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Chapter 5
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 the 1580s, Mary makes Agnes sleep in Eliza’s bed between her arrival and the wedding. When Mary announced the arrangement, Eliza felt a momentary shock; the last person to share her bed was her sister, Anne. She wants to ask her mother if she, too, still misses Anne. Eliza often thinks—or wishes—that she’ll wake up one day to find Anne back in her old place. On this morning, as she lies next to Agnes, she thinks about the fuss and bother of the wedding arrangements. It will take place tomorrow morning, officiated by a priest who lives at Temple Grafton and is Agnes’s friend. Agnes announced her choice of priest matter-of-factly in the parlor one evening. Her frank cheer and unselfconsciousness shocked Mary, angered John, and impressed Eliza. No one in her family speaks that freely.
Anne died of plague about two years before the tutor met Agnes, yet her presence remains fresh in Eliza’s mind. Earlier chapters hinted at the close relationship the girls shared. Eliza’s continuing affection suggests that love is stronger than death; that is, the dead may be gone, but they cannot be lost as long as they are remembered and loved. Agnes’s arrival doesn’t erase the pain of Anne’s death, but the love and friendship she extends does offer to fill an empty spot in Eliza’s world. Eliza reflects in this here, as well as on her respect for and envy of Agnes’s freedom.
Themes
Eliza wants to walk down the street in bright sunlight to her own wedding, crowned with flowers. She doesn’t want a furtive ceremony miles from town like Agnes will have. But she knows it’s not her business. In the early morning light, she whispers an offer to make Agnes’s bridal crown, certain the woman will refuse. Instead, Agnes turns to face her soon-to-be sister-in-law and accepts with gratitude. Soon the two are conspiratorially deciding which plants they can find to use this late in the year. Agnes catches hold of Eliza’s hand, ostensibly to allow her to feel the child —whom she’s certain is a girl—moving in her belly.
Eliza feels drawn to Agnes in much the same way that she clearly has deep affection for her brother. But, quite unlike them, she wants a conventional life. The book doesn’t criticize her for this; while it celebrates the uniqueness and genius of Agnes and her husband, it maintains respect for those who live conventional lives as long as they don’t limit others. It suggests, in other words, that the world needs some geniuses but also quite a lot of regular people, too. Agnes, in turn, welcomes Eliza’s love warmly since she has been so deprived of love and affection thus far.
Themes
Agnes’s grip disconcerts Eliza. Then Agnes asks, quietly, about Eliza’s sister. Eliza answers briefly. She does not say what she feels, does not say that she often worries about Anne being on her own wherever she is. But Agnes seems to know her thoughts. She assures Eliza that Anne is with their other two sisters, the ones who died before either Anne or Eliza were born. Eliza asks how Agnes knew about them; she doesn’t believe Agnes’s answer that the tutor told her. Still, Eliza explains that she has the same name as one of them, and that her brother Gilbert warns her that its ghost may come back someday to demand she relinquish the name. Agnes assures her that won’t happen. When she lets go of Eliza’s hand, there’s a bright red spot where she pressed with her thumbnail.
Agnes’s special ability allows her to see the details of Eliza’s loss—it’s a mark of her wildness that she can see things without being told. And it's a mark of her fear of others’ scorn that she tries (poorly) to hide her gift. But it’s her shared sense of grief—remember how young she was when she lost her own mother—that informs her response. Since no one is immune to suffering, only love can offer hope and comfort. Agnes’s vision emphasizes the power of the familial bonds which link Anne and her sisters, even though they never met in the world of the living.
Themes
On the morning of the wedding, Eliza weaves a crown of ferns, evergreen boughs, and asters, while minding her youngest brother, Edmond. He’s only two and just beginning to speak. In the cookhouse, she can hear Mary venting her impotent rage on the food. Upstairs, her brother the tutor wrestles with siblings Gilbert and Richard until one of them gets hurt. Then the trio bounds down the stairs into the parlor. The tutor picks up Edmond, spinning him around to the boy’s great delight. Then he puts Edmond down and bounds out into the street. In his absence, Agnes slips into the parlor in a pale yellow gown.
In her stepmother’s house, Agnes felt totally alienated from everyone but her brother. Joan’s need to control and repress denied Agnes the opportunity to forge loving bonds with her stepsiblings. Although her in-laws aren’t perfect either—readers have already witnessed John’s quick temper and abusive tendencies—the affection the Shakespeare siblings share contrasts sharply with Agnes’s experience at Hewlands, and it contributes to Agnes’s sense that her marriage will indeed give her the escape she longed for.
Themes
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The wedding party walks to the chapel through the frosty morning with the men leading the way. Agnes walks with Eliza (carrying Edmond), Mary, and a few friends. Joan, Caterina, Joanie, Margaret, and baby William walk off to one side in a cluster. Agnes notices Eliza’s sad jealousy as she watches Joan’s girls together. Agnes notices everything, both visible—unpicked berries in the hedgerow, birds in the trees—and invisible—which of her stepsisters will be lucky and which will not. She senses the water flowing in the plants in her crown and the blood coursing through her body and the baby’s in her womb.
Joan holds herself aloof on the walk to the chapel, replicating the way she withheld love from Agnes all her life; Agnes responds by reaching beyond herself to the life that pulses through the whole natural world. This life force has sustained her since she was small, and will continue to do so, this passage hints, even as she gains important companionship and love in the form of her new family.
Themes
Because she knows her mother would have been beside her in life, Agnes feels confident her spirit is with her as she walks to the church. She looks intently at the tutor, willing him to turn to her. She feels no surprise when he does. He makes a gesture, maybe miming putting a ring on her finger, maybe something cruder. As the priest solemnly declares the banns three times, Agnes begs her mother’s spirit for a sign. Other members of the party fidget, but she remains still. And then, as the tutor impatiently takes his place by the priest and Bartholomew prepares to hand her over to her groom, a cluster of berries falls from the rowan tree overhead onto her shoulder. She catches it and holds it out to her brother; they both know it to be a sign from their mother, who was named Rowan, just like the trees.
Agnes reaches out for her mother’s spirit and finds it in the world, demonstrating that the ties of love and affection which bind people together in life are strong enough to withstand the separation of death. Likewise, Agnes’s experiences suggest that love exerts a real force in the world, as when she wills the tutor to turn and look at her. Early Modern English law required that an announcement of an impending marriage (the banns) be read out on three successive Sundays or market days, to give people an opportunity to bring to light any objections or circumstances which might prevent the marriage (for example, if one member of the couple was already married). But in practice, sometimes exceptions were made, as here.
Themes
Bartholomew grips the tutor’s shoulder and quietly says that if he fails to take good care of Agnes, he will have to answer for it to Bartholomew. Then he steps back. The bride and groom slip holy-water-wetted rings on to each other’s third fingers—from which a vein runs directly to the heart, according to the tutor—as the priest solemnly makes the sign of the cross in Latin. Agnes feels the cold ring warm on her finger. As she enters the chapel to hear the mass, she’s keenly aware of the ring, the rowanberries in her palm, and her new husband’s hand.
The tumult and chaos of the wedding party fades away in the moments after the priest reads the banns. Agnes and the tutor disentangle themselves from the families in which they grew up and look toward the future. As she does so, however, Agnes reaffirms her connection to those she loves the most, those who will support her through all her life’s trials: her brother and her mother. This hints that, while she may be enough for the tutor, she will need a bigger community to help see her through coming events.
Themes
