Oops, Anne Shakespeare and the death of Hamnet
This blog is an extension of my previous blog concerning the death of Anne Shakespeare's son, Hamnet. In that blog I quoted Maggie O'Farrell (of Hamnet novel fame) who is going to plant sprigs of rosemary at Hamnet and Judith's grave-sites. Of more interest though, is her assertion that the death of Hamnet in 1596 affected William (assumed to be the author) and that his death somehow resurfaced for William in his play, Hamlet (again assuming that William is the author).
I raised some doubts about this claim (see blog fourteen). Now, further to those doubts I would like to return to perhaps some more relevant information that Anne (as the real author) had to say about Hamnet's death. And it is not to be found in the person of Hamlet. A more likely tribute to her son Hamnet is to be found in sonnets 33 and 34. In my forthcoming book (Shake-speare: The Inside Story) I detail at some length how both of these sonnets can be read as tributes to Hamnet. To quote, I suggest that, in sonnet 34 (for instance),
"Sonnet 34 carries on the imagery from sonnet 33 that Anne had used in describing how the plague had decimated her son Hamnet. She does not go over again how wondrous he was prior to the plague taking its toll on him. But what she is doing here in this sonnet is extending the metaphors she used around the plague and its effects on Hamnet."
Indeed, both sonnets 33 and 34 use metaphors of the natural world in describing Hamnet as the "Sun", and in one telling line she laments, 'Suns of the world may stain, when heavens sun staineth' (sonnet 33, l. 14), which is to say that Anne recognises that Hamnet may not have been perfect but then again, neither is 'heavens sun' which can also have "stains" (or imperfections).It is in these two sonnets that Anne is grieving for her son, Hamnet, taken by the plague. And, this interpretation, then leads on to be able to date these sonnets as having been written around 1596 or shortly thereafter. This then creates a possible timeline for the rest of the sonnets, beginning way back in 1582 when Anne was wooing a reluctant William into marriage and fathering children (sonnets 1-17), the possible birth of their first daughter, Susannah in 1583 (sonnet 18) and then into their marriage with all of its challenges (sonnets 19-154).
To return to Maggie O'Farrell's fictionalised account of Hamnet. This raises the tantalising possibility of Anne (as author) and her own biography as art. That is, what we witness, through all of the plays and poems (and especially the Sonnets), are a complex entwining of Anne's personal beliefs with the creative forces of her imaginative dramatic art (as I outline in Shake-speare: The Inside Story, forthcoming).
More to come.
