father’. This focuses attention on the domestic life of the home they share with his parents, although they live in a separate apartment.
Well- researched, the novel vividly brings to life the busy household, with all its daily chores – the heat and bustle of the cookhouse and the wash house as well as Agnes’s garden and her bees. Farrell well conveys the sounds and smells of sixteenth century life. Their life is not easy – Shakespeare’s father is portrayed as a bully with a violent temper and his harassed wife Mary is always suspicious of Agnes. At Agnes’s urging, her husband escapes and leaves for London and the couple have to build anew a relationship around his long absences. He becomes a shadowy figure in the background, occasionally appearing to play with the children.
The final part of the book takes place after Hamnet’s death. O’Farrell gives a moving account of Agnes’s grief and how husband and wife deal with it in their own way. Shakespeare moves his family into their own grand house but spends more time in London, until an angry Agnes rides to confront him in time to view the first performance of ‘Hamlet’ which brings her an understanding of his true state of mind.
What makes this novel so enchanting is the dream-like quality of the prose, redolent of the sixteenth century but without resorting to the language of the time; it is poetic in its evocations of forest and garden. Themes from Shakespeare’s plays lurk within – Agnes’s beloved forest reminds us of the Forest of Arden and Agnes herself resembles Rosamund in ‘As You Like It.’ We remember how often twins feature in his comedies and how often, like Hamnet and Judith, they change clothes and identities. It is a story of love, loss and grief but so tenderly done that it ends on a note of hope.
This is not for those who only like a strong narrative-driven novel but we recommend it for its subtlty, the beauty of its language and the understanding of bereavement.
Our next book is Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’.
Heather Mines