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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep per WP:SNOW. Non-admin closure. Pastor Theo (talk) 02:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hamnet Shakespeare

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Hamnet Shakespeare (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Procedural nomination. Was recently listed as a good article, but there's been some discussion as to whether the topic is notable for a stand alone article. I cast no !vote at the present time, but I'm leaning towards keep. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 14:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • keep- certainly looks like there's enough for a stand-alone article to me. Umbralcorax (talk) 14:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Some people are notable only on account of their family connections, and Shakespeare's 11 year old son is one of them. I think there ought to be a per se rule: if you died more than 200 years ago, and your name is remembered well enough for there to be material for an article about you, you are notable. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge with William Shakespeare. Notability is not inherited. The example of Charles, Prince of Wales is a poor comparison with a subject about whom so little is known and will never be known. There may sufficient material available to refocus this article as an account of the speculation surrounding Hamnet's influence on his father over the naming of Hamlet, for instance, but it certainly does not stand up as a biography of a notable person. --Malleus Fatuorum 15:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Scholarly discussion of Hamnet Shakespeare is longstanding. By any normal standard, he is unquestionably notable. John M Baker (talk) 15:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy keep (procedural nom with no delete votes, per WP:SK #1)—Shakespeare's only son, whose untimely death cannot but have been an influence on the father (particularly a father that was very concerned with keeping his inheritance undivided for the future), must meet the standard for inclusion. Just look at the references; the article, short as it may be, still cites 8 different reliable sources, of which 4 are from academic journals or university presses (usually heralded as the gold standard for reliable sources on Wikipedia), and 2 of whom are from the most prominent and respected Shakespeare scholars of the twentieth century (Chambers and Schoenbaum). And since I've contributed to this article I can add that the choice of sources was selective; if needed to establish notability I could add a whole bunch more. As a reminder, WP:N says: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.
    In other words, it meets the standard for inclusion and the nom is purely procedural, so my !vote is an emphatic speedy keep. --Xover (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Well referenced, enough material for a stand-alone article.  LinguistAtLarge • Msg  16:46, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge per Malleus; the notability claims seem to be based on two foundations: (1) that he was Shakespeare's son, and (2) that he may have inspired some of Shakespeare's work. For (1), notability is not inherited, and for (2), the notions are very speculative. The speculation is sourced and verifiable, so it really belongs in the appropriate play articles (Hamlet and Twelfth Night), and the remaining bio information could be merged into William Shakespeare. EyeSerenetalk 17:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, notability claims are based on the sheer volume of material written by scholars have written about him. The idea that the notions are speculative is your OR and your opinion. Stephen Greenblatt, one of the most famous contemporary scholars on Shakespeare, wrote a piece in which which he argues that Hamnet influenced Hamlet. Are you more qualified to judge speculation than him? This isn't just some fringe theory. Wrad (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      To be more precise, Greenblatt's essay argues that Hamnet's early death influenced the writing of Hamlet. He's apparently a primary source for that idea. For this to be any more than a viewpoint (no matter how scholarly), you need a secondary source. In particular, if the article is kept and such secondary sources are not available, attribution would be needed ("Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt has argued that...") Geometry guy 19:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry Wrad, I obviously expressed myself badly. I meant Greenblatt's speculation, not yours (and no matter how well-regarded Greenblatt is, it is still speculation and as G'guy says, should be attributed as such). That there is a theory from a well-known scholar about the influence of Hamnet's death on his father is verifiably true; what I'm questioning is the use of this as the basis for the assertion of the subject's notability. EyeSerenetalk 21:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"should be attributed as such"? What part of "these ideas are still not mainstream" do is not being understood here? Could the article possible be any more clear? We say things along those lines several times in the article. Wrad (talk) 22:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"still not mainstream" (my emphasis) implies a certain pov, that they will or deserve to become mainstream in the future. Still, that's a discussion best kept for this article's inevitable WP:GAR. --Malleus Fatuorum 22:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Might want to double check that. The article doesn't use the word "still" at all, so it would be no problem at GAR. Please keep comments here focused on the AfD. If you have any other suggestions, please post them on the article's talk page, preferably after you carefully read what the article really says. Wrad (talk) 22:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I was quoting you, not the article. Please make at least an effort to keep your personal remarks to yourself; they're becoming tiresome. --Malleus Fatuorum 22:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Somebody who is documented by reliable sources to have influenced the writing of Shakespeare's plays is clearly worthy of an article. JulesH (talk) 17:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Perhaps, but that's not what we're talking about here. There is a complete lack of evidence beyond the tenuously circumstantial to support the thesis that Hamnet had any influence at all on Shakespeare's plays. --Malleus Fatuorum 22:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep/Merge not feasible. Type this guy's name into a scholarly database and you will get many, many articles about him. Merging him with William Shakespeare is absolutely unfeasible. There is far, far too much information in the article to totally merge without violating undue weight. Wrad (talk) 18:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, of course. Easily satisfies WP:GNG. Significant non-trivial coverage about him in his own right. AndyJones (talk) 18:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge. While at first glance it might seem to contain enough for a standalone article, on closer inspection it does not.
