BOOKS / “In the name of the son. Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell, a book capable of raising various points of discussion

The modern classic that tells the lost story of WIlliam Shakespeare’s family life

“Hamnet is proof that there are always new stories to tell.”

With this sentence the British writer Maggie O’Farrell (photo below) explains the intention behind his historical novel “In the name of the son. Hamnet”, New York Times bestseller published in 2020 in the United Kingdom and published in Italy by Guanda the following year.

Despite William Shakespeare is considered the most important playwright of Western cultureof his private and family life, very little is known and it is precisely starting from this premise that the author combines known and imaginary to tell the story of those whom Shakespeare put into the backgroundto give the highest priority to its theatrical performances.

In fact, the true protagonist of the novel is his wife Anne Hathaway (in the novel called Agnes following what was written in the will of the father), flanked by the three children Susanna, Judith and Hamnet.

To be able to better tell their stories, O’Farrell develops the narrative in two different timelines: a part from 1596, more precisely from the evening in which Judith fell ill with the plague and Hamnet left the house in search of the help of an adult; the second instead takes place in an unspecified pastin which the beginning of the is described romance between mysterious free-spirited Agnes and Latin tutor William, the shotgun wedding to hide an unexpected pregnancy, up to the moment when Shakespeare abandons his family to go to London in search of fortune.

“In the name of the son. Hamnet” it’s a book capable of raising various points of discussion, starting from the central themes of the work, namely the loss, the pain and the consequent anger that arises when seeing the world go on undisturbed in the face of the suffering of an individual.

All the characters are hit in their own way by the anguish of the unpredictability of deathsentiment treated especially in a long digression on the arrival of the plague disease a Stratford-Upon-Avonwhich will cause a mourning too great to metabolise.

After centuries in which Shakespeare has always been in the spotlight, for once the attention is paid to those who have been silently next to him and to emphasize this the author never calls the author by name, favoring the use of expressions such as “father” and “husband” which highlight the relationships that man entertained with his loved ones.

Agnes and the three children are thus portrayed as human beingswhose stories are worth hearing, thus making O’Farrell’s novel a modern classic.

The great success that “In the name of the son. Hamnet” has collected is witnessed since winning awards such as the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020.

The novel recently had a theatrical adaptation critically acclaimed who has already sold out all seventy-three dates at Stratford-Upon-Avon and which promises to do the same with the one hundred and twelve dates at Garrick Theater in London.

In addition, a future big-screen adaptation of the novel was announced on April 6whose screenplay will be edited by the author herself in collaboration with Chloe Zhao, which in 2021 became the second woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director for his film “Nomadland”.

Of LISA CRITELLI