Maggie O’Farrell

But, you know, for me, there are two really important documented things about Shakespeare.

One that was that all the money he earned in London and he earned a lot.

He was a very, very good businessman as well as being a pretty good playwright.

He sent all of that money back to Stratford-upon-Avon and he lived in very modest lodgings in London while he was there.

And also at the end of his career, he could have lived anywhere he wanted when he retired from the stage, but he chose to go back to Stratford-upon-Avon and live with his wife, which neither of those things speak to me as somebody who regretted his marriage or hated his wife.

It did, definitely.

And I think if you are going to choose to write fiction about people who were real, even if they lived, you know, 500 years ago, you do have a responsibility to them.

And you've got to remember that their bones are still in the churchyard.

You know, they were real.

These names are real.

The scenario, the houses, the lives, as much as you can find out are real.

So I absolutely made it a hard and fast rule that I needed to find out as much as I possibly could.

And even if I found out something that didn't fit with the novel that I wanted to write, I had to change.

I couldn't just pretend I hadn't read that book.

I had to incorporate it in.

And also, I knew that when I'd finished the book, I wanted to use some of the money I got for it for making a memorial for Hamlet because he doesn't have a gravestone and neither does Judith.

Wow.

And there's no, I mean, we know that they're buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, but there's no marker of their grave.

So that's what I did.

After COVID, after lockdown, the church in Stratford-upon-Avon were brilliant.