Hamnet

By Maggie O’Farrell, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020, 305 pages
Reviewed by Janet Cleaveland, March 22, 2021

The ending of Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet” sent me scurrying to William Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.”

The last two words in the novel are straight out of the play. They are delivered as a command from the Ghost in both:

“Remember me.”

“Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague” is the best book I’ve read in the past couple of years. It’s about Shakespeare’s marriage and career, first as a Latin tutor and then as a playwright and actor, and the wrenching loss of his only son. He relives his misery as an abused son and his joy in finding a free-spirited, eccentric wife, who gathers herbs, makes potions, heals villagers and roams the fields near Stratford, England. (No midwife for her, she even gives birth in one of those fields.)

The Ghost’s command gave me the chills. It reminded me of the journey I took to appreciate and start to understand Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

I read it in college, and it was way beyond my fledgling analytical skills. I saw it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (twice!), and I had no patience for it. I always thought the tragedy was too overwrought, too cerebral and too long. Last time I saw it, I just wanted everyone to die so we could get on with it or, more likely, I could get out of there for a nightcap.

Then a year ago, right before the Covid-19 lockdown, I attended a weekend retreat on “Hamlet,” led by Father Stephen Rowan of the Archdiocese of Seattle. The discussions included the Ghost as a character, and those comments came to mind as I read O’Farrell’s “Hamnet.”

Hamnet is a precocious and charming 11-year-old boy who likely lost his life to the plague, though the cause isn’t specified on his death certificate, according to O’Farrell. Also, “Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable names in Stratford records in the 16th and 17th centuries,” wrote critic and scholar Steven Greenblatt in 2004. I needed that clarification. I also needed O’Farrell’s clarification that the character she calls Agnes is Anne Hathaway. Apparently, Agnes/Anne’s father named her as Agnes in his will. O’Farrell stuck with that name in her novel.

“Remember me.”

At the end of “Hamnet,” the Ghost addresses that command to the playwright’s wife, who is watching from the pit and working out how her husband assuaged his grief by writing the tragedy. The playwright plays the part of the Ghost. As she watches, she understands how he had to have coached the young actor playing Hamlet the prince:

“He has found this boy, instructed him, shown him how to speak, how to stand, how to lift his chin, like this, like that,” Agnes thinks. “He has rehearsed and primed and prepared him,” she realizes.

She is wracked with such sorrow that it helps her come to terms with her boy’s death.

It broke my heart.

Even better for anyone who struggles to understand “Hamlet,” consider this: G.B. Harrison (1894-1991), who was editor of the Shakespeare Penguin Classics, wrote, “There is more of Shakespeare himself in this play than in any of his others.”

Good enough for me.

“Do not forget,” the Ghost says in Act III.

Don’t worry, Ghost. I won’t. You were magnificent in bringing me to new understanding about a seminal work in Shakespeare’s canon.

“Hamnet” the novel helped me make some connections to an older, more famous work of literature.

And God knows it’s a perfect time to be thinking about ghosts, death and plagues.