Para 1 (after lead) is vague with so many qualifiers: Relatively little is known...might have...had he...were likely named after...is very little information...was likely raised principally by...x thinks it unlikely that .. proposing instead the possibility .. or even. Example: "might have carried on the Shakespeare family name had he survived to adulthood" Quite.
Para 2: Almost in its entirety covers how he didn't influence the name of the character in Hamlet.
Para 3: Small paragraph outlining couple've academic's speculative suggestions other Shakespeare plays in which any minor/sibling happened to've died was inspired by Hamnet.

(Also, the reviewer made clear the promotion to GA was under protest.) There is difference between laying out theories, that were developed based on analysis of data and put forth by academics/experts, and perhaps contrasting one academic theory to another's, versus, a list of academic's guesses who - seemingly - made the capital mistake of theorizing before one has data. Most content is already in Hamlet#Sources. We don't even know when he was born (not baptised), or what he died of. Merging useful content followed by suitable redirecting, complying with WP:PRESERVE, seems sensible. Whitehorse1 18:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • You could make many of those arguments about the William Shakespeare article! It's just as full of "might have"s and "maybe"s, and we don't know his birthdate, just his baptism. Some of this information is in Hamlet, but nothing biographical. The reader is left to wonder just exactly who this Hamnet really was. This kid has sparked enough scholarly debate to merit his own article, and that's all there is to it. Type his name into any database and you'll see. Wrad (talk) 18:18, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • (e/c) Tangentially, I was surprised the birth date wasn't known. I'd have thought the birthdate for a child in England (even that early) would be in Parish records. Re your last sentence, that...was kinda my point. :\ Whitehorse1 18:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well then apparently you haven't searched his name at all. He's everywhere. (And if you really know Yorick so well, you should be able to spell his name right). Wrad (talk) 18:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • The birthdate is not in your article. That was the point I was making there. (For benefit of anyone else his last sentence is a reference a spelling error I made in my edit summary.)
