In 1596, when William Shakespeare was still emerging—he’d written just five plays, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry VI—he and his wife of 14 years, Anne Hathaway, lost their only son, Hamnet. The bubonic plague killed the 11-year-old boy, who was survived by his twin, Judith, and older sister Susanna. In 2020, the Irish novelist Maggie O’Farrell lightly fictionalized Shakespeare’s real-life tragedy in her novel Hamnet, showing how heartbreak led to Shakespeare’s writing of Hamlet, a story in which the father, not the son, dies. The critically acclaimed book has become a play, which had its world premiere at the Royal Shakespeare Company on April 1 and was sold out before performances began. Luckily the production heads to the Garrick Theatre in September. —Jensen Davis