Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

He cannot tell, as he stands there, whether or not this new play is good. Sometimes, as he listens to his company speak the lines, he thinks he has come close to what he wanted it to be; other times, he feels he has entirely missed the mark. It is good, it is bad, it is somewhere in between. How does a person ever tell? All he can do is inscribe strokes on a page—for weeks and weeks, this was all he did, barely leaving his room, barely eating, never speaking to anyone else—and hope that at least some of these arrows will hit their targets. The play, the complete length of it, fills his head. It balances there, like a laden platter on a single fingertip. It moves through him—this one, more than any other he has ever written—as blood through his veins.