{"id":963,"date":"2026-03-10T15:57:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/health-humanities\/?p=963"},"modified":"2026-03-12T14:28:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T14:28:59","slug":"hamnet-and-the-heartbreak-of-child-illness-and-death-in-early-modern-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/health-humanities\/hamnet-and-the-heartbreak-of-child-illness-and-death-in-early-modern-england\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hamnet\u2019 and the Heartbreak of Child Illness and Death in Early Modern England"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Newton <\/a><\/em><\/strong>(hyperlink: https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/hannah-newton-6a96713a8\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s bestselling book, Hamnet, <\/em>and its BAFTA-winning 2026 film adaptation, bring to life with heartbreaking poignancy what it was like to nurse a child through a fatal illness in early modern England.[i]<\/a> The story pivots around the sudden sickness and death of William Shakespeare\u2019s eleven-year-old son Hamnet in 1596, a real event that some believe may have been the inspiration behind the tragedy, Hamlet.<\/em>[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Traditionally it\u2019s been assumed that early modern parents didn\u2019t show a great deal of concern when their offspring were unwell, nor did they grieve deeply upon their early deaths. Aware that childhood was a dangerous time, parents are said to have protected themselves from searing sorrow by remaining emotionally distant from their children.[iii]<\/a> O\u2019Farrell\u2019s book challenges these ideas, portraying the intensity of parental love, care and grief in early modern England.<\/p>\n

This blog draws on historical memoirs, letters, eulogies and other sources to show that the imagined experience of Shakespeare\u2019s family closely resembles what many parents endured during fatal illness in the early modern period (c.1580-1720). I discuss three areas of similarity before turning to one significant point of difference.<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 Exhausting care<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tending a sick child is portrayed in Hamnet <\/em>as exhausting and all-consuming. In the novel, Hamnet\u2019s twin sister Judith falls ill first. It is chiefly the twins\u2019 mother, Agnes Shakespeare, who looks after the children. She sits day and night at Judith\u2019s bedside: she \u2018will not rise, she will not eat, she will not sleep or rest\u2019, and eventually slumbers at the girl\u2019s bedside. When Hamnet falls ill, and Judith makes an unexpected recovery, the mother \u2018does not leave his side. She \u2018swabs his brow, his limbs, with a damp cloth\u2019.<\/p>\n

Early modern sources indicate that round-the-clock nursing was a normal part of parenting in this period. When Elizabeth Walker\u2019s thirteen-year-old daughter fell into a \u2018great Fit of sickness\u2019 in 1671, she recorded, \u2018In the whole time of her sickness I was not from her but one night, not being well\u2019.[iv]<\/a> Upon returning to her daughter\u2019s bedside, the girl \u2018was very glad when she saw me again\u2019, clearly appreciating her mother\u2019s presence. \u00a0Fathers as well as mothers nursed their sick children. In the 1680s, eight-year-old Sarah Camm, ill with smallpox, \u2018lay\u2026in her Fathers arms\u2019, and thanked him for taking \u2018great pains with me in my Sickness\u2019.[v]<\/a> Thomas Brockbank from Lancashire was so \u2018overcome for want of sleep\u2019 from nursing his son in 1687 that he laid his \u2018head on the [child\u2019s] bed\u2019 and let \u2018sleep come upon me\u2019.[vi]<\/a> Such entries reveal the physical toll of nursing a sick child, and the vigilance of both maternal and paternal care.<\/p>\n

Watching at the bedside was only one part of the labour involved in caring for a sick child. Parents were also responsible for preparing and administering medicines and foods. In Hamnet<\/em>, Agnes gives her son a purgative, as well as \u2018jelly of rosemary and mint\u2019, and a poultice made of boiled milk and bread, which she had also used for her daughter Judith. Household recipe books and diaries show this role was widespread in the early modern period, especially for mothers. Jane Josselin from Essex provided 73 percent of the medicines mentioned in her husband\u2019s diary in the mid-17th<\/sup> century. Sometimes fathers also administered treatments. The gentleman Ralph Verney from Buckinghamshire laid \u2018a thick plaster\u2019 to the ear of his seven-year-old daughter Peg in 1647, which was made from milk, grated bread, egg yolk, and saffron.[vii]<\/a> Thus, like Agnes in\u00a0Hamnet<\/em>, early modern parents were deeply involved in both the nursing and treatment of their ill children, a responsibility that demanded constant attention, practical skill, and physical endurance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a02)\u00a0 Sensing sickness and death<\/strong><\/p>\n

