suspected poisoning
Two years ago, Maggie O’Farrell rose to international literary prominence with the multi-award winning Hamnet. The novel garnered widespread critical acclaim, captivated readers around the world, and achieved remarkable sales. It tells the little-known story surrounding William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, who died at age eleven, and the wife of the celebrated English playwright. The work weaves a intimate biographical thread that had long been overlooked in the broader Shakespearean narrative.
O’Farrell returns with a highly anticipated new release, Married Portrait, published in Catalan by Libros del Asteroide and L’Altra. In keeping with her established approach, the book shines a light on a lesser-known figure connected to a storied surname that carries immense prestige: Lucrezia de Medici. Betrothed at thirteen to the Duke of Ferrara, Lucrezia’s life was cut short a year after her wedding, reportedly because she failed to fulfill the core aim of arranged unions: to secure her family’s power and prosperity through offspring.
With deft storytelling, O’Farrell recreates the Renaissance’s bustling atmosphere—a court rich with music, poetry, curiosities, and the exotic creatures collected by Lucrezia’s father. Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici, whose marriage to Eleonora Álvarez de Toledo connected powerful families, held sway behind the scenes. In correspondence, Lucrezia appears rarely, and even the surviving portraits offer scant clues about her. The bronze portrait by Bronzino, created a year before the sitter’s death and now housed in a North Carolina museum, caught the author’s eye precisely because it diverges from typical depictions of the era. The face seems to whisper a story left unsaid, inviting readers to imagine the life behind the silence.
the quiet trace of a life
The novel follows a family at the heart of a renowned dynasty and charts Lucrezia’s brief, luminous, and fraught life. A fever that today would be diagnosed with tuberculosis shadows a tale of suspicion, as merciless political machinations and personal vulnerabilities converge. A series of misdirections—an overworked physician, a second autopsy that arrives too late, and whispers of mercenary plotting—paint a portrait of risk and fragility. The narrative probes how fear, privacy, and power intersect in a world where even kinship can become a tool in the game of statecraft. Critics note the atmosphere of loneliness and the weight of a life compressed by circumstance, making the emotional center of the story feel both intimate and inevitable. The author reflects on the weight of such moments, acknowledging the difficulty of writing scenes that expose vulnerability while maintaining historical texture.
The work interlaces historical texture with a frank meditation on how the past is remembered. It questions the ease with which beauty and brutality are reconciled in the Renaissance, a period famed for masterpieces yet marked by political cruelty and strategic ruthlessness. Lucrezia’s world is described as a place where art and ambition coexisted with danger, and the reader is invited to consider how much of what we admire comes at a cost. The author’s perspective suggests that the Renaissance was not a single color, but a dichotomy: a dazzling surface and a darker undercurrent that shaped destinies. Perspective from contemporary scholars and critics highlights this tension, noting how power dynamics on the stage of Europe influenced culture, art, and human lives in ways that still echo today.
Hamnet and the Royal Shakespeare Company
In a broader arc, the writer links two historical novels that explore how the past informs the present. The choice to work in a present-tense mode is deliberate, a stance the author defends with humor and humility. She cites a well-known proverb about living in interesting times and adds her own twist: there is genuine relief in writing about yesterday when the world feels unsettled today. The author also notes a personal milestone on the horizon—a stage adaptation of Hamnet by the Royal Shakespeare Company scheduled for a premiere in Stratford-upon-Avon. For O’Farrell, the project holds special resonance because Hamnet is a figure rarely treated in historical recountings, despite the enduring curiosity about his life and his connection to Shakespeare’s enduring legacy. The idea that this young boy will perform in the very city where he was born and died adds a poignant echo to the narrative’s larger meditation on memory, biography, and performance.