In ‘Hamnet,’ Shakespeare’s Wife Takes the Stage, at Last

Of the numerous puzzles about William Shakespeare, those concerning his love life are the most tantalizing. Why did he marry a local woman, Anne Hathaway, have three children with her, then decamp to London for a life in the theater? What was their relationship really like? And why do we know so little about Anne herself, whom one scholar has called a “wife-shaped void” in the playwright’s story?

This year, the 400th anniversary’s of Anne death, might be the year we finally hear about this other Shakespeare. A volume of celebratory poems, “Anne-thology,” is being published later this month. A small bust of her has been unveiled at Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where her body has lain next to her husband’s since 1623. And, most strikingly, a Royal Shakespeare Company production devoted to her story opens next Wednesday at the company’s Swan Theater in the town.

“It’s about time,” said Erica Whyman, the show’s director, in an interview after a recent rehearsal. “This is her town; she was born just outside Stratford and lived here all her life, as far as we know. She deserves to be back here.”

The play, an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel “Hamnet,” is named for the Shakespeares’ only son, who died at age 11 in 1596, for reasons unknown. His father apparently began work on the death-haunted “Hamlet” not long afterward, something that has driven biographers into frenzies of Freudian speculation.

But in the script, which has been adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti, there is little doubt who is the star: Shakespeare’s wife, the mother of his children and the head of his household, who brims with spirit and practical intelligence, and runs rings around her partner and everyone else. In the play’s first scene, we see the 17-year-old William gawkily trying to woo her while she flies a pet hawk. (She, too, will never be tamed, we surmise.) Later, we see her industriously baking bread and mixing folk remedies while he dreams of poetry and the theater.

“She’s so alive,” said Madeleine Mantock, who plays the role based on Anne for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “She has all this knowledge, all this capability.”

O’Farrell explained in a phone interview that she first encountered Shakespeare’s wife at college, after becoming curious about the playwright’s family — something historians have often neglected. “Shakespeare’s domestic life, if you want to call it that, just never came into the picture,” Anne least of all, she said. “And the more I read, the more derailed I was about her and the way she’s been treated. She’s been sidelined, in fact worse than sidelined — vilified.”

Shakespeare was just 18 when he married Anne in 1582; she was 26 and pregnant. Historians have speculated that theirs was a shotgun wedding which Shakespeare entered into with gritted teeth. That he left Stratford-upon-Avon to begin his theatrical career after the birth of Hamnet and his twin sister, Judith, a few years later has added fuel to speculation that the Shakespeares had a loveless marriage. The playwright made only occasional treks back to his hometown until his last years. Signing his will with a shaking hand before his death in 1616, he left Anne his “second-best” bed — something that’s been interpreted as an insult. “Even among quite respected biographers, she’s cast as an illiterate, cradle-snatching peasant who lured this boy genius into marriage,” O’Farrell said. “But I couldn’t find a single shred of evidence for that.”

The fact that she’s most often referred to by her maiden name, “Hathaway,” speaks volumes, O’Farrell added. “It’s like we don’t want to let her near him.”

And speaking of names, “Anne” might not even be the right one, O’Farrell said. In one surviving document, she referred to as “Agnes,” the form adopted in the novel and the play. “The fact that we’ve possibly been calling her by the wrong name for nearly 500 years seems completely symptomatic,” O’Farrell added.

Paul Edmondson, the head of research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said that the story of Shakespeare’s wife was likely complex and compelling. While little evidence of her personality survives — we don’t even have a portrait — the facts we know point to a shrewd, capable woman who managed a large house, was responsible for significant amounts of money and land, and possibly ran a brewing business on the side. In addition, of course, she raised a family for a husband who was mostly away working, as many men in England were at the time.

“She’s running the household, she’s a co-earner, and she’s also keeping an eye on his investments in the town. She was his equal in many ways,” Edmondson said.

And that “second-best” bed? Edmondson said that it could have been the marriage bed, filled with intimate memories; its mention in the will “might also have been a legal understanding,” guaranteeing her residential rights after his death.

In the novel, Anne/Agnes might not be able to write — women rarely received formal education at the time — but her husband does encourage her to read. And, crucially, William’s departure for London isn’t framed as abandonment, but his wife’s idea. “She realizes he needs more,” said Mantock, the actress. “She wants to encourage him to be who he needs to be.”

In fact, it is only Hamnet’s untimely death that threatens to tear the couple apart; in the play, Agnes is left to pick up the pieces and hold the family together, while William escapes back to London and buries himself in work. It is only when Agnes attends an early performance of “Hamlet” that she realizes that he has transmuted his grief into drama.

The novel’s success has had some real-life impacts in Stratford-upon-Avon, too. At Holy Trinity church, volunteers who tend to the Shakespeare family graves said that many more visitors now ask after her, as well as him. Last summer, O’Farrell presided over a ceremony for the planting of a pair of trees in the churchyard — one commemorating Hamnet, the other Judith.

“I find that incredibly moving, actually,” O’Farrell said. “And the fact that she and the children are being brought to life onstage in the town.”

For Mantock, simply being in Stratford, walking its streets and seeing the places that Anne knew was both poetic and potent, she said. “I know that what I’m doing is not real,” she added. “Of course I know that. But I feel there’s this real person there everywhere I go.”

Hamnet

At the Swan Theater, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, through June 17, then at the Garrick Theater, in London, from Sept. 30 through Jan. 6; rsc.org.