Hamnet

The unexpected meeting of two disparate objects is a key motif throughout the novel. Without such meetings there would have been no Hamnet and no trace of the plague that killed him. O’Farrell highlights this by alternating the timeline of the events leading up to Hamnet’s sickness and death with another chronological strand, beginning with his parents’ meeting. Rather than engage in an arranged marriage as was customary in the late 16th century, Agnes and the Latin tutor meet and fall in love by chance. The Latin tutor spots Agnes from the window while tutoring her half-brothers and initially thinks that he will have a casual liaison with the “mad witchy sister” (33); instead, he accidentally impregnates her. Their marriage, which is assured by his father John to safeguard his own interests, results in a second pregnancy through which Hamnet is produced. Hamnet’s character is a confluence of his parents’ personalities, as he combines his father’s imagination and intellