Hamnet - Facts

 The novel is about William Shakespeare's son, Hamnet, who died in 1596.

In the book William Shakespeare and Agnes Hathaway, more often known as Anne, meet, fall in love and marry. Anne Shakespeare (née Hathaway; 1556 – 6 August 1623), commonly known as Anne Hathaway, was the wife of William Shakespeare, an English poet, playwright and actor. Anne Hathaway is believed to have grown up in Shottery, a village just to the west of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. She is assumed to have grown up in the farmhouse that was the Hathaway family home. Hathaway married Shakespeare in November 1582, likely November 28, while already pregnant with the couple's first child, to whom she gave birth six months later. 

Susanna was their eldest daughter. Susanna Hall (née Shakespeare; baptised 26 May 1583 – 11 July 1649) was the oldest child of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway and the older sister of twins Judith and Hamnet Shakespeare.

Then the twins came: Judith and Hamnet Shakespeare. 

Judith Quiney (baptised 2 February 1585 – 9 February 1662), née Shakespeare, was the younger daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway and the fraternal twin of their only son Hamnet Shakespeare.

Hamnet Shakespeare (baptised 2 February 1585 – buried 11 August 1596) was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, and the fraternal twin of Judith Shakespeare.He died at the age of 11.  Hamnet Shakespeare was probably raised principally by his mother Anne in the Henley Street house belonging to his grandfather.

Shakespeare and Anne married and lived in Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford-upon-Avon, a medieval market town in England’s West Midlands

Anne Hathaway grew up in Hewlands. Anne Hathaway's Cottage is a twelve-roomed farmhouse where Anne Hathaway lived as a child in the village of Shottery, Warwickshire, about 1.6 km west of Stratford-upon-Avon. Spacious, and with several bedrooms, it is now set in extensive gardens. After the death of Richard Hathaway (father of Anne Hathaway) in 1581, the cottage was owned by Anne Hathaway's brother Bartholomew, who began to expand the building starting on 1 April 1610.

Anne/Agnes and William moved to Henley Street when they married. It was a house next to his parents'. Shakespeare's Birthplace is situated on Henley Street, where it is believed that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and spent his childhood years. The house remained in the family until it was handed down for the final time to William Shakespeare's daughter and, given that he was born in 1564, it is fairly certain that he was born and brought up there.

When William and Anne tell their families they want to marry, he keeps saying that they are already handfast. From about the 12th to the 17th century, "handfasting" in England was simply a term for "engagement to be married", or a ceremony held on the occasion of such a contract, usually about a month prior to a church wedding, at which the marrying couple formally declared that each accepted the other as spouse. Handfasting was legally binding: as soon as the couple made their vows to each other they were validly married. It was not a temporary arrangement. Just as with church weddings of the period, the union which handfasting created could only be dissolved by death. English legal authorities held that even if not followed by intercourse, handfasting was as binding as any vow taken in church before a priest.

William and Anne married in the church of Temple Grafton. Temple Grafton is a village and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district.

William lived in Bishopsgate when he moved to London. Bishopsgate was one of the eastern gates in London's former defensive wall.

It is said that Hamnet's death influenced the writing of Hamnet. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play.