Hamnet

On her wedding night Agnes is struck by the difference between the countryside home where she grew up and the city dwelling which she shares with her husband and his family. The newlyweds have the attic room in a house which slopes like Agnes’ first initial, the letter A. Her kestrel now lives with the priest who married the couple.

Agnes adapts quickly to the ways of the house, even adding a personal touch to the trimming of candle-wicks and the baking of bread. She notices that her husband has a fractious relationship with his father, and that he seems “split in two”—relaxed in their apartment yet argumentative and defensive in the family home (122).

When Hamnet answers the door, he encounters the terrifying figure of the physician who wears a black cloak and “a hideous featureless mask, pointed like the beak of a gigantic bird” (124). The physician’s disguise allegedly protects him from the plague. The physician and Agnes, as competing purveyors of medicine, have little respect for one another. Hamnet even senses that the physician wishes his mother ill. Meanwhile, she rejects both the physician’s dried toad cure and his pessimism about what can be done to help Judith. 

In the spring of 1583, Agnes is heavily pregnant. Given that many women die in childbirth, her husband fears for her safety. Agnes however, has the premonition that all will be well and that she will have two healthy children.

One morning, Agnes wakes up to find that she has dreamed of her mother, Rowan. In the dream, Rowan tells Agnes that “the branches of the forest are so dense you cannot feel the rain” (128). Agnes takes this and labor pains as a sign to go to the forest near Hewlands. She gives birth to her daughter alone in the forest.

Meanwhile, her husband, who plans to move away from his parents when the baby is born, is shocked by Agnes’ absence and her handwritten message about branches and a forest. He approaches Agnes’ brother, Bartholomew, who guides him to her in the forest.

This chapter reveals how Judith’s caught the plague. Her illness originated in two separate events in other parts of the world. The first of these involves a Venetian master glassmaker specializing in the craft of millefiori beads who accidentally singes off two of his fingers. One of his fellow workers packages up the beads in a box, preparing them for sale.

Meanwhile, in Alexandria, a cabin boy from the Isle of Man befriends a monkey when he is charged with procuring provisions for the ship. A pestilent flea from the monkey jumps onto the boy, who then carries the flea onto the ship. This flea wreaks havoc on the ship, killing crew-members and cats. When the cats die, the rat population increases, which in turn causes the pestilence to spread. Still, the ship’s captain is determined to continue in order to sell his wares and make money. In Venice, they pick up the glassmaker’s beads and the fleas infiltrate the bead supplies. There are more casualties, both human and feline, before the ship docks in London. A messenger, who begins to experience symptoms of the plague himself, deposits the beads, which are now teeming with fleas, at different outposts in the country. In Stratford, a box is delivered to Judith’s neighbor, a seamstress. The seamstress allows Judith the honor of opening the beads because she knows that Judith eagerly anticipated their arrival.

When Susanna is one year old, Agnes senses that she is pregnant again with a child whose sex she cannot determine. However, the true blight on Agnes’s happiness is her husband’s foul mood, which surrounds her like a bad odor. His sleeplessness, heavy drinking, and semblance of ill health give her cause for concern. She senses that living with his authoritarian father is the cause of his melancholy.

Agnes visits her brother Bartholomew for advice. Bartholomew judges that Agnes’ husband is “all head […] with not much sense” and that he stands to go insane without some gainful employment (160). He agrees that he will find John in the tavern and suggest that the eldest son go to London, perhaps on the pretense of expanding the glove business. Agnes imagines that her husband will go to London first and that she and the children will follow after she gives birth.