Why do you think the author chose to tell the story of this family primarily from the perspective of Agnes, as opposed to her famous husband? What do you think is gained (or lost) by this choice? Why do you think she chooses not to name him?
Telling the story from Agnes’ perspective is freeing for the author. Since so little is know about Anne Hathaway, O’Farrell can be creative without being restrained by historical details. As for why she chose not to use Shakespeare’s name, a few reasons occur to me:
It signals: Make no mistake, this is Agnes’ story, not her famous husband’s.
Eliminating Shakespeare’s name turns the novel into a universal human story rather than a “biopic.” He may be one of the most famous people in history, but in O’Farrell’s hands, nameless, he becomes an Everyman. He experiences and endures the same sort of good and bad that affect nearly all of us: falling in love, navigating the relationship with your parents, becoming a parent yourself, losing a loved one, discovering your calling.
Eliminating the name also forces O’Farrell to make other choices in identifying Shakespeare. This deftly reminds us of his connection to the theater—to characters—by referring to him in all sorts of roles: Latin tutor, son, brother, husband, father, etc.
This novel felt intimate and very real. I had to keep reminding myself that it was the author’s interpretation of how the time might have been for William Shakespeare’s family, not necessarily the true happenings. I enjoyed the book and the ending. One thing I didn’t like was how sad I felt through so much of it.
It was interesting to consider the options available to a mid-20s woman in the that era. The idea that Agnes was looking to get out of the family home (albeit with a side-swipe at stepmothers!), but had few options is entirely plausible*. That she might have recognized something in Shakespeare that made him as out of place as she was is also interesting. And as @Mary13 notes, a practically-oriented parent and artistically-oriented kid struggling to navigate the relationship is entirely relatable!
Using Agnes (v the more familiar Anne) emphasizes the fluidity of naming seen in the Hamnet/Hamlet of the title character.
*Apparently later marriages were not that uncommon: for women, when they were raising younger siblings after the death of the mother, and for men, when they were able to establish a household of their own.
I felt “prepared” to be sad, if that makes sense. Hamnet’s fate is a historical fact and every blurb made it clear that the book wrangled with grief. The story danced around the impending death, pulling away through flashbacks, then drawing ever closer with the next chapter. That said, as ready as the book tried to make me, that chapter where Agnes prepares Hamnet’s body totally did me in.
Good point re stepmothers. In fact, when I was looking online for discussion questions, one batch that I did not select had this question:
It is unknown whether Joan was Agnes’ mother or step-mother. How would the story have been different if she was actually Agnes’ mother?
Perhaps deciding to make Joan the “evil” (really just unpleasant) stepmother was to make Agnes seem more like a fairy tale character, especially at the outset: a wild woodland sprite, falcon in hand, able to sense the future and to cure with near-magical herbs. As in a fairy tale, the stepmother doesn’t love or understand her.
I’m not sure why O’Farrell sets up the story this way–maybe to suggest that when we are young, life seems to hold the promise of a fairy tale, but when the hard work of living (and dying) takes over, we become more grounded, becoming cynical (Mary) or restless (Agnes’ husband) or ultimately accepting (Agnes).
Enjoyed this book. Sad in a sense to me that women were basically trapped in society norms. I found it interesting that she thought her husband was cheating yet he was living like a monk. I felt like I was there in time.
I found that I had a lot of faith in Agnes’ sixth sense, so I wondered if her husband was cheating elsewhere, but keeping his own living quarters pure and simple – an area only to write and to reflect upon his love for his family. Of course, I prefer to believe that he never cheated, but it doesn’t seem realistic given the cumulative years he spent away from Agnes.
“I felt like I was there in time” – absolutely! So did I. And I think this answers the final discussion question about use of the present tense. With many books, the technique strikes me as an affectation, but not with this one. Rather, it brought the story alive.
I loved the book. Sometimes when a book is sad, it puts me off reading it, but not this one. I loved the lushness of the language, the piling on of descriptions. Sometimes it was a bit over the top, but I didn’t care. I also normally despise novels told in the present tense, which I assume authors think draw you into the action and make you feel more like you are there now. I did eventually get used to it, and concede that it probably did what it was intended to do.
If I had a quibble, it’s that Hamnet himself, doesn’t end up being much of a character. I wished he’d felt a little more fleshed out. I also think that in fact the Hamlet connection doesn’t really work. I went and watch the play after finishing the book - and I just don’t see the dithering Hamlet in the character of Hamnet who knew exactly what he was up to. Though I guess you could say both characters choose “not to be”.
Hamlet is actually one of my favorite Shakespearean characters. Maybe because I have a hard time making decisions.
They both choose “not to be” – yes! Another way in which Hamnet and Hamlet are alike is that they live inside their heads; they are highly intelligent dreamers.
Recalling verbs and grammar and tenses and rhetoric and numbers and calculations comes to him with an ease that can, on occasion, attract the envy of other boys. But his mind is also easily distracted. A cart going past in the street during a Greek lesson will draw his attention away from his slate to wonderings as to where the cart might be going and what it could be carrying and how about that time his uncle gave him and his sisters a ride on a hay cart, how wonderful that was, the scent and prick of new-cut hay, the wheels tugged along to the rhythm of the tired mare’s hoofs.
Sounds like a very young Hamlet to me, in a more innocent time before palace life took a nasty turn (“He does confess he feels himself distracted, / But from what cause he will by no means speak").
Recalling verbs and grammar and tenses and rhetoric and numbers and calculations comes to him with an ease that can, on occasion, attract the envy of other boys. But his mind is also easily distracted. A cart going past in the street during a Greek lesson will draw his attention away from his slate to wonderings as to where the cart might be going and what it could be carrying and how about that time his uncle gave him and his sisters a ride on a hay cart, how wonderful that was, the scent and prick of new-cut hay, the wheels tugged along to the rhythm of the tired mare’s hoofs.