A second point of resonance between\u00a0Hamnet<\/em>\u00a0and early modern accounts of childhood illness and death lies in the sensory experience of the sickroom. Agnes realises the danger of her daughter\u2019s condition through eyesight and touch: her \u2018eye falls on the swelling at Judith\u2019s neck\u2026She reaches out and touches it gently\u2026It feels damp and watery, like marshy ground\u2019. The swellings or buboes \u2018are what people most dread\u2019, and \u2018occupy such a potent place in everyone\u2019s fears that she cannot quite believe she is actually seeing them\u2019. At this sight, the mother\u2019s heart \u2018gives a great thud in her chest\u2019, like \u2018an animal hurling itself against its cage of bones\u2019. Judith has contracted the bubonic plague.<\/p>\n

Hamnet develops buboes as well. Through touch, sight, and movement, Agnes perceives the extent of his suffering \u2013 his body \u2018is in a place of torture, of hell\u2019: she holds his \u2018shivering body\u2019 and feels the \u2018buboes swell tighter and tighter\u2019. She watches his body writhe, buckle, and strain, and supports him by the shoulders, \u2018by the chest, to keep him still\u2019. There is even an imagined (or real) olfactory dimension: as death approaches, a \u2018musty, dank, salty smell\u2019 fills the room. It is all too much for Hamnet\u2019s older sister Susanna: she \u2018presses fierce fists to her eyes. She cannot look any more; she cannot bear it\u2026her hands [are] over her ears\u2019. Finally, death itself is experienced as the sudden termination of sensory stimuli: \u2018All at once he stops shaking and a great soundlessness falls over the room\u2019.<\/p>\n

Early modern accounts of illness describe similar sensory experiences. A journal of the plague year, <\/em>published in the early eighteenth-century, describes one mother\u2019s imagined reaction to the sight of the buboes on her daughter\u2019s body: \u2018looking upon her body with a candle, immediately [she] discovered the fatal tokens\u2019, the buboes, on her thighs. In terror, this mother \u2018threw down her candle and shrieked out in such a frightful manner that it was enough to place horror upon the stoutest heart in the world\u2019.[viii]<\/a> The girl died two hours later. This account shows how\u00a0a parent\u2019s own exclamations and gestures\u00a0<\/strong>add to the sensory intensity of the sickroom.<\/p>\n

The most ubiquitous sensations from the sickroom were the cries and groans of the suffering child. In 1652, eleven-year-old Martha Hatfield contracted a disease of the spleen: her \u2018doleful cries\u2019 filled the \u2018ears of her dear relations\u2019 with \u2018extreme sadness\u2019, and were \u2018very grievous and afflictive to the spirits of all that heard her\u2019.[ix]<\/a>\u00a0 During the illness of his baby daughter Mary a few years later, Isaac Archer bewailed, \u2018Oh what a grief it was to me to hear it groan, to see it\u2019s [sic] sprightly eyes turn to me for help in vain!\u2019[x]<\/a> These parents felt as though their child\u2019s cries pierced their hearts, eliciting anguish. This idea was meant literally as well as metaphorically: Jennifer McDermott has shown that anatomists considered the recently discovered Eustachian tube as a direct link between the ear and the heart, the seat of the emotions.[xi]<\/a><\/p>\n

As well as sensing the child\u2019s suffering, parents sensed the signs of death. Philip Henry recorded the \u2018intermittent pulse, blackness of nails\u2019 and \u2018shortness of breath\u2019 of his five-year-old son John, acknowledging that these were amongst the \u2018many symptoms of Death\u2019 perceptible to his senses.[xii]<\/a> So upsetting were these sensations, they sometimes became forever seared on the parent\u2019s memory. \u2018Remember dying looks and parting sigh\u2019, bewailed the doctor James Clegg at the death of his twelve-year-old daughter Margaret in 1723.[xiii]<\/a> This initial grief was often expressed through tears rather than words: when John Vernon from London observed his twelve-year-old son\u2019s \u2018alteration in countenance\u2019, he \u2018gushed out into tears\u2019, sensing that death was imminent.[xiv]<\/a> Thus, like Agnes in\u00a0Hamnet<\/em>, early modern parents experienced the illness and death of a child through a flood of sensory impressions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 Distracted grief<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Agnes, grief starts even before Hamnet dies, as she begins to lose hope of his recovery. She feels \u2018her hope for him begin to leak from her, like water from a punctured bucket\u2019. Such a description would have made sense to early modern people, since the emotions \u2013 known as \u2018passions\u2019 \u2013 were envisaged as powerful liquids, which gushed around the body, and could exit via the eyes in tears.[xv]<\/a> Personal memoirs reveal that mothers and fathers also felt this loss of hope \u2013 they depicted a battle in their hearts \u2018betwixt hope & fear\u2019, with the latter passion gradually gaining ascendency.[xvi]<\/a><\/p>\n

