Hamnet

Shakespeare

Hamnet Shakespeare (baptised 2

February 1585 – buried 11 August 1596)
was the only son of William Shakespeare
and Anne Hathaway, and the fraternal
twin of Judith Shakespeare.[1][2][3][4] He
died at age 11. Some Shakespearean
scholars speculate on the relationship
between Hamnet and his father's later
play Hamlet,[5] as well as on possible
connections between Hamnet's death
and the writing of King John, Romeo and
Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Twelfth Night.
 Hamnet Shakespeare

A 19th-century engraving imagining

Shakespeare's family life. Hamnet stands
behind Shakespeare, left of centre.

Born baptised 2 February

1585
Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, England

Died buried 11 August 1596

(aged 11)
Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, England

Nationality English

Parent(s) William Shakespeare

Anne Hathaway
Hamnet's death record

Life
Little is known about Hamnet.[4] Hamnet
and his twin sister Judith were born in
Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 2
February 1585 in Holy Trinity Church by
Richard Barton of Coventry.[2] The twins
were probably named after Hamnet
Sadler, a baker, who witnessed
Shakespeare's will, and his wife, Judith.[1]
According to the record of his baptism
on 23 March 1560 in the Register of
Solihull he was christened 'Hamlette
Sadler',[6][7]

Hamnet Shakespeare was probably

raised principally by his mother Anne in
the Henley Street house belonging to his
grandfather.

By the time Hamnet was four, his father

was already a London playwright and, as
his popularity grew, he was probably not
regularly at home in Stratford with his
family.[8] Honan believes that Hamnet
may have completed Lower School,
which would have been normal, before
his death at the age of eleven (possibly
from the Bubonic Plague). He was buried
in Stratford on 11 August 1596.[3][4] At
that time in England about a third of all
children died before age 10.[9]

Connection to Hamlet and

other plays
“
Grief fills the room up of my absent
child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down
with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his
words,
Remembers me of all his gr acious
parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with
his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of
grief. ”

Constance, King John, Act 3, Scene 4, line

95–9.[a]

Scholars have long speculated about the

influence – if any – of Hamnet's death
upon William Shakespeare's writing.
Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson,
who wrote a lengthy piece on the death
of his own son, Shakespeare, if he wrote
anything in response, did so more subtly.
At the time his son died, Shakespeare
was writing primarily comedies, and that
writing continued until a few years after
Hamnet's death, when his major
tragedies were written. It is possible that
his tragedies gained depth from his
experience.[9]

Biographical readings, in which critics

would try to connect passages in the
plays and sonnets to specific events in
Shakespeare's life, are at least as old as
the Romantic Period. Many famous
writers, scholars, and critics from the
18th to the early 20th century pondered
the connection between Hamnet's death
and Shakespeare's plays. These scholars
and critics included Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Edward Dowden, and Dover
Wilson, among others. In 1931, C. J.
Sisson stated that such interpretations
had "gone too far". In 1934, Shakespeare
scholar R. W. Chambers agreed, saying
that Shakespeare's most cheerful work
was written after his son's death, making
a connection doubtful. In the mid-to-late
20th century, it became increasingly
unpopular for critics to connect events in
authors' lives with their work, not just for
Shakespeare, but for all writing. More
recently, however, as the ideas of the
New Criticism have lost prominence,
biographical interpretations of Hamnet's
relationship to his father's work have
begun to re-emerge.[8]

Some theories about Hamnet's influence

on his father's plays are centered on the
tragedy Hamlet, composed in 1599 or
1601. The traditional view, that grief over
his only son's death may have spurred
Shakespeare to write the play, is in all
likelihood incorrect. Although the names
Hamlet and Hamnet were considered
virtually interchangeable, and
Shakespeare's own will spelled Hamnet
Sadler's first name as "Hamlett",[11][7] the
name of the character in the play has a
different derivation.[12] Prince Hamlet's
name is more often thought to be related
to the Amleth character in Saxo
Grammaticus' Vita Amlethi, an old
Scandinavian legend that is very similar
to Shakespeare's story.[13] More recent
scholarship has argued that, while
Hamlet has a Scandinavian origin and
may have been selected as a play subject
for commercial reasons, Shakespeare's
grief over the loss of his only son may lie
at the heart of the tragedy.[11][14]

