Agnes and Her Husband’s Wedding

Agnes and Her Husband’s Wedding is the church ceremony in which Agnes and William Shakespeare become husband and wife. The event turns their courtship into a public bond, but it does not erase the pressures around that union: Bartholomew escorts his sister and warns the groom to care for her, while Agnes enters the church carrying both a token of the natural world and the hand of her future husband.

The Walk to the Church

Bartholomew takes Agnes firmly by the hand and leads her to the church door. When William Shakespeare comes forward with an eager, outstretched arm, Bartholomew stops his sister from moving on. He holds her back while placing his other hand on the groom’s shoulder, then quietly warns him to treat Agnes properly. Agnes hears the warning despite her brother’s effort to keep it from her. When Bartholomew releases her, he turns to the watching company with a broad, tooth-baring smile; William Shakespeare, by contrast, is left somewhat pale. The exchange makes the wedding a family negotiation as well as a romantic union: Agnes’s brother relinquishes his hold on her only after making her future husband answerable to him.

The Ring and the Ceremony

The priest dips the ring in holy water, murmurs a blessing, and gives it to William Shakespeare. He speaks the Latin formula as he places the ring successively on Agnes’s thumb, index finger, and middle finger, removing it between each placement. At the final Amen, it reaches her ring finger. Agnes recalls William Shakespeare’s earlier explanation that a vein runs from that finger directly to the heart. First cold and wet from the holy water, the ring quickly warms against her skin until it matches her body’s temperature. The ritual thus moves from priestly blessing and spoken formula to an intimate physical sensation: the ring is both a public sign of marriage and a piece of metal warmed by Agnes’s own blood.

After the exchange, Agnes enters the church carrying three things: the ring on her finger, a cluster of rowan berries in one hand, and her husband’s hand in the other. The couple walks together down the nave, followed by a crowd whose feet echo against the stone as they take their places in the pews. Agnes kneels at the altar to William Shakespeare’s left, and they bow their heads together to hear Mass. The priest spreads a linen cloth over them as protection from demons, the devil, and the evils of the world. The movement from the threshold into the nave, and from the walk together to kneeling beneath the cloth, gives the marriage a deliberately communal and sacred setting.

Family Bond and Meaning

The wedding’s central images hold protection and independence in tension. Bartholomew’s grip is strong enough to delay Agnes’s approach to her groom, and his warning marks his continuing concern for his sister; yet he finally lets go, allowing her to take William Shakespeare’s offered arm. Agnes’s three carried tokens gather the ceremony’s different bonds into one image: the ring, the rowan berries, and her husband’s hand. The ring is blessed and made public through ritual, while the berries remain in her palm as she walks beside her new husband. Their marriage is not presented as a private escape from family or community, but as a union enacted before both, under the priest’s blessing and the watch of those gathered in the church.