18 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY Perhaps in part because of the “psychic numbing,” during the peak of COVID, many sought what might be described as “feel good” entertainment. Viewers embraced shows such as Ted Lasso that promoted both levity and positivity— and The New York Times bestseller lists featured the usual suspects, reliably escapist fare from John Grisham, Danielle Steele, and James Patterson.6 One novel of historical fiction, however, received both critical plaudits and impressive sales during this peculiar season. Hamnet, by Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell, was released on March 31, 2020. 7 With an increase in stay-at-home orders, rising COVID casualties, and no sign of a vaccine on the horizon, the release of O’Farrell’s text with the eerily prescient subtitle “The Novel of the Plague” seemed to have been disastrously ill-timed. O’Farrell herself commented that she predicted it would “sink without a trace.”8 The novel might have been a tough sell to the general reading public even in less unprecedented days. Set in sixteenth century England, the work depicts the death of Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, as experienced by the playwright’s wife. Though the novel is historical fiction, records confirm that Hamnet did indeed die at the tender age of eleven, and though the cause is unknown, the plague has historically been blamed for his death as recurrences of the disease were common. DBU’s PhD students know I am a Shakespeare fan—but please don’t quit reading if you don’t like Shakespeare. There is no iambic pentameter incoming! Despite the dark subject matter of Hamnet, and O’Farrell’s own anxieties about its debut, readers embraced the book—and to date, it has sold nearly two million copies. The novel has even been adapted as a play by the Royal Shakespeare Company, a production deemed a “phenomenal success” at the box office that is now being adapted into a film helmed by award-winning producer Sam Mendes.9 Hamnet or to be more accurate, the protagonist of the novel, Hamnet’s mother, Agnes, broke through “psychic numbing” or “compassion fatigue” and resonated with readers throughout the world. Many readers, isolated at home, feeling a loss of agency, connection, and stripped even of the ability to grieve in a public forum, found a fellow sufferer in Hamnet’s mother—prompting the very empathy endangered by the
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