Hamnet Shakespeare - Life

Life

Little is known about the short life of this child, who might have carried on the Shakespeare family name had he survived to adulthood. Hamnet and his twin sister Judith were born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 2 February 1585 in Holy Trinity Church by Richard Barton of Coventry. Some sources state that they were born that very day. The twins were likely named after friends of their parents, Hamnet Sadler, a baker, who witnessed Shakespeare's will, and his wife, Judith.

He was likely raised principally by his mother Anne in the Henley Street house belonging to his grandfather. Germaine Greer, however, thinks it unlikely that the Shakespeare children were raised principally at Henley Street, proposing instead the possibility that the newly-wed Shakespeares set up house in a small cottage, or even took up residence at New Place as tenants early in their marriage, before purchasing it later on.

By the time Hamnet was four, his father was already a London playwright, and he might not have been home at Stratford with his son very often as his popularity grew. Honan believes that Hamnet may have completed Lower School, which would have been normal, before his death at the age of eleven (possibly from the Bubonic Plague). He was buried in Stratford on 11 August 1596 and some sources state that he had died two days earlier, on 9 August. At that time in England about a third of all children died before age 10, so his young death was not unusual for the time.