The Nature of Things

Not a lot is known about William Shakespeare's family life, but from a cache of bare-bones facts, Maggie O'Farrell has constructed an exceptional historical novel the main action of which is set in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1596. Among those bare-bones facts is Shakespeare's marriage to a woman older than himself called Anne, or in some documents Agnes, Hathaway. In her story, O'Farrell chooses to call her Agnes. The marriage produced three children, first a daughter and then twins, a boy and a girl. The older girl was called Susanna and the twins were Hamnet and Judith. Before all that, Shakespeare, in O'Farrell's telling, suffered from an abusive father. The father was a glover who for a while was successful but by the time Shakespeare reached adulthood, his father had been disgraced by some of his shady practices. In order to retire some of his debts, the father sent his son to serve as a Latin tutor for the Hathaway household and it was there he met Agnes, a fr...