For now, she is right at the front of the crowd, at the edge of the stage; she is gripping its wooden lip in both hands. An arm’s length away, perhaps two, is Hamlet, her Hamlet, as he might have been, had he lived, and the ghost, who has her husband’s hands, her husband’s beard, who speaks in her husband’s voice.
She stretches out a hand, as if to acknowledge them, as if to feel the air between the three of them, as if wishing to pierce the boundary between audience and players, between real life and play.
The ghost turns his head towards her, as he prepares to exit the scene. He is looking straight at her, meeting her gaze, as he speaks his final words:
“Remember me.”
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction, inspired by the short life of a boy who died in Stratford, Warwickshire, in the summer of 1596. I have tried, where possible, to stick to the scant historical facts known about the real Hamnet and his family, but a few details—names, in particular—have been altered or elided over.
Most people will know his mother as “Anne,” but she was named by her father, Richard Hathaway, in his will, as “Agnes,” and I decided to follow his example. Some believe that Joan Hathaway was Agnes’s mother, while others argue she was her stepmother; there is little evidence to support or discredit either theory.
Hamnet’s sole surviving paternal aunt was called not Eliza but Joan (as was the eldest sister who predeceased her). I took the liberty of changing it because the doubling up of names, while common in parish records of the time, can be confusing for readers of a novel.
There were guides at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust who told me that Hamnet, Judith, and Susanna grew up in their grandparents’ house on Henley Street; others seemed certain that they would have lived in the little adjoining property. Either way, the two households would have been closely linked, but I chose to opt for the latter.
Lastly, it is not known why Hamnet Shakespeare died: his burial is listed but not the cause of his death. 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. I have always wondered about this absence and its possible significance; this novel is the result of my idle speculation.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Mary-Anne Harrington.
Thank you, Victoria Hobbs.
Thank you, Jordan Pavlin.
Thank you, Georgina Moore.
Thank you, Hazel Orme, Yeti Lambregts, Amy Perkins, Vicky Abbott, and all at Tinder Press.
Thank you to the staff at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, and the guides at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, who were unfailingly generous and patient in the face of numerous questions.
Thank you, Bridget O’Farrell, for the loan of a kitchen table.
Thank you, Charlotte Mendelson and Jules Bradbury, for herbal and plant advice.
The following books were invaluable during the writing of this noveclass="underline" The Herball or General Historie of Plantes by John Gerard, 1597 (arranged by Marcus Woodward, Bodley Head, 1927); Shakespeare’s Restless World by Neil McGregor (Allen Lane, 2012); A Shakespeare Botanical by Margaret Willes (Bodleian Library, 2015); The Book of Faulconrie or Hauking by George Turberville (London, 1575); Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer (Bloomsbury, 2007); Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (Harper Press, 2007); Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (Vintage, 2006); How to Be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman (Penguin, 2015); 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber & Faber, 2005); and the website Shakespeare Documented, shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/.
Special thanks are due to Mr. Henderson, in whose English class, in 1989, I first heard about the existence of Hamnet. I hope he will rate this book as “not bad.”
Thank you, SS, IZ and JA.
And thank you, Will Sutcliffe, for everything.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, Maggie O’Farrell grew up in Wales and Scotland and now lives in Edinburgh. She has worked as a waitress, chambermaid, bike messenger, teacher, arts administrator, journalist (in Hong Kong and London), and as the deputy literary editor of The Independent on Sunday. She is the author of After You’d Gone (winner of the Betty Trask Award); My Lover’s Lover; The Distance Between Us (recipient of a Somerset Maugham Award); The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox; The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Book Award); Instructions for a Heatwave; This Must Be the Place; and, most recently, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death.
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