Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet and the problem of historical ethics

Good historical fiction shouldn’t be (too) relatable. Should it?

A few weeks ago, I finished reading Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, the loosely imagined retelling of the lives of William Shakespeare’s real-life son and Shakespeare’s extended family in Stratford at the turn of the 16^th century. The book came out in 2020 and promptly won the Women’s Prize; the Guardian called it “a work of profound understanding”. I came t…