          • My searches are showing solid, print sources in the several hundreds at least. Wrad (talk) 18:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • For the final time on that point: despite your myriad of sources you have not included his date of birth (it apparently is not known). Nobody has suggested he wasn't born. Whitehorse1 18:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
              • William Shakespeare's birthdate is not known. Only his baptism date is. No scholar knows it. Why should you then demand that this kid's birthdate be known, or else? Wrad (talk) 18:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                • Going by your article, no scholar knows anything on Hamnet besides a baptism date and a date of death. If it were different, say if Shakespeare had kept a diary and wrote of the pain of his loss, or we had letters to his wife in which he spoke of Hamnet saying he impacted his works (just illustrative examples), that would form a basis for an - albeit short - standalone article. Whitehorse1 18:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • (e/c) Weak keep - this kid, while he doesn't inherit notability from Dad, will be a search topic from confused kids in English/Literature class who think that he was an inspiration for Hamlet. Why not have a separate article? With them separate, we will not inconvenience a reader by forcing them to read through the entire William Shakespeare and Hamlet articles, keeping within WP:SS? —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 18:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Exactly. The debate surrounding this kid's influence is significant enough that we need to have one place where a reader can easily see what the debate was and what is generally thought about it. Wrad (talk) 18:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • (e/c) The last para of the Sources section in the Hamlet article, which I linked in my first comment, basically does that already though. Post-merge the name can easily be redirected to that article or another. Well, that's my view on this anyhow. Whitehorse1 18:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • In that case the article has the wrong name, and should be moved. It's not a biography of Hamnet at all, but an account of some half-cooked academic speculation. --Malleus Fatuorum 18:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Wikipedia is interested in the scholarly sources, not whether or not individual editors think they are half-cooked. Who's more authoritative, a Wikieditor, or Stephen Greenblatt? Wrad (talk) 18:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Analogies aren't my strong point but I'll give one a whirl. It's one thing to theorize (educated 'guess' - sort've) on, say, narrative themes in a play — you have something substantial there; things like analysis in terms of political climate, and other works by the artist are fair game. It's another to simply know something existed and speculate from that. If the play Hamlet had never been found barring a title page, and no descriptions on its plot existed, then speculating what the other pages might have said is, well, waffle. Whitehorse1 18:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Being a likely search term is an argument for keeping a redirect, not an article. Geometry guy 19:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - okay, I was leaning keep before, but this debate has convinced me that there's no way to merge this information while still keeping it centralized, and that centralization is desirable. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 18:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - 4,820 hits on Google for "Hamnet Shakespeare" —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 18:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Sources provided. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 19:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - there is (I suspect) plenty of scholarly speculation that has been written and sufficient to justify a page Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge - but not into Shakespeare's article. There could be a new article (if there isn't one already) devoted to Shakespeare's family members (parentage, spouses, relationships, children, etc), and this information can form one component of it. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - I'm surprised by the element of certainty in some of the !voting here. On the one hand, "notability is not inherited" is part of an essay on arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. What it really means is "notability is not automatically inherited" and hence is a weak argument on its own. Wikipedia at least tolerates many articles on family members who wouldn't be notable were it not for the family connection. The Shakespeare family has a whole tree containing over 10 people whose lives are known and researched primarily because of the link with WS himself. Of course "other stuff exists" is not an argument on its own either.
So we actually have to read the relevant guidelines. WP:GNG makes it abundantly clear that having plenty of reliable secondary sources referring to a topic is not sufficient for notability. In particular, the "significant coverage" means that "sources address the subject directly in detail".If the subject here is "Hamnet Shakespeare", rather than the influence of his name on Hamlet or his death on his father's writing, then they don't. WP:PEOPLE specifically gives the examples of the Beckham and Spears children, which are redirects, despite the fact they have received plenty of coverage in reliable secondary news and media sources, and have surely influenced their parents lives and work. Ironically it refers back to "notability is not (automatically) inherited", so lets look at it once more. There we find "Ordinarily, the child of a celebrity parent should only have their own independent article if and when it can be reliably