Hamnet: A Novel Synthesis
Any novel is evidently a work of synthesis. This is true whether the novel is close to an autobiography or blatantly science fiction; and irrespective of the work’s setting, characters, plot. Some novels focus on a short period of time and few characters (say. a mystery by Agatha Christie or Georges Simenon); others deliberately extend over generations (think Buddenbrooks or The Sound and the Fury); and the most ambitious, seek to encompass the universe (think War and Peace, Moby Dick).
That said, a novel occasionally stands out as a brilliant synthesis.
Recently, on the recommendation of several people, I read Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. It’s a remarkable achievement. I was first struck and then increasingly amazed at how the author was able to develop multiple strands and braid them deftly into an effective literary work. Particularly rewarding for me, Hamnet yields insights into how synthesis can work in a novel, and highlights facets of synthesis that a novel can display, indeed foreground.
For those unfamiliar with the book, a very brief synopsis. The novel is set in Elizabethan England in the second half of the sixteenth century. It takes place primarily in the village of Stratford-upon-Avon, familiar centuries later because it was the place where William Shakespeare was born and raised, and where he married Anne Hathaway, who eventually gave birth to their three children. One of these, a twin boy named Hamnet, died at age 11, in a pandemic (possibly of a “pestilence”). These and other characters lived at a time when variants of names were common—in the novel, Anne Hathaway is named Agnes, and of course, the name Hamnet is close to the name of Shakespeare’s most famous and perhaps greatest play, The Tragedy (orTragical Historie) of Hamlet.
While these are the names most familiar to us today, O’Farrell introduces a panoply of other characters: Shakespeare’s two surviving children (Judith and Susannah); quite a few members of their two respective families (some quite villainous, a few very sympathetic); and an assortment of doctors, friends, tradespersons and passers-by. Intriguingly, William Shakespeare himself is never mentioned by name—he is referred to variously as tutor (he taught Latin), husband, father, son. And indeed, the reader—if, like me, he is particularly interested in and curious about “the Bard”—is invited to reflect on how plausibly O’Farrell resolves the puzzles surrounding the early life of the historical Shakespeare.
So far, an intriguing reconstruction of a family and its circle several centuries ago. O’Farrell apparently worked on this novel for many years and carried out extensive research on a plethora of topics from that time. Just to mention some of the most salient and intriguing: the nature of disease, health, and medicine of the time; the various flora and fauna of that part of England; theater in London (and other sites) during a pandemic; religions, rituals, as well as witchcraft; the trades of glove-making, farming, of the Shakespeare and Hathaway families. In a tour de force, O’Farrell describes how a virus first detected in Italy and Africa made its way, step by incongruous step, into a bit of clothing and jewelry in an English village. I did not try to confirm the historical and scientific accuracy of these various strands, but I can assure you that they are convincingly and evocatively described. They add marvelous detail to what is essentially a psychological portrait of two extended families.
And then, there is the language: while O’Farrell is clearly a contemporary author, her choice of words and phrases evokes centuries past. Consider, for example, her flashes backward and forward—many of the expressions that she uses are reminiscent of Shakespeare’s—some, indeed, are direct quotes. And there are other features of the Bard that I had not been cognizant of—the same tilting toward negative words and expressions (Un, Not) that also characterize Shakespearean language.
Finally, and most important, the hypothesized connection between the child Hamnet and the Shakespearean character Hamlet. As portrayed in the novel, the grown Shakespeare was quite remote from his family; most tellingly, he did not even arrive at the family home (which he had purchased with his theatrical profits) in time to witness Hamnet’s death. And yet, four years later, he creates a powerful work, in which both the protagonist and his ghostly father are named Hamlet!
In O’Farrell’s audacious but convincing leap, the play “Hamlet” is construed as Shakespeare’s way of coping with the death of his only son. To be sure, its manifest plot depicts a saga from centuries earlier and located far away from Elizabethan England. But O’Farrell construes the play as Shakespeare’s effort to recreate his own recently deceased offspring as a young man coming into his own—one who mourns his slain father (King William of Denmark) and kills his faux father (Claudius, who can stand in for William Shakespeare himself). This may well be confusing—put differently, playwright Shakespeare uses the play as a vehicle to resurrect his dead son Hamnet and kill the son’s absent and guilt-ridden father—William. I am in agreement with most reviewers, including noted Shakespearen scholar Stephen Greenblatt, that O’Farrell succeeds in pulling of this daring dramatic realization.
O’Farrell is an accomplished novelist. She has published this work at what might be seen as the prime of her life—just a shade under fifty, (about the same age that Shakespeare finished his writing). And yet, unless one knows her writings and her biography, there is no reason to infer that she is writing about her own life.
But the two turn out to be intimately, integrally interconnected.
Several years before completing Hamnet, O’Farrell published an amazingly revealing autobiography—entitled I AM I AM I AM. The memoir consists of seventeen episodes—all life-threatening—in which she was personally involved. These include the death in utero of one of her twins, and various perilous conditions that she and her other children have confronted in a way that most of us (in our less perilous time) are fortunate enough to have avoided. O’Farrell’s life has been closely intertwined with death—and particularly with the pain that perhaps only a mother can feel when one of her offspring has died and another has been near death on numerous occasions. In fact—and here I share a personal note—while pregnant with me, my own mother witnessed the accidental death of her own eight year old son. O’Farrell’s rendering helped me to understand what my own mother must have experienced almost eighty years ago. As for herself, O’Farrell’s experiences have made her far more cognizant of the tenuousness of life; and yet at the same time (as sometimes happens), more adventurous in her personal life (she offers numerous examples) and—in this novel—in her literary life as well.
As just one example: consider this passage—based on her own and her family’s personal experience—which suggests how Hamnet’s impending death from the plague may have appeared to the 11 year old youth:
“When you are a child, no one tells you that you are going to die. You have to work it out for yourself. Clues may include: your mother crying but the pretending not to; your siblings being kept away from you; doctors looking at you with an expression of concentration, gravity and a certain fascination; nurses avoiding your eye; relatives travelling great distances to visit you. Hospital isolation rooms, invasive procedures and groups of medical students are also reliable signs.”
Back to synthesizing. All novels are syntheses, some more successful than others. Hamnet succeeds in drawing together historical, scientific, medical, cultural, and biographical information, as well as real and imaginary characters and situations—and does do in a compelling way. At the same time—in a way that we only know because of her published memoir—the author succeeds in synthesizing her own tumultuous life with her masterfully scripted work of imagination. No doubt, almost all novels draw on one’s personal experiences—but O’Farrell has set a very high standard (1).
(1) Note: I have also written an essay about the English playwright, Tom Stoppard (click here for link.) For many years, Stoppard wrote about a wide range of topics but never about his own family—a Central European Jewish family whose history he had deliberately not probed. Only in his ninth decade did he explore that relationship in Leopoldstadt—by far his most personal play. And reflecting on my own writings, only as I neared the age of 80 did I begin to reflect on my own intellectual strengths—my synthesizing mind.