William Leaves for London

William Shakespeare’s departure for London is a separation Agnes has helped arrange in the hope of rescuing him from a life that has become unbearable. The departure brings two opposing desires into the same moment: she has worked to make a new beginning possible for him, yet wants him to stay beside her as she approaches childbirth. The journey he eagerly undertakes is therefore both an escape from his unhappiness and a cost Agnes knowingly accepts.

Background and the Need to Leave

Agnes explains to Bartholomew that her husband is not sleeping: he stays awake through the night and then cannot get up. She describes him as sad and resentful, largely silent except when arguing with his father, and burdened by profound sorrow. Bartholomew listens without answering at once. After he finishes his bread and cheese, he picks up a hammer and drives two blows into a stake. His response is practical rather than consoling: William needs work, and perhaps distance from John as well.

Agnes has already begun to imagine London as that distance. She suggests that John might be interested in opening a shop elsewhere, and proposes that a business partner could raise the idea so that it appeared to be John’s own. Bartholomew understands the plan: if the suggestion came from someone with an interest in the business, it might persuade John where Agnes herself could not. She admits that William’s leaving would matter deeply to her, but cannot see another way to help him. London, she hopes, might save him from his present misery.

Bartholomew agrees to speak to John that very night, at the place where he knows John goes to drink. The plan depends on Agnes’s influence being concealed: she means to set events in motion without appearing to direct them. Her intervention is not a simple willingness to part from her husband. It is an attempt to alter the circumstances around him, even if the change she engineers will take him away from her.

A Departure Agnes Has Orchestrated

Weeks later, the preparations are complete. Agnes walks through Stratford beside her husband, her pregnancy making it difficult to keep pace. He tries to slow himself to match her, restraining the energy and speed he longs to spend on the journey ahead. Letters have been written, belongings packed, and clothes washed and washed again by Mary, who must do the work herself. John has supervised the glove samples, packing and unpacking them and packing them once more.

Agnes understands how the departure came about. She asked Bartholomew to approach John, then waited for John to speak to William. Without her planting the idea in John’s mind, she believes, none of this would have happened. She has prepared the ground and guided the people involved towards a decision that can appear to belong to them. Yet now that the plan has succeeded, its result contradicts her own private wishes: she wants William to keep hold of her hand, stay at home, and be present when she gives birth. She wants them to remain together. He is leaving, and she knows that she helped push him towards the road.

The small details of his preparations make the separation tangible. William carries a bundle on his back; more belongings will be sent once he is settled. Agnes has cleaned his boots and rubbed grease into their seams to protect them from the damp streets of London. She trimmed his beard the previous night, sharpening the razor before passing its edge over his skin. The care involved in these acts sits beside the urgency of his departure: she prepares him for a journey she does not want him to make.

The bundle also holds evidence of another choice. William has taken some of the glove samples supplied by his father and exchanged them for books and papers. Agnes touches the cloth and gives him a brief, knowing smile. She is not certain whether he understands that she knows. The exchange quietly distinguishes his own intellectual pursuits from the family business that has shaped the preparations for his journey.

The Parting at the Road

On the way to the post stop, William talks about the riverbanks, the landing places, and the times when crossing is less dangerous. Agnes imagines a broad, thick river with lethal currents and boats scattered across it. In her vision, one boat carries her husband downstream, his clothes soaked and his boots full of river mud. She grips his arm and shakes off the image, telling herself that it is only a trick of her imagination and will not happen.

At the post stop, beside a signpost pointing towards London, William talks about where he will stay and promises to return sooner than expected. He says he will think of Agnes and Susanna every day, find a room for all three of them as soon as he can, and bring the family together again. He asks Agnes to write when the time comes and rests both hands against the lower curve of her belly. The promise of reunion and the touch of her pregnant body place their future together inside the very scene of their separation.

Agnes tells him that she is counting on his mother, sister, and both families; he has to go, find a house in London, and bring them there when possible. William says he cannot bear to leave her and wonders what will happen if he fails. She answers by insisting that he must go. Before he leaves, he kisses her, then gives another kiss for Susanna and one for the unborn child. Agnes promises to pass the last one on when the time comes, and urges him to go. He says he will return for them sooner than she expects; she answers with another insistence that he leave.

Separation and Its Immediate Aftermath

Agnes turns away before William reaches the corner. The journey to London will take four days, she calculates, or less if a farmer picks him up in a cart. She has encouraged him to go but cannot bear to watch him depart. On the way back through the same streets, she walks more slowly. The familiar route seems to run backwards, like writing being revisited and erased: a moment ago he was beside her, and now she is alone. She feels exposed and stripped bare.

Nothing around her appears to have changed. A woman still weighs two pots in her hands; a dog still dozes; a young woman still ties up bundles of clothes; a neighbor still greets Agnes with a solemn nod. Agnes’s private world has split in two, while the street continues with its ordinary business. Her return makes the departure’s consequence immediate: the plan that was meant to relieve William’s sorrow has also left Agnes to face the coming birth without him. At the scene’s end, his absence is not yet repaired by the promised reunion. It is the fact through which she must continue home.