Deaths in the Family: The Loss of a Son and the Rise of Shakespearean Comedy

“Almost the Copy of My Child That'S Dead”: Shakespeare and the Loss of Hamnet

“…A further 2 to 3 years later, in Twelfth Night, there is a much fuller exploration of a similar moment, as Wheeler (2000) points out. Viola believes her twin brother Sebastian has drowned, and he thinks she has.…”

“…On a stage where women were played by males, such a disguise has an obvious practicality, but there is an interesting change in Shakespeare's use of this device as his career develops. In his first five comedies, written before Hamnet's death, he uses the device just once, and then only in the last two acts of The Two Gentlemen of Verona; but as Wheeler (2000) notes, in his next five comedies, written in the 5 years following Hamnet's death, Shakespeare uses this transformation three times, and on two occasions, in As You Like It and Twelfth Night, it lasts for virtually the whole play.…”

“To Tell My Story”

“…René Weis (2007) has pointed to the parallel between the burial of Shakespeare’s son and the descriptions of the Capulets’ tomb in Romeo and Juliet , written shortly after his death. Keverne Smith (2011a, 2011b) and Richard Wheeler (2000) have noted echoes of Shakespeare’s grief in the many father–son relationships in the histories as well as the androgynous young women in the comedies. Rosalind, Portia, and Viola transform themselves from female to male characters, adopting male identities and wearing men’s clothing, perhaps even, as Wheeler suggests, expressing “a father’s fantasy of transforming the surviving daughter into the lost son” (2000, p. 146).…”

“…Especially poignant is the character of Viola, who dresses like her twin brother Sebastian, presumed dead. Wheeler (2000) has seen the reunion of the twins at the end of this play as a form of wish fulfillment, the restoration of the lost male twin in Shakespeare's imagination.…”

“…In the years between 1602 and 1607, Shakespeare produced all of his major tragedies: Hamlet in 1602, followed by Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1606), and Antony and Cleopatra (1607). Recent biographical studies have suggested that the plays were influenced by Shakespeare’s traumatic loss of his only son in 1596 and the death of his father in 1601 (Greenblatt, 2004; Honan, 1998; Smith, 2011a, 2011b; Weis, 2007; Wheeler, 2000). This article takes a deeper look at how, in writing Hamlet , Shakespeare may have begun working through his grief in a process of dramatic self-disclosure that informed his major tragedies with enduring emotional depth.…”