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Hamnet

“In the 1580s, a couple living in Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins.
The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven.
Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.”

So writes Maggie O’Farrell, author of the multi-award winning novel, Hamnet (2020), which tells the story of the personal circumstances that might have fed into the tone and the subject matter of William Shakespeare’s most celebrated play of Hamlet. In this course, we will perform a careful and thorough close reading of O’Farrell’s Hamnet, we will examine some of the historical documents utilised by O’Farrell to bring Shakespeare’s family to life, and we will also read Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The questions animating and directing our study are: what makes a successful creative response? What can historical records like letters, wills, petitions, applications, inventories, accounts, and dedications tell us about past lives, feelings, and experiences? And how can we (as modern readers and scholars) intervene and participate in the Shakespeare story?