Hamnet: Chapter 16 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.