Agnes Persuades Her Husband to Go to London

Agnes Persuades Her Husband to Go to London is the turning point at which Agnes converts concern for William Shakespeare’s condition into a plan for his departure. She sees that he is unhappy and unable to thrive under his father’s authority; by persuading Bartholomew to approach John, she helps create an opportunity for William to work in London. The decision is hers in its origins, but its success brings the separation she least wants: William leaves while Agnes is heavily pregnant, and she turns away before he reaches the end of the street.

A household in distress

Agnes’s intervention begins in the aftermath of nights that she cannot ignore. William sits awake at the bedroom table, drinking too much and trying to write. He rejects one quill after another as unusable, complaining that they are too long, too short, or too thin for his fingers. When the quills break or scrape the paper and leave smudges, he loses control and throws everything against the wall, including the inkpot. The noise wakes Agnes; Susanna cries in alarm, and the ink stains the wall like a black island. In that moment, looking at William’s livid face and disordered hair, Agnes does not recognize him.

The next morning, while William sleeps, Agnes ties Susanna to her back and goes to Hewlands. Along the way she gathers quills, poppy heads, and nettle stems, then finds Bartholomew by following the regular blows of his hammer. He is setting a fence post in the first sheepfold, marking off pens for newborn lambs. His height, strength, and persistence make him well suited to the work, though Agnes knows he could have left the task to someone else. The purposeful, repeated hammering provides a sharp contrast to the disorder she has just left behind.

When Bartholomew asks her to explain, Agnes shifts Susanna from one side to the other and tells him that William does not sleep. He stays awake through the night and then cannot get up; he is sad and resentful, says little except when arguing with his father, and carries a great weight of sorrow. Bartholomew listens in silence, chewing the last of his bread and cheese. He then returns to the fence post and strikes it with two precise blows before stating his central conviction: a man needs work, and William needs real work.

Turning concern into a plan

Bartholomew argues that William has too much intellect and too little practical sense, and that his current life—running errands for his father and teaching from place to place—will drive him mad. He also raises what people say about John’s temper, particularly toward his Latin-tutor son. Agnes acknowledges how bad the situation has become. Bartholomew repeats that William needs work and may also need distance from his father.

Agnes proposes London as a possible remedy. John, she suggests, might be interested in opening a shop there and expanding the business. Bartholomew understands the practical implication: John could send someone he trusts to the city for a time, perhaps a son. Agnes agrees, but emphasizes that the arrangement would be temporary. London offers William employment away from his father; it is not yet a plan for Agnes to abandon her own home or join him immediately.

The proposal depends on how it reaches John. Agnes doubts he will listen to a woman on this matter, so she imagines that a business partner could raise the idea, show interest in the enterprise, and make the suggestion seem to have originated with John himself. Bartholomew completes her thought: such a partner might persuade him. Then he asks what the arrangement would mean for Agnes if William left before her. She admits that she would not be indifferent; he might take time to establish himself. Still, she cannot see another way. If London can save him from his present misery, that is what she wants.

Agnes has not yet told William. She intends to wait until matters become clearer. Bartholomew gives her one of his rare, broad smiles, puts his powerful arm around her shoulders, and promises to speak to John that very night, at the place where he knows John goes to drink. The plan therefore advances through a quiet chain of persuasion: Agnes plants the possibility with her brother, who can approach John in a form John may accept.

The departure she has arranged

Weeks later, Agnes walks through Stratford beside William, her belly so large that she cannot keep pace. She notices him deliberately slowing down to match her steps and feels the strain in his muscles as he restrains his natural desire for movement and speed. Their walk is also the visible culmination of preparations and negotiations: letters have been written, bundles packed, and clothes washed and washed again by Mary, while John has supervised the repeated packing and unpacking of glove samples.

Agnes understands that William is ready to go. She has prepared the ground and set events moving, as though pulling hidden strings to guide people toward a decision they can accept as their own. She asked Bartholomew to speak to John, then waited for John to speak to William. In her reckoning, none of this would have happened without her. Yet the moment of success contradicts her private wishes. She wants William to stay beside her, to hold her hand, to be home when she gives birth, and to continue their life together. Her own desire, she recognizes, does not decide what happens: he is leaving, and she is the person who secretly urged him toward it.

William carries a bundle on his back; more belongings can be sent after he has settled. His boots are clean and polished, their seams rubbed with grease by Agnes to protect them from the damp streets of London. She has also trimmed his beard. These acts of preparation register care in practical, intimate forms even as the departure separates them. William keeps his gaze lowered and does not want to stop to greet people or talk for long. He grips Agnes’s hand hard, eager to begin the journey.

At the coaching stop, he talks about where he might find lodging and promises that he will return sooner than expected. He hopes to find a room in London for all three of them as soon as he can, so that he, Agnes, and Susanna can live together again. They stop beside a milestone marked with an arrow pointing toward London. William asks whether Agnes will write when the time comes and reaches out to touch the lower curve of her belly. His projected return and the unborn child make the separation feel temporary in intention, but its immediate emotional cost is unmistakable.

Refusing the farewell

Agnes imagines William crossing the river in a small boat, soaked by the water and weighed down by mud, then has to shake the vision away. She tells herself it is not true and will not happen, only a trick of her imagination. The scene shows how the departure activates fears that practical arrangements cannot settle. William speaks of routes, crossings, and lodging; Agnes has to resist the image of danger in order to remain with the journey they have chosen.

At the final parting, Agnes pushes him away when she needs space, then tells him calmly that she will not say goodbye and will not stand watching him leave. William answers that he will not say goodbye either. He kisses her for herself, for Susanna, and for the child not yet born. Agnes promises to pass on that last kiss when the time comes and urges him to go. He says he will return for them sooner than she thinks, but she turns back before he reaches the corner.

William will take four days to reach London, perhaps less if a farmer gives him a ride. Agnes has encouraged him to leave, yet cannot bear to witness his going. On the return walk, the streets appear unchanged: a stall remains full of tin vessels and cedar shavings; a woman is still weighing two pots; a dog sleeps in a doorway; a young woman continues tying bundles of clothes. The ordinary activity around Agnes throws her inward rupture into relief. Her world has split in two, but the passers-by and familiar objects continue as before. The action’s decisive consequence is thus double: Agnes secures the possibility of work and distance for William, while discovering that arranging a separation does not make it less painful to endure.