Hamnet Shakespeare
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Hamnet Shakespeare (1585 - August 1596) was a fraternal twin and the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. Relatively 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 baptized on February 2, 1585, in Stratford Parish Church. The twins were named after friends of their parents—Hamnet Sadler, a baker, and his wife Judith.
Hamnet grew up in his grandfather's house in Stratford. In all probability, he was principally raised by his mother Anne, as his father spent much of his time writing and performing in London. Oddly, although it was common for a boy of Hamnet's place in society to receive a formal education, there is no record of his ever having attended school (neither his mother, Anne, nor his sisters, Susanna and Judith, were formally educated—as was typical of Englishwomen of that era—and all three were illiterate.)
There were occasional outbreaks of the Black Plague in Elizabethan times. During one of these outbreaks in 1596, Hamnet contracted the plague; he died at the age of eleven and was buried in Stratford on August 11, 1596. Some Shakespeare scholars have suggested that grief over his only son's death may have spurred Shakespeare to write the tragedy Hamlet.
