
Shakespeare’s Son Died at 11. A Novel Asks How It Shaped His Art - benbreen
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/books/review/hamnet-maggie-ofarrell.html
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therealdrag0
Interesting. Coincidentally, a recent episode of EconTalk [0] taught me that
the plague had a big impact on Shakespeare and his work.

[0] [https://www.econtalk.org/ben-cohen-on-the-hot-
hand/](https://www.econtalk.org/ben-cohen-on-the-hot-hand/)

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claudeganon
Newton also made many of his breakthroughs after retreating to the countryside
to avoid a plague in London as well:

[https://www.biography.com/news/isaac-newton-quarantine-
plagu...](https://www.biography.com/news/isaac-newton-quarantine-plague-
discoveries)

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twoodfin
Odd that this review doesn’t mention that Hamnet’s early death and its impact
on the Bard are dissected in the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Joyce’s
_Ulysses_ , as well as echoing against the cornerstone of the protagonist,
Bloom.

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yewenjie
Neil Gaiman's The Sandman has three episodes dedicated to Shakespeare (and one
features his son Hamnet). This is a good analysis of how isolation and genius
in art relates, in the context of Shakespeare in The Sandman.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhA0GVi_N4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhA0GVi_N4E)

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hprotagonist
and in 1991, Gaiman won to date the only World Fantasy Award given to a
graphic novel for exploring the same question:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman:_Dream_Country#%22...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman:_Dream_Country#%22A_Midsummer_Night's_Dream%22)

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chrisweekly
Edit: My original comment

> how could anything be known about Shakespeare's son given the Bard's
> identity is an open question?

resulted in downvotes and being compared to a flat-earther, plus one helpful
answer to my question which remedied my ignorance. I'd love to freeze or
delete my comment but all I can do is edit it. Thanks in advance for ignoring
it and moving on.

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spaced-out
His identity is not an open question. We know exactly where and when William
Shakespeare of Stratford was born and baptized (in those days they recorded
baptism dates, not births). We know who his parents were, who his wives and
kids were, the names of his 8 siblings, and the business ventures of his
family...to name a few things.

We also know when he got started in the London theater scene, and how his
career and skill developed (we've found early poetry of his which was not very
good, for example). We even know that he became very wealthy and famous (he
was famous even during his life) due to the success of his plays, and acquired
quite a bit of real estate before he died.

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hnaa
There are also large, structural similarities across the plays and poems that
suggest a single authorship; that 'not very good' poetry has interests and
stylistic tics in common with the later, more universally revered work. It's
also relatively recently (1800s on) that the plays gained that the reputation
that they did. The argument that William Shakespeare couldn't have written the
plays is one that is extremely recent, historically-speaking, and it relies on
snobbish negatives ('A son of a glove maker who had an excellent education
grounded in the classics and spent his life in the theater couldn't have
written the plays') rather than any affirmative evidence against. We also have
text of contemporaries that are generally trustworthy sources describing his
work (and offering criticisms). It's not the exciting answer, but it probably
was William Shakespeare that wrote the works in question.

