Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (2020), the novel about Shakespeare’s son and wife, is considered as the continuation of postmodernist interest in Shakespeare exemplified by A. Burgess’s and R. Nye’s novels about the Bard. However, O’Farrell’s approach to history through the lens of everyday family life, her present-tense narrative and especially her manner of reinterpreting the historical facts all point to another, more recent literary influence – Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell novels.