<em>Hamnet</em>: About a Boy

<em>Hamnet</em>: About a Boy

These are the facts: William Shakespeare had a son named Hamnet. The boy died of bubonic plague at the age of 11. Shortly after that, Shakespeare started working on the play called Hamlet. This has haunted Shakespeare scholars. It haunted James Joyce, who had Leopold Bloom ponder it at length in Ulysses after losing his own son. It haunts me, too. What does it mean? It must mean something. Yes, the book by Saxo Grammaticus that Shakespeare used …