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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hamnet, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loss and Grief
Fate and Fortune
Freedom, Restraint, and Genius
The Power of Love
Identity, Choice, and Sacrifice
Summary
Analysis
As Agnes’s second pregnancy progresses, Mary watches her like a hawk, determined to prevent her from giving birth in a forest like last time. When Agnes’s labor begins, nearly one month early, and as she mulls over her husband’s most recent letter, it surprises her. The letter describes her husband’s new contract to make gloves for a theater company. There’s an eagerness in his words, in his description of the theater and the costumes the players wear, that worries Agnes. So does the fact that he now won’t be there for the birth. Agnes tries to slip away to the forest as she did for Susanna’s birth, but her brother-in-law Gilbert blocks her in the street and escorts her back to Mary’s house.
Mary’s desire to control those in her household makes her relationship with Agnes yet another arena where the conflict between freedom and restraint can play out. Mary wants to domesticate Agnes, to ensure that her behavior conforms to social expectations (for example, give birth at home with a midwife, not alone in the woods). The book hints that Agnes would have prevailed had she not been puzzling over her husband’s letter with its confusing references to the theater. Readers understand what Agnes cannot yet see: crossing the threshold of a theater is so important because it is an important step toward William Shakespeare capitalizing on his genius.
Themes
In an upstairs room of Mary’s house, Agnes grows more and more distraught over her confinement as her labor progresses. Fear and pain cut off her ability to see what will happen, making her feel certain that she will die. She refuses to sit on the birthing stool, falling to her hands and knees on the floor. But as she labors, she realizes that her husband didn’t sound different in his letter so much as restored to his former self. And then, her son (Hamnet) comes into the world, caught by Mary and the midwife.
In this moment, Agnes worries that confinement will quite literally kill her. She wrestles with three things at once: the physical pain of giving birth, the trauma of being denied her autonomy and access to the natural world which sustains her, and her worry over the tone of her husband’s letter. But as soon as one of these is resolved, the others fall into place, too: the knowledge that her husband is returning to himself gives Agnes the strength she needs in this moment.
Themes
Afterwards, while Agnes nurses Hamnet, the midwife listens to Mary encouraging her to swaddle him. The midwife knows Mary and recognizes her persistence. But she suspects Agnes will win the argument. When she turns toward the bed, she sees that something is wrong; after a quick examination she realizes that Agnes is about to deliver the second of a set of twins. This delivery is much harder, with Agnes becoming so weak that Mary begins to fear for her death. But eventually, the second baby (Judith) falls into the midwife’s hands, its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck.
The midwife is one of only two characters (the other is the cabin boy) outside of the Shakespeare family whose perspective the narrative occupies. She thus confirms for readers what earlier episodes have already sketched out about Mary’s character and Agnes’s—they are alike in their strong wills, even if Mary’s conventional life and Agnes’s wild heart cause them to want different things. And they’re united in the way they love their families and long for the health and safety of all members.
Themes
Judith does not cry; the midwife prepares to carry the stillborn child away. But Agnes demands to see and hold it. Mary and the midwife try to dissuade her, but she is adamant. And after a moment, to their utter amazement, they hear a small cry. The child is alive. Still, Agnes knows, just like everyone else, that she may not live long. John and Mary rush to have the newborns “churched” before anything tragic can happen.
The midwife’s calm reaction to the apparent stillbirth points to the common nature of such tragedies in an era long before modern medicine. This doesn’t take away from the tragedy of the situation—otherwise, she and Mary wouldn’t be so intent on trying to keep Agnes from unnecessary suffering. But it does suggest that grief and loss are one of the unifying experiences of human life.
Themes
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The boy, Hamnet, is strong. His sister, Judith, is weak, often forgetting to suck when placed to her mother’s breast. But Agnes refuses to let her daughter die. She imagines death like this: there is a cottage in the middle of a desolate tract of moorland. The living are inside the cottage. The dead are outside, and they press desperately against the windows, trying to get back to their people inside. She cannot imagine her tiny daughter being stuck outside. She vows she will slam the door to death. She defies her onetime certainty that two children—not three—would stand at the foot of her bed when she died. She exhausts herself with her efforts to keep Judith alive; when her husband returns home, he can scarcely recognize her.
The contrast between Hamnet—the larger, stronger twin—and his sister helps to explain why, in Chapter 13, Hamnet prevails in offering himself to death even though Judith wants to stop him. He is, after all, the stronger twin. Agnes’s image of the house on the dark moor—where mere walls separate the living and the dead—speaks to the unbreakable bonds of love which even death cannot touch. The effort Agnes puts into keeping Judith alive points to the force of maternal love generally, and Agnes’s fierce, sacrificial love for her family in particular.
Themes
When her husband returns home, he and Agnes make plans for the day when they will all live together in London. He is saving money to buy a house, and he imagines how happy he will be with his wife and children in the kitchen of their own home, far from his parents. The babies will chatter and grow fat and happy. He will no longer need to live his split, doubled life. And with Agnes by his side, anything will be possible. Neither he nor Agnes know, then, that this vision will never come to pass. Judith will live, but she will always be sickly, her health too fragile for a city like London. By the time she is two, and he has found work in the theaters, he won’t be thinking of houses in town anymore. But neither of them, at this moment, can see what their future holds.
Agnes can see things about the future that other people cannot; thus, readers should be wary about accepting the husband’s rosy predictions—which the book casts as wishful thinking. He wants his life to be whole once more, not divided between his London work and his Stratford family. But just as the birth of the twins splits something that was meant to be whole (Agnes’s second of two children), so too does it extend the division between the husband’s life in London and the lives of the rest of his family in Stratford. Yet, the book emphasizes, although readers already know how at least one of these tensions will be resolved, the husband and Agnes remain trapped in their ignorance and are blind to the workings of fate.
Themes