sourced that they have done something significant and notable in their own right, and would thereby merit an independent article even if they didn't have famous parents." It seems to me the only significant and notable thing that Hamnet did in his own right was die aged 11. Geometry guy 20:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I disagree with your assessment. The "sources address [Hamnet] directly in detail". The objections raised here are that the details the reliable secondary sources address are not sufficiently numerous, an issue which the guidelines do not put a number cap on. --Xover (talk) 20:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, the issue is that the sources do not deal with Hamnet, but with speculation about the effect of his early death on his father. --Malleus Fatuorum 20:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Then I must respectfully submit that you appear not to have actually studied the relevant sources, including the ones cited in the article, as they do deal with Hamnet directly. The fact that the book as a whole is about William Shakespeare does not invalidate it as a source on Hamnet Shakespeare. --Xover (talk) 20:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • No amount of respectful submissions can alter the fact that there is almost nothing known about Hamnet Shakespeare, and a repetition of the same three of four facts any number of times doesn't change that. The topic of this article is quite clearly the speculation as to what, if any, effect Hamnet's early death had on his father's writing. Not even on his father, but on his father's writing. --Malleus Fatuorum 20:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Though, again, if the sources cited do deal with Hamnet directly then their depth of coverage and the sparseness of information given, based on the article, is negligible. The resultant content extends to statements he might or might not have had kids (carried on name) if he'd grown up; that his parents knew somebody of that name, but according to the Hamlet article (citing Saxo and Hansen) it was a common name then anyway; and, by near-universal acceptance he didn't inspire the authoring of Hamlet in any way. Whitehorse1 21:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • Since you bring it up; the reason, the basis upon which, scholars speculate on the naming is William Shakespeare's friends Hamnet and Judith Sadler, and the Shakespeare twins being named Hamnet and Judith, and the fact that the Sadlers named one of their children William (and Judith's children were named Shakespeare Quiney, Richard Quiney, and Thomas Quiney; the latter two probably also named after relevant people, to illustrate that this was a common custom). Which nicely illustrates that what appears superficial and waffling speculation on first look is actually fairly well founded scholarly speculation (as opposed to "speculation perpetrated by scholars" as seems to be the going assumption here). --Xover (talk) 21:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • I do not disagree that very little is known about Hamnet Shakespeare. In fact the article explicitly mentions this. I disagree with your assessment that the mere arbitrary number of facts known about Hamnet can disqualify the article from inclusion under the notability guidelines when there are numerous reliable secondary sources discussing—directly and specifically—the few facts that are known; and incidentally also a great number of reliable secondary sources dealing with various levels of scholarly speculation (where some here seem to prefer to put the emphasis on the latter word) about his life based on things like internal evidence in the plays, contextual data (geographic, social, economic, academic, etc.), and, yes, the possible connections between Hamnet, his death, and his father's life and works. --Xover (talk) 21:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
              • The speculation has absolutely nothing to do with Hamnet though. It's speculation about the effect of Hamnet's early death on his father's writing, quite a different subject. --Malleus Fatuorum 21:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                • To turn your own edit comment around on you (an unsavoury rhetorical practice, I admit); merely repeating this assertion does not make it true. Scholars also speculate on Hamnet and his death's influence on his father's life and works, but, cf. the scholarly speculation about how Hamnet got his name, that does not contradict that they have (and do) speculate on Hamnet himself. I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not planning to argue that since the name came from friends of Hamnet's father—and not friends of the as-yet unborn Hamnet—the speculation is about William instead of Hamnet. :-) In any case, even were the only speculation on how and whether Hamnet influenced Shakespeare—which is not the case—then that only helps establishing notability (which is the criteria for a stand-alone article) as it would for the various sources for Shakespeare's plays (many of whom would be so hopelessly obscure that nobody had heard of them, much less had Wikipedia articles, were it not for Shakespeare scholars' interest in them because they influenced Shakespeare). --Xover (talk) 21:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • Do you at least concede that that speculation is notable? Zagalejo^^^ 20:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