When death finally arrived, Agnes feels disbelief and incomprehension: \u2018This cannot happen, it cannot, how will we live, what will we do\u2026how can we continue\u2019. The three words \u2013 \u2018he is dead\u2019 \u2013 \u2018contain no sense for her. She cannot bend her mind to their meaning\u2019.\u00a0 Upon seeing Judith \u2018racked with grief\u2019, Agnes weeps: her tears \u2018fill her eyes without warning, blur her vision, pouring forth to run down her face\u2026Her whole being longs for, grieves for her son\u2019. She cannot speak, does not seem to hear others talking to her, and sits deadly still, hardly breathing.\u00a0 In the days that follow, Agnes is described as \u2018broken into pieces, crumbled and scattered around\u2019. She is emotional all the time, and will \u2018weep if she cannot find a shoe or overboils the soup\u2019. She no longer derives any pleasure from the things that used to interest her, and she sees no point in cooking or cleaning. As time passes, Agnes begins to function again, but it is clear that Agnes will never be the same again: she is \u2018utterly changed\u2019, and will forever mourn her son.<\/p>\n

Turning to our historical sources, Agnes\u2019 experience echoes the reactions of many early modern parents. The term used by contemporaries to describe early grief was \u2018distraction\u2019: it meant the breaking up of the mind, and was characterised by periods of delirium, weeping, and shaking.[xvii]<\/a> When Simonds D\u2019Ewes\u2019 baby son \u2018had given up the ghost\u2019, he \u2018could not refrain from many tears, sighs and mournings\u2019, while his wife \u2018fell a-shaking, and scarce being able to speak in respect of the abundance of tears that issued from her intermixed with many sobs\u2019.[xviii]<\/a>\u00a0 Like Agnes, grief-stricken parents often found it difficult to speak, think, or engage in any activity. Recounting her own reaction to the death of her seven-year-old daughter Peg, Mary Verney told her husband, \u2018I was in soe much affliction\u2026that I was not in a condition to write or do anything else, and truly at present I am soe weak that I am scares able to go up and down in my chamber\u2019.[xix]<\/a> Contemporaries were familiar with the debilitating nature of grief \u2013 they attributed it to the fact that \u2018all the powers of the soul\u2019 are \u2018busied in the functions\u2019 of this passion, so that the soul \u2018cannot attend anything else\u2019.[xx]<\/a><\/p>\n

Over time, grieving was believed to have an ageing effect.\u00a0 Three years after the death of their son John Brockbank, his parents were still \u2018mightily broke\u2019: the grandfather informed John\u2019s brother \u2018you would scarce know [i.e. recognise] your dear Mother if You saw her\u2019.[xxi]<\/a> Sometimes, parents felt they would never be entirely free from sadness: speaking of her grieving sister, Ann Fanshawe wrote, \u2018she never much enjoyed herself [again] since the death of her eldest daughter\u2019.[xxii]<\/a> Fathers\u2019 grief could be equally enduring. \u2018Here ends the joy of my life, & for which I go even mourning to the grave\u2019, bewailed John Evelyn after the decease of his five-year-old son Richard in 1658.[xxiii]<\/a> In this way,\u00a0Hamnet<\/em>\u00a0captures something familiar to early modern parents: the death of a child could produce a state of distraction, in which grief overwhelmed the mind, disrupted everyday life, and lasted for years to come.<\/p>\n

Area of difference: faith<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far, we have seen that the experiences conveyed in Hamnet <\/em>closely resemble those described in primary sources from the time. However, here I would like to highlight one notable area of difference: religious faith. Early modern society was deeply spiritual, and even those occasionally accused of \u2018atheism\u2019 usually retained some belief in an afterlife. Parents confronted with illness commonly turned to God, begging Him to heal their child and give them strength to cope. When death occurred, many found at least some comfort in the conviction that their child had gone to heaven, a place of eternal bliss, where eventually the whole family would be joyfully reunited.[xxiv]<\/a> Agnes, by contrast, does not appear to pray for Hamnet\u2019s recovery, nor does she derive any consolation from the possibility of heavenly reunion. The novel\u2019s portrayal of grief is therefore strikingly secular, presenting the loss of a child as an almost entirely earthly experience. Of course, the surviving sources from the early modern period are often religious in character, and they may therefore over-emphasise spiritual responses. Yet taken together, the sources suggest that O\u2019Farrell\u2019s depiction of parental experiences is rather bleaker than the one which emerges from early modern accounts.<\/p>\n

