HE to knowledagble friendo who’s seen Hamnet: At the end of Maggie O’Farrell‘s book of Hamnet (published in 2020), the Stratford-dwelling Agnes Shakespeare journeys to London and attends a performance of Hamlet, written by her absentee husband William, and is very moved.
We all understand that Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal play Agnes and William Shakespeare in Chloe Zhao’s filmed adaptation, which pops on 11.27.
But is it stated or implied by Zhao that catching Hamnet at the Globe theatre is Agnes’s very first viewing of one of her husband’s plays?
Because it was first performed in 1600, by which time Shakespeare had been banging out plays for rough eight or nine years. Hamlet was in fact his 22nd play. Agnes didn’t catch any of his plays before this?
Friendo: “That’s right. He goes to London, where he establishes himself (and spends increasing amounts of time), and his family is still living out in the country. It’s like they’re many miles away in the burbs, except there’s no commuter train.”
HE to friendo: “Check — no commuter train. But still…he’s written many, MANY big-time plays during the 1590s, including Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and Julius Caesar, and she hasn’t attended ONE of his plays before Hamlet? She’s the playwright’s wife and she couldn’t manage to attend ANY of his big-time plays for a period of eight or nine years (1592 to 1600)? Judi Dench‘s Queen Elizabeth admired Shakespeare (in Shakespeare in Love she attends the debut performance of Romeo and Juliet) and the country-dwelling Agnes was like “look, that’s all very nice with the Queen and all, but I’ve got so much laundry and house cleaning and cow-milking to attend to”?
Friendo: “Hey, I didn’t write the script!”
The chronology of Shakespeare’s plays, presented by E. K. Chambers in 1930 is as follows:
Henry VI, Part 1 (1591–1592)
Henry VI, Part 2 (1591–1592)
Henry VI, Part 3 (1591–1592)
Richard III (1592–1593)
The Comedy of Errors (1592–1593)
Titus Andronicus (1593–1594)
The Taming of the Shrew (1593–1594)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594–1595)
Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594–1595)
Romeo and Juliet (1594–1595)
Richard II (1595–1596)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–1596)
King John (1596–1597)
The Merchant of Venice (1596–1597)
Henry IV, Part 1 (1597–1598)
Henry IV, Part 2 (1597–1598)
Much Ado About Nothing (1598–1599)
Henry V (1598–1599)
Julius Caesar (1599–1600)
As You Like It (1599–1600)
Twelfth Night (1599–1600)
Hamlet (1600–1601)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600–1601)
Troilus and Cressida (1601–1602)
All’s Well That Ends Well (1602–1603)
Measure for Measure (1604–1605)
Othello (1604–1605)
King Lear (1605–1606)
Macbeth (1605–1606)
Antony and Cleopatra (1606–1607)
Coriolanus (1607–1608)
Timon of Athens (1607–1608)
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608–1609)
Cymbeline (1609–1610)
The Winter’s Tale (1610–1611)
The Tempest (1611–1612)
Henry VIII (1612–1613)
The Two Noble Kinsmen (1612–1613)