Hamnet Shakespeare

Did You Know?

• Hamnet and his twin sister Judith were baptised on 2 February 1585 in Holy Trinity Church by Richard Barton of Coventry.
• According to the record of his baptism in the Register of Solihull, the baker was christened 'Hamlette Sadler'.
• Hamnet was buried on 11 August 1596, likely before his father (who was on tour in Kent in early August) learned of his death.

Life

Hamnet and his twin sister Judith were born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 2 February 1585 by Richard Barton of Coventry. The twins were likely named after Hamnet Sadler, a baker who witnessed Shakespeare's will, and his wife Judith. The name Hamnet was not uncommon in early modern England. By the time Hamnet was four, his father was a London playwright and probably not regularly at home. Park Honan suggests Hamnet may have completed Lower School, typical for an eleven-year-old. The cause of his death is unknown; some speculate famine or bubonic plague, though the latter is disputed. About a third of English children died before age 10 at that time. Hamnet was buried on 11 August 1596, likely before his father learned of his death. His grave is unmarked.

Connection to William Shakespeare's work

Scholars have long speculated about the influence of Hamnet's death on William Shakespeare's writing. At the time of Hamnet's death, Shakespeare was writing primarily comedies, and his major tragedies came a few years later. Biographical readings connecting passages in the plays and sonnets to Shakespeare's life date back to the Romantic period. Many writers and critics from the 18th to early 20th centuries pondered the connection, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Dowden, and J. Dover Wilson. In 1931, C. J. Sisson said such interpretations had gone too far, and in 1934 R. W. Chambers noted that Shakespeare's most cheerful work was written after his son's death, making a connection doubtful. In the mid-to-late 20th century, linking authors' lives to their work became unpopular, but more recently biographical interpretations have re-emerged. Some theories centre on the tragedy Hamlet, composed between 1599 and 1601, though not everyone agrees grief spurred the play. The names Hamlet and Hamnet were considered virtually interchangeable, and Shakespeare's own will spelled Hamnet Sadler's name as Hamlett. Critics often assume Prince Hamlet's name derives from the Amleth character in Saxo Grammaticus' Vita Amlethi. J. Dover Wilson remarked that it is perhaps an accident that the name was current in Warwickshire and that Shakespeare's son was christened Hamnet, a variant of it.

In popular culture

Imogen Clark wrote Will Shakespeare's Little Lad, an 1897 fictionalization of Hamnet's life. Hamnet appears in two comics by Neil Gaiman: in The Sandman #19, he accompanies his father and plays the changeling boy, and in The Books of Magic #3, he is shown as a servant of the faerie queen. He appears in the 2018 film All Is True, written by Ben Elton, which revolves around Shakespeare coming to terms with Hamnet's death. Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 book Hamnet is a fictional account of his life, and a 2025 film adaptation directed by Chloé Zhao features Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet. He is also a character in the BBC comedy drama series Upstart Crow, where his death occurs in the final episode of series 3. Suzanne Collins's 2005 book Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods includes a character named Hamnet. In Ngaio Marsh's 1966 detective novel Death at the Dolphin, a glove that belonged to Hamnet Shakespeare plays an important part.