Speculation over Hamnet's influence on

Shakespeare's works is not limited to
Hamlet. Richard Wheeler theorises that
Hamnet's death influenced the writing of
Twelfth Night, which centres on a girl
who believes that her twin brother has
died. In the end, she finds that her
brother never died, but is alive and well.
Wheeler also posits the idea that the
women who disguise themselves as men
in The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It,
and Twelfth Night are a representation of
William Shakespeare's seeing his son's
hope in his daughters after Hamnet's
death.[8] Bill Bryson argues that
Constance's speech from the third act of
King John (written mid-1590s) was
inspired by Hamnet's death. In the
speech she laments the loss of her son,
Arthur.[15] It is possible, though, that
Hamnet was still alive when Constance's
lament was written.[8] Many other plays
of Shakespeare's have theories
surrounding Hamnet. These include
questions as to whether a scene in Julius
Caesar, in which Caesar adopts Mark
Antony as a replacement for his dead
son is related to Hamnet's death, or
whether Romeo and Juliet is a tragic
reflection of the loss of a son, or Alonso's
guilt over his son's death in The Tempest
is related.[8] Sonnet 37 may have also
been written in response to Hamnet's
death. Shakespeare says in it, "As a
decrepit father takes delight / To see his
active child do deeds of youth / So I,
made lame by fortune's dearest spight /
Take all my comfort of thy worth and
truth." Still, if this is an allusion to
Hamnet, it is a vague one.[9] The grief can
echo also in one of the most painful
passages Shakespeare ever wrote, in the
end of King Lear where the ruined
monarch recognizes his daughter is
dead: "No, no, no life! / Why should a dog,
a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no
breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, /
Never, never, never, never, never!"[14]

Michael Wood suggests in In Search of

Shakespeare that sonnet 33 might have
nothing to do with the so-called Fair
Youth sonnets, that it alludes to the death
of the poet's son, Hamnet in 1596 at age
11, and that there is an implied pun on
"sun" and "son": "Even so my sun one
early morn did shine, with all triumphant
splendour on my brow; but out, alack, he
was but one hour mine, the region cloud
hath mask'd him from me now". If this is
the case the link of sonnet 33 with
sonnet 34, sonnet 35 and sonnet 36
would be entirely coincidental and
spurious. Note that in sonnet 33 (1) there
is no overt "you" or "thou" (contrary to
most of the sonnets and in particular to
sonnets 34, 35 and 36 which all three use
"thou") and (2) there is no mention of the
supposed "fault" committed by the
addressee towards the poet (as in
sonnets 34 and 35) nor of the supposed
"guilt" borne by the poet which may affect
the addressee's reputation (as in sonnet
36).

Notes and references

Notes

a. The Constace's lamentation speech is

in King John, 3.4.95–107.[10]

References

1. Chambers 1930a, p. 18.

2. Schoenbaum 1987, p. 94.
3. Chambers 1930a, p. 21.
4. Schoenbaum 1987, p. 224.
5. Dexter 2008, pp. 34–6.
6. Fry 1904, p. 16.
7. Nelson n.d.
8. Wheeler 2000.
9. Honan 1999, pp. 235–6.
10. Mowat et al. n.d.
11. Greenblatt 2004a.
12. Chambers 1930b, pp. 3–4.
13. Hansen 1983, pp. 1–5.
14. Greenblatt 2004b.
15. Bryson 2007, p. 119.

Sources
Bryson, Bill (2007). Shakespeare: The
World as Stage. Eminent Lives. New
York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-
0062564627.
Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (1930).
William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts
and Problems. I. Oxford: Clarendon
Press. LCCN 31002409 .
OCLC 353406 . OL 1182161W .
Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (1930).
William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts
and Problems. II. Oxford: Clarendon
Press. LCCN 31002409 .
OCLC 353406 . OL 1182161W .
Dexter, Gary (2008). Why Not Catch-
21?. Frances Lincoln. ISBN 978-0-7112-
2925-9.
Fry, Edward Alexander, ed. (1904). The
Register of Solihull, Co. Warwick . I,
1538–1668. Exeter: The Parish
Register Society. LCCN 05036801 .
OCLC 18970847 . OL 6962359M .
Greenblatt, Stephen (21 October 2004).
"The Death of Hamnet and the Making
of Hamlet" . The New York Review of
Books. Retrieved 17 June 2017.
Greenblatt, Stephen (2004). Will in the
World: How Shakespeare Became
Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton &
Co. ISBN 0-393-05057-2.
Hansen, William, ed. (1983). Saxo
Grammaticus and the Life of Hamlet: A
Translation, History, and Commentary.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
ISBN 0-8032-2318-8.
Honan, Park (1999). Shakespeare: A
Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
ISBN 9780199774753.
Mowat, Barbara; Werstine, Paul;
Poston, Michael; Niles, Rebecca, eds.
(n.d.). "The Life and Death of King
John" . Folger Digital Texts. Folger
Shakespeare Library. Retrieved
17 June 2017.
Nelson, Alan H. (n.d.). "William
Shakespeare's last will and testament:
original copy including three
signatures" . Shakespeare
Documented. Folger Shakespeare
Library. Retrieved 16 June 2017.
 Schoenbaum, Samuel (1987). William
Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary
Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-
19-505161-0.
Wheeler, Richard P. (2000). "Deaths in
the Family: The Loss of a Son and the
Rise of Shakespearean Comedy".
Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger
Shakespeare Library. 51 (2): 127–53.
doi:10.2307/2902129 . eISSN 1538-
3555 . ISSN 0037-3222 .
JSTOR 2902129 – via JSTOR.
(Registration required (help)).

External links
Shakespeare's children and
grandchildren
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