I thought of Hamnet’s father when I read that passage, that perhaps the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree in this case. I think Agnes sees her husband when watching her son slip from the world into a world of his own.
This was an exceptionally well-written book. It made you pause, gather your thoughts and then go on. O’Farrell transports us into a different time and may be even into the heads of her characters.
It makes it easy to believe that these were living, breathing people whose lives in many ways were just as ordinary as ours. Their grief becomes yours as you read on.
I read the book almost 6 weeks ago and (memory not being what it used to be) my recollection of details, names and order of events may not be completely accurate.
The unpredictability of life and by corollary death — that which you think is strong and rooted may be most likely to fall in the first big storm. For a mother, especially one who has life-saving skills, the sorrow of realizing that you didn’t know which child needed your help and that you focused on the wrong one would be enough to wreck you. The moment when Agnes realizes this was very poignant for me.
As for his father — what a way to remember a dead child! The agony of putting your grief into words serves as penance for the guilt you feel when a child dies. To me, Hamlet, of all Shakespeare’s tragedies, was about the power of grief.
Another sad moment was when Agnes sees the monastic simplicity of her husband’s lodging place. He toiled so that his family could live well and not for himself. His infidelity, if indeed he was unfaithful, seems almost forgivable.
I would like to think that Anne, like Agnes, understood what the play was about and saw a way forward for them to come together and heal.
One thing I will say, this wasn’t a book that I could read continuously. I read many reviews where the reviewer said that it was a book that they couldn’t put down. Actually it was the opposite for me — I had to put it down several times and pick it up again. I read and then needed time to absorb before continuing to read. It took me a week to finish the book. Perhaps, knowing the outcome of the story from the beginning meant there wasn’t a need to hurry. It was rather a book to wander in, to savor the writing and the emotions.
I loved that passage about Hamnet getting distracted.
That Shakespeare’s name was never mentioned reminded me that Moses is never mentioned in the Passover haggadah. The religious explanation for that is that it’s supposed to give God all the credit for the Israelites gaining their freedom from Egypt, but in both cases the omission underlines the centrality of the character to the story.
Exactly. I hadn’t put my thoughts into words yet but you expressed my reading experience to the tee.
True confession time here: I haven’t finished the book yet. I’m debating putting it aside to read later. I can’t remember the last time - if ever - I set aside a book I like as much as like this one with the thought “later.” It’s so atypical of my usual mode of reading that I’ve actually worried about it.
It was an amazing book and one I found very absorbing. I agree it was beautifully written.
It was sad to read about the roles Joan and The grandfather ended up in. They were very unhappy people and made those around them pretty unhappy as well. It reminded me of some of the problems of small towns—folks are labeled and stuck with the label. Poverty and brutality were tough to escape.
I give Agnes credit for freeing Shakespeare, at great cost to herself and her family.
I read this book quicker than usual, less than a week (in maybe 4 long sessions?). Admittedly part of the incentive was being ready for this discussion and also wanting to start books for 2 other book clubs.
I really enjoyed Hamnet. It was slightly confusing to me in first pages, but it quickly became a fast and enjoyable read.
Some of my visuals of he London scenes came from watching some of the shows from the Netflix series Will, another fictional Shakespeare-based story. In that story, he did have a mistress/muse. We loved the costumes, dancing etc but stopped watching when it got too dark and creepy.
I think one of the highest compliments I can give a historical novel is to say that nothing stuck out to me – meaning that there were no glaring anachronisms or actions that seemed out of step with the times.
O’Farrell did her research, but it’s ingrained in the text rather than flaunted. She says:
…I had the OED open next to me, looking for words that weren’t used then or had different meanings. I’d written of a girl folding her dress into concertina, for example, and those weren’t invented until the early 19th century, so that had to go.
I’d continually come up against questions while writing. ‘What did they sit on when they ate?’ ‘What did they eat off?’ ‘What did they eat, in fact?’ ‘What time of day?’ And I’d go back to my books and find out they had their main meal at 11 in the morning. And I’d say, ‘Right, I can picture it now. I can see where the light would come from.’ There’s so much you need to know but not show.
That quote is from a lovely and interesting interview in The Irish Times:
My thoughts went to lineage. If Hamnet had lived, Shakespeare might have descendants today, but the line stopped with his grandchildren by Susanna and Judith.
Susanna had only one child, Elizabeth, who never had any children. And Judith had three children who all pre-deceased her. (One son died as an infant and her two other sons died within two weeks of each other at ages 19 and 21. No record as to how. Tragedy upon tragedy in those days.)
Well, if you remember The Weight of Ink, Shakespeare might have at least one unaccounted for (fictional) daughter! When I was in high school I had a senior project to write a historical novel about an obscure figure from 17th century England. I did a lot of research at the Library of Congress and quickly realized that it was a daunting task figuring out what people ate, what they wore, where they went to the bathroom. Privies or chamberpots anyone? I did not get very far! That’s so interesting that she used the OED. Back in grad school I belonged to an eating group. Nowadays we’d google something, but back then when we had a question, like “what makes a berry a berry anyway?” we’d all chant out “OED! OED!” and haul out the two volume set with the magnifying glass. But I digress…
My thought on the description of Hamnet was that he sounded like he had ADHD.
I loved the relationship of Agnes and Shakespeare. They each saw something in the other that few other people saw.
I really enjoyed this book. Even knowing that Hamnet died since that was already disclosed in the summaries, I was devastated when it actually happened. The writing drew you in and I felt such a part of it. Although it seemed true to the time period it did not feel strange.