In short, Hamnet<\/em> captures many of the physical and emotional realities of childhood illness in the early modern household, yet its striking absence of religious consolation reminds us that the past interpreted suffering through a far more explicitly spiritual lens.<\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> Maggie O\u2019Farrell, Hamnet <\/em>(London, 2020).<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> Stephen Greenblatt, \u2018The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet\u2019, New York Review of Books, <\/em>October, 2004.<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> This interpretation is most famously associated with Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500\u20131800<\/em> (London and New York: 1990, rst publ. 1977).<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> Elizabeth Walker, The vertuous wife: or, the holy life of Mrs. Elizabeth Walker<\/em>, ed. Anthony Walker (London, 1694), 111.<\/p>\n

[v]<\/a> Thomas Camm, The admirable and glorious appearance of the eternal God. . . through a child. . . upon her dying bed <\/em>(London, 1684), 6.<\/p>\n

[vi]<\/a> Thomas Brockbank, The Diary and Letter Book of the Rev. Thomas Brockbank 1671\u20131709<\/em>, ed. Richard Trappes-Lomax, Chetham Society New Series, vol. 89 (Manchester, 1930), 5-7.<\/p>\n

[vii]<\/a> Frances Parthenope Verney and Margaret M. Verney (eds), The Verney Memoirs, 1600\u20131659<\/em>, vol. 1 (1925, first publ. 1892), 376.<\/p>\n

[viii]<\/a> H.F., A journal of the plague year <\/em>(London, 1722), 67-8.<\/p>\n

[ix]<\/a> James Fisher, The wise virgin, or, a wonderfull narration of the hand of God (London, 1653), 138-41.<\/p>\n

[x]<\/a> Isaac Archer, Two East Anglian Diaries 1641\u20131729<\/em>, ed. Matthew J. Storey, Suffolk Record Society, vol. 36 (Woodbridge, 1994), 120.<\/p>\n

[xi]<\/a> Jennifer Rae McDermott, \u2018\u201cThe Melodie of Heaven\u201d: Sermonizing the Open Ear in Early Modern England\u2019, in Wietse De Boer and Christine Gottler (eds.), Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe<\/em> (Leiden, 2012), 177\u201397.<\/p>\n

[xii]<\/a> Philip Henry, The Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry of Broad Oak, Flintshire, A. D. 1631\u20131696<\/em>, ed. M. H. Lee (1882), 198.<\/p>\n

[xiii]<\/a> James Clegg, The Diary of James Clegg of Chapel-en-Frith 1708\u20131755,<\/em> vol. 1 (1708\u201336), ed. Vanessa S. Doe, Derbyshire Record Society, vol. 5 (Matlock,1978),\u00a020.<\/p>\n

[xiv]<\/a> John Vernon, The compleat choller; or, a relation of the life, and latter-end especially, of Caleb Vernon<\/em> (London, 1666), 73.<\/p>\n

[xv]<\/a> See for example, Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago, 2004), 17<\/p>\n

[xvi]<\/a> See Hannah Newton, The Sick Child in Early Modern England <\/em>(Oxford, 2012), 138.<\/p>\n

[xvii]<\/a> Newton, The Sick Child, <\/em>139-40.<\/p>\n

[xviii]<\/a> Simonds D\u2019Ewes, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D\u2019Ewes, Bart<\/em>., ed. J. O. Halliwell, 2 vols (1845), vol. 2, 45\u20136, 147.<\/p>\n

[xix]<\/a> Verney (ed.), The Verney Memoirs, vol. 1, 144.<\/p>\n

[xx]<\/a> Francois Coeffeteau, A table of humane passions <\/em>(London, 1621), 330-1.<\/p>\n

[xxi]<\/a> Brockbank, The Diary<\/em>, 12.<\/p>\n

[xxii]<\/a> Ann Fanshawe, Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe<\/em>, ed. Richard Fanshawe (1829), 303,<\/p>\n

[xxiii]<\/a> John Evelyn, John Evelyn\u2019s Diary: A Selection, ed. Philip Francis (1963), 388.<\/p>\n

[xxiv]<\/a> On the hope from prayer, see Newton, The Sick Child<\/em>, 95-7, 111, 113-15; on comfort from belief in heavenly reunion see, the same book, 152-4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Newton (hyperlink: https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/hannah-newton-6a96713a8\/) Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s bestselling book, Hamnet, and its BAFTA-winning 2026 film adaptation, bring to life with heartbreaking poignancy what it was like to nurse a child…Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Hamnet\u2019 and the Heartbreak of Child Illness and Death in Early Modern England - Centre for Health Humanities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/health-humanities\/hamnet-and-the-heartbreak-of-child-illness-and-death-in-early-modern-england\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Hamnet\u2019 and the Heartbreak of Child Illness and Death in Early Modern England - 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