              • I have never claimed otherwise, which is why I voted for a merge. Do you agree that this an article about literary speculation centred on Hamnet Shakespeare, rather than about Hamnet Shakespeare? --Malleus Fatuorum 20:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                • Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. However, I don't think there's one appropriate merge target, since Hamnet has been connected to Twelfth Night and King John as well as Hamlet. (Also, it appears that some have associated Sonnet 37 with Hamnet [1], though I don't know much more about that.) Zagalejo^^^ 20:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Finding the appropriate target(s) needs thought yep. Much of the content is already repeated in the Hamlet and Sources of Hamlet articles. The 2 sentences saying Wheeler and Bryson suggest the loss may've prompted the writing of Twelfth Night & King John, respectively–since bereavement crops up in those, seem even more speculative. As information its small size allows that to be easily worked into any of the other articles, if need be. Whitehorse1 21:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                  • A combination of suggestions already made by Ottava Rima and Geometry guy seems perfectly reasonable to me. Start an article on Shakespeare's family (if one doesn't already exist), move this material into the article, and make Hamnet Shakespeare a redirect to the family article. --Malleus Fatuorum 21:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                    • It doesn't seem we have that article yet. The closest is this section. Frankly, I'm still not convinced that this article needs to be part of a broader page. Outside observers can criticize Wikipedia for many things, but no one's going to fret over the fact that Hamnet Shakespeare has his own article. Zagalejo^^^ 23:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                      • But he doesn't have his own article, this is really an article about his Dad. How much of this article is actually about Hamnet? Hardly any of it; that's the issue that needs to be addressed. --Malleus Fatuorum 23:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • I haven't yet come to a conclusion on what to do about this article, but we seem to disagree on what "directly in detail" means. Apparently for you (Xover), date and place of birth, baptism, likely abode and date of death suffice as "in detail" as they are details. In questioning this, I would note that WP:PEOPLE says: "trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability". Geometry guy 20:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • That would seem a fair assessment. [inserted: But] a policy's invocation of "in detail" cannot conjure facts that are not in evidence; for a source to deal with a subject "in detail" must ipso facto refer to those details that exist. Would it help to think of the phrasing as "not superficially or in passing" rather than "in detail"? --Xover (talk) 21:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep This is a topic many people would like to read about, and plenty of sources are available online and offline. We need to stop fixating on the "independent article" issue. Even if a topic can't support 30 KB of text, an independent article is warranted if it is the best way of organizing the information. Merging this into William Shakespeare would produce an awkward digression, and spreading it across multiple articles will just make things harder on the readers. Zagalejo^^^ 20:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Keep Subject has been noted and analysed by a significant number of literary critics as a way of postulating influences upon Shakespeare's work. Perhaps move and recast article as "Influence of Hamnet Shakespeare" or similar? Either way, removal or splicing of information into other articles will only put the reader at a disadvantage. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 21:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Notable in its own right (I remember from 1st year BA Eng Lit, mountains of scholarly papers on the relationship between Hamlet the play and Hamnet the son. Also, there is a long "performance" by SD in Joyce's Ulysses on the same topic) and the Shakespeare page is long enough. Ddawkins73 (talk) 23:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, I just came across that Ulysses bit and am about to add it. Wrad (talk) 23:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • What is notable is the relationship that some scholars have speculated might exist between Hamnet's early death and Shakespeare's subsequent writing. That has absolutely nothing to do with Hamnet Shakespeare himself, the purported subject of this article, about whom we learn very little indeed except that he was born, had a twin sister, and died at the age of 11. Hardly the stuff that biography's are made of. --Malleus Fatuorum 00:04, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The article is a benefit to Wikipedia. Applying notability guidelines according to the letter of the law might prevent Hamnet from having an article. However, I believe that this is a special case. I don't know if David Schwimmer, Hoyt Wilhelm, or Michael Dell have kids, but notability obviously wouldn't be inherited there. Hamnet Shakespeare is mentioned in just about every high school English course taught in English-speaking countries, though. If the rules say the article doesn't belong, this is a clear case for WP:IAR. GaryColemanFan (talk) 23:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Would you also keep Susanna Shakespeare? Just curious. Geometry guy 00:10, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Definitely significant enough to merit its own article. Valley2city‽ 00:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Sufficiently notable per WP:PORN BIO WP:N. --maclean 01:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment -
  • I strongly question the use of http://www.bardweb.net/will.html as a source. It is used for WP:SYN. The only connection with the article is the following statement:

    Witness to the publishing hereof: Fra: Collyns, Juilyus Shawe, John Robinson, Hamnet Sadler, robert Whattcott.

    That proves nothing about the birth or parentage of Hamnet Shakespeare. I removed it but the editor put it back. —Mattisse (Talk) 01:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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