To See or Not to See? Hamnet tune-up session
episodePreviously titled “To see or not to see: Hamnet tune-up session” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Every book has two stories.
The one it tells.
And the one it hides.
Welcome to The Secret Life of Books.
I'm Jonty Claypole, broadcaster and producer.
And I'm Sophie Gee, academic and writer.
In this podcast, we tell the story behind the story of the literary classics everybody wants to read, feels they should read, or has already read and loved.
This week, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell.
OK, all of us know that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, and many of us are also aware that Shakespeare had a son with basically the same name. But let's be honest, how many of us have really wondered what, if any, was the connection between these two facts? This, though, is the inquiry at the heart of Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 bestselling and multi-award winning novel, Hamnet. It's one of those books that you read and the proposition seems so obvious and compelling, you wonder why nobody did it earlier. In this episode, we're going to find out how Shakespeare's loss as a parent may have inspired his most famous play, how leaving his wife, Anne Hathaway, his second best bed, might have been the greatest love token of all,
And how Shakespeare might, although probably didn't, conceive his first child in an apple shed watched over by a kestrel. Sophie, give us a flavour of O'Farrell's prose.
Yes, and it's beautiful prose, very, very different from Shakespeare's verse. The letters from their father speak of contracts, of long days, of crowds who hurl rotten matter if they do not like what they hear, of memorising lines, lines, more lines, of scenery that falls, of props that are mislaid or stolen, of carts losing their wheels and pitching all into the mud. taverns that refuse them beds, of the money he has saved, of what he needs their mother to do, whom she must speak to in the town about attractive land he would like to purchase, a house he has heard is for sale, a field they should buy and then lease, of how he misses them, how he sends his love, how he wishes he could kiss their faces one by one, how he cannot wait until he is home again.
So this reading is, of course, about William Shakespeare here writing to his family from London who are back in Stratford. And actually, it's a bit of a cheat having Shakespeare's voice be the one that we start this episode with, because I think one of the things that O'Farrell does so brilliantly in Hamnet is to move Shakespeare to one side. He's the hovering figure. He's sort of the ghost.
What is the story behind the novel Hamnet?
And the women in his life are in the centre. So actually, the hero of Hamnet is Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway. Although Maggie O'Farrell, based on some documentary evidence, calls her Agnes instead. And so that's what we're going to be calling Anne Hathaway for the rest of this episode. I really enjoyed the novel. How was it for you, Jonti, reading it? Yeah, I...
So I've avoided reading Hamnet ever since it came out. And I don't know why. I think I just thought it's too impossible a task, right? It's too impossible to bring Shakespeare to life. And as a result of which, it's just going to be a bit kind of awkward and
Monty Python. Right.
And because we were doing Hamlet and we thought it'd be good to look at a contemporary response, I did read it. At the start, that resistance was in me and then I was just won over. And I think it's a beautiful novel and it just gets better and better until the extraordinary ending. So I really enjoyed it.
And it really gets you thinking about Hamlet in a cleverly sort of oblique and roundabout way.
How does O'Farrell portray Anne Hathaway as a character?
It's a tough act to follow, Hamlet. And O'Farrell really goes in fearlessly, I think.
Yeah, she does. And as you were saying, I think the brilliant trick is in making Anne Hathaway or Agnes the hero. And that if Hamlet is a play about father-son relationships, Maggie O'Farrell reclaims the idea of motherhood. And by putting Agnes and her relationship with Hamlet very much centre stage... It actually makes it about the experience of motherhood rather than fatherhood. And of course, the implication is what does Shakespeare really know about being a father?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:04–2:26
2
What is the story behind the novel Hamnet?
2:26–3:31
3
How does O'Farrell portray Anne Hathaway as a character?
3:31–5:57
4
What themes of motherhood are explored in Hamnet?
5:57–19:38
5
How does the novel connect Shakespeare's family life to his works?
19:38–27:33
6
What is the significance of the plague in Hamnet?
27:33–30:21
7
How does O'Farrell depict the relationship between Agnes and Shakespeare?
30:21–49:55