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Chapter 2
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
In 1596, Hamnet struggles to climb the stairs on oddly weak legs. He tells himself that he will find Agnes in the bedroom, tending to Judith. Everyone knows his mother can cure anything. But Judith, looking even sicker than when he left a short time ago, is alone. Hamnet knows, all of a sudden, that he’s failed. He collapses to the bed, hooks his pinky finger through his twin sister’s, and begins to cry.
Hamnet expresses his deep love for Judith as he tries to prepare to face the grief he expects will come from her death. He seems to accept what readers likely already suspect: that one of Agnes’s children dying is now inevitable.
Themes
Half an hour later, Susanna comes in to find the fire out and Agnes—despite her promises to the contrary—not at home. She surveys the room, sighs, and throws herself into the good chair. It’s the one her mother’s clients use when they come to ask about their health, their love lives, their fortunes, or their dreams. People sometimes ask how Agnes does it, and at nearly 14, Susanna has no patience for their inquiries any longer. She’s learned to look for the expression of curiosity and suspicion that usually precedes these questions and tries to divert the conversation. She wishes Agnes could be more like other mothers. A potential customer knocks at the window and Susanna ignores it; her father sends home enough money that her mother need not carry on with curing people, even though she insists.
The book has made it clear that Hamnet, like his parents, operates differently in the world than most people. His sister Susanna, in contrast, clearly longs for a “normal” life. She resents her family’s differences and her mother’s reputation. Yet, her ability to read the intentions of others and her pointed, obstinate refusal to give them what they want suggests that she is just as perceptive—and willful—in her own way as her parents and brother are in theirs. And her attention to the business dealings shows that she’s also inherited some of her grandfather’s shrewdness. Despite her annoyance, she clearly plays an important role in the family, running the household and attending to the things other members forget.
Themes
Susanna misses her father. Between his infrequent visits, he sends letters home talking about his life. Agnes can read them, albeit slowly. Susanna’s Aunt Eliza or Hamnet write down Agnes’s replies. Hamnet can write words as fast as a person speaks and he excels in his studies. Their grandfather, John, proudly anticipates the day when Hamnet will take over the glove-making business. Although she knows it’s wrong, Susanna sometimes secretly wishes for an outbreak of plague to close the theaters in London and allow her father to come home for an extended visit. Mary comes through the back door, looking for Hamnet, Judith, and Agnes. As exasperated as Susanna to find the family shirking, she grumblingly heads for the cookhouse. Susanna follows. When the door slams behind them, Hamnet wakes with a start.
Susanna’s wish for plague to bring her father home of course tempts fate—the very thing she has wished for has come about but not in the way she meant it. As she leaves, she slams the door and wakes Hamnet, but before he can think or act, the chapter ends. Almost all of the chapters set in 1596 end in this way, on a character’s suspended action. This contributes to a sense of momentum and forward progress even as the events of the past regularly punctuate the narrative in the present.
Themes
