Bartholomew Hathaway

Bartholomew Hathaway, Agnes’s brother, is a practical ally whose care is expressed through physical presence and concrete acts. After Hamnet’s death, he offers comfort without trying to hurry Agnes’s grief; later, he helps Agnes’s husband despite his family’s suspicions, and agrees to accompany her when she decides to go to London.

Identity and Presence

Bartholomew’s relationship with Agnes is established through familiarity that precedes speech. At Hamnet’s deathbed, Agnes knows her brother has come beside her without looking: she recognizes the weight of his broad hand, his strong step and dragging boots, and the clean smell of hay and wool. He touches her arm and her dry cheek, says her name twice, and shares his sorrow over the loss of a child he remembers as the best of them all. The scene makes his closeness legible through touch and the details of his working body; comfort begins in his presence before it can become words.

His response also joins sympathy to responsibility. He tells Agnes that he will handle the arrangements and has sent Richard to the church to make sure everything is ready. He notes that women have come to help her, but does not assume that their presence settles what she wants. His readiness to organize the practical work does not erase Agnes’s authority over her son’s body or the timing of his burial.

Grief and the Funeral

When Bartholomew considers what Agnes’s husband would have wanted, he does so cautiously. He suggests that the news may not yet have reached him, but believes that, if he knew, he would have come; he also thinks he would understand that they may need to proceed. Agnes answers that they will wait until the next day and that she will prepare Hamnet for burial herself, allowing no one else to do it. Bartholomew accepts her decision and rises. His support here consists not in taking grief out of her hands, but in making room for her choice while remaining ready to help with what must be done.

The contrast between his practical preparations and Agnes’s insistence on tending Hamnet herself defines his role in the scene. He has already sent word to the church and acknowledges the people gathered to assist; she turns back to her son and refuses to surrender the intimate work of preparing him. Bartholomew neither contests her refusal nor presses the argument about her husband. He yields the decision to her.

A Difficult Family Decision

Later, Bartholomew receives a letter from Agnes’s husband asking him to represent him in making a purchase. The husband explains that he does not want to ask his own brothers, because their father might interfere, and asks whether Bartholomew will help. The request places Bartholomew between his brother-in-law and a household inclined to distrust him. Joan, Agnes’s stepmother, demands to know what the letter says and assumes that the man may be asking for money after failing in London; she warns Bartholomew not to lend anything and invokes the needs of the farm and family.

Bartholomew does not answer Joan at once. He goes out over the lands east of Hewlands, where the ground has lately become boggy, then returns. Ignoring the women’s questions, he takes paper and a pen and laboriously writes back that he will help. The decision is presented through a small but consequential sequence: family suspicion surrounds the letter, he considers it, and then commits himself in writing. His agreement gives practical force to his relationship with Agnes’s husband, without suggesting that Joan’s misgivings have been resolved.

Weeks later, Bartholomew goes looking for Agnes, first at the house, then at the market, and finally to a dark cottage off the mill road, whose location the baker’s wife gives him. He finds his sister applying a poultice to the chest of an elderly man lying on a rush mat. The damp room, the sharp smell of clay, and the sickening odor of the man’s illness mark the conditions in which he finds her. The episode places Bartholomew in the role of someone who seeks Agnes out, even when she is away from home and occupied with care for another person.

Accompanying Agnes

When the question of London arises, Bartholomew turns concern into a decision. After the possibility of Agnes not going and abandoning what is called her madness has been raised, he announces that they are leaving the next day and that he must obtain horses for the two of them. His words commit him to the journey beside her rather than merely advising from a distance. The need for two horses gives the decision a practical shape: his support means preparing to go with Agnes, at a moment when others around her are distressed by the prospect.

Across these episodes, Bartholomew’s care repeatedly takes the form of useful action tempered by restraint. He arranges the church preparations but lets Agnes decide when and how to prepare Hamnet; he weighs a request for help amid his family’s objections and answers it himself; and, when Agnes is set on going to London, he makes the journey possible by arranging transport for them both. He is not the center of these crises, but his steady presence helps Agnes retain agency within them.