"William Shakespeare is the most celebrated playwright in the English language, but we really know so little about him."
"He wrote 154 poems and about 39 plays between 1592 and 1612. But he didn't leave diaries, journals, or any other biographical record, so his "passionate life - his access through personal experience and observation to the intense emotions he represents - is almost completely mysterious," according to Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities and one of the foremost experts on the Bard of Avon."
"Scholars agree that this much is known: Shakespeare was born in Stratford, England, in 1564 and died in 1616. At 18, he married Anne (also known as Agnes) Hathaway, who was 26 years old. They had three children: Susanna, and twins Judith and Hamnet, who died at 11 of an unrecorded cause."
"It is "a story of deep loss," Greenblatt wrote in a 2021 review of O'Farrell's book, "and its impact upon a marriage that was already buckling under almost intolerable strain." He added, "With her touching fiction O'Farrell has not only painted a vivid portrait of the shadowy Agnes Hathaway Shakespeare but also found a way to suggest that Hamnet was William Shakespeare's best piece of poetry.""
William Shakespeare produced roughly 154 poems and about 39 plays between 1592 and 1612, yet he left no diaries, journals, or other biographical records, leaving much of his inner life mysterious. He was born in Stratford in 1564, died in 1616, and married Anne Hathaway at 18; they had three children: Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet died at 11 of an unrecorded cause. An upcoming holiday film titled Hamnet reimagines the family's life, centers on the couple's searing grief, and traces how the boy's death and marital strain influenced themes that informed Hamlet.
Read at Harvard Gazette
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