Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

“Hamnet”: Visualizing What Inspired Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

By Glynn Young 2 Comments

Deer Family Hamnet Chakrabarti

The new play “Hamnet” suggests a strong influence on “Hamlet”

William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway had three children: Susannah and the twins Judith and Hamnet. In 1596, when the twins were 11, Hamnet died. A week after his son was buried in their hometown of Stratford, Shakespeare was back in London, working on a new play.

It seems odd to us today that the man would have hurried back so quickly to London after the funeral of his child. I suspect it might have seemed odd even in 1596. Your wife is grieving, your daughters are grieving, your still-living parents are grieving, and you rush back to work. We don’t know what might have been going on in Shakespeare’s mind, as he left no written record of his thoughts about his son’s death.

Or did he?

HamnetShakespeare scholars know that the play Hamlet, first staged in 1600, was based on a legendary story included in a work compiled in Latin about 1200 called History of the Danes. The Tale of Amleth is the story of the rightful prince displaced by the conniving uncle. Amleth pretends to be mad to protect himself, and eventually the uncle meets his fate (as do many of the characters in the story). And, yes, it is a simple trick of letters to move the “h” of Amleth to the beginning and create “Hamlet.”

But why would Shakespeare have done that? He could have just as easily kept the historical name and written Amleth, Prince of Denmark. Early on, people understood the resemblance between “Hamlet” and “Hamnet.” And over the centuries, many wondered if Shakespeare was trying to memorialize his son.

Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O’Farrell

The story obviously intrigued novelist Maggie O’Farrell (I would say British novelist, and she lives in Britain, but her name is Irish and she resides in Edinburgh). She wrote the much celebrated novel Hamnet, which won a number of literary awards. It’s a story about the Shakespeare family—how Will and Anne met and married, their children, their life together in Stratford and apart when Will went to London to work. It focuses on the children and the death of Hamnet (from the plague, which was a recurring disease for hundreds of years before and after Shakespeare).

Actress and playwright Lolita Chakrabarti adapted the novel into a play of the same name. It premiered in Stratford at the Swan Theatre this past April, a production of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Neal Productions. It is now scheduled for London’s Garrick Theatre, beginning Oct. 1.

Unless I know the story backward and forward (like the musical Les Misérables), I like to read the text of the play I’m going to see. That’s especially true if it’s a drama. I read the script for The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth a few days before the performance, and it was enormously helpful when I actually saw the play.

Lolita Chakrabarti

Lolita Chakrabarti

In the case of Hamnet, the story becomes a haunting tale of grief, much of it told from Anne Hathaway’s perspective. She’s been away, and she rushes home to care for her daughter Judith suffering from the plague, only to find Judith recovering and Hamnet dying. Word is sent to London to Shakespeare, and he rushes home, but it’s too late. The boy has died.

Without giving away too much of what happens next, suffice it to say that both parents grieve, grieve deeply, and deal with their grief in very distinct ways. Anne finds William’s almost walled-off feelings to be disconcerting, until she learns firsthand that her husband felt their son’s loss as deeply as she did. And she discovers it in a very Shakespearean way.

It’s a moving story. A play adapted from a novel can never include everything the novel contains, but Chakrabarti has been faithful to O’Farrell’s story and shaped it into what is the essential plot and character development.

Scholars will never know for sure whether the death of his son influenced Shakespeare when he wrote Hamlet, but writers and readers of the novel and the play will know better.

Photo by faungg’s photos, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

Browse more book reviews

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan

5 star

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
  • Czeslaw Milosz, 1946-1953: “Poet in the New World” - May 13, 2025

Filed Under: article, book reviews, Books, Grief Poems, Hamlet, Shakespeare

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. Bethany says

    July 21, 2023 at 12:39 am

    How interesting. Thanks so much for sharing this with us.

    I like too how you read a play before attending. That would have been helpful when I went to see “The Winter’s Tale” some years back.

    Reply
  2. Megan Willome says

    August 5, 2023 at 5:41 pm

    I think I might actually enjoy the story better as a play. When reading the book, I especially wanted to see the ending. A staged version would certainly make that possible.

    The other great part of the book that I don’t think would adapt well is the chapter on the plague spreading. Unforgettable.

    Thanks, Glynn!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy