News about Madeleine Mantock

Maggie O'Farrell's book Hamnet was a lockdown bestseller about Shakespeare's domestic life, a book far more tragic than any Shakespeare's home life, which was much more disturbing than any play about the Bard I've ever seen. The RSC was supposed to stage it, with the theatre's door in Stratford (mostly) on the theatre's doorstep. Agnes Hathaway, also known as Anne, is the subject of this tale: a woman who was portrayed as the great man's shrewish wife is introduced as the great man's mistress. Here she has been regained, as both a witchy free spirit and a hard-pressed mother. In an apple shed, she and William have a baby. Twins are following. In a household that is under Shakespeare's tyranny (played with an enthralling gaze by Peter Wight), she raises the children, two girls and a boy.