Is Hamlet an only child?
If he has or had any sibling, they are nowhere to be seen in the play. We know he’s the only boy but does he have a sister stashed somewhere? Maybe married off to the King of Sweden or something?
Or did he have brothers who didn’t survive?
It is rare for a Royal family to have just one child. Part of the deal with having a Royal Family at all is to insure lots of heirs. So I’m curious about Hamlet’s only-ness.
I’m part only child (on one side) but no one’s concerned about middle class lineage.
And I am the sole daughter both of my mother – to whom I am also the sole child and to my father, who has two sons.
It never occurred to me to wonder about Hamlet’s siblings before – why he doesn’t seem to have any and what happened there.
Was Gertrude unable to have more? Did she become a little like Lady Macbeth and lose a child or two?
Are there sisters somewhere?
I’d like to imagine that there are three sisters and one is Queen of Sweden, another is in a nunnery (the one where Hamlet would send Ophelia) and the third has been discovered, since she ran off, joined up some pirates off the coast.
It’s a natural extension of Virginia Woolf’s imagining of Shakespeare’s sister – this extra fictional step of imagining Hamlet’s sisters. If I started a band again, I might call it Hamlet’s sister, since someone already took Shakespeare’s sister.
It’s the next best thing.
A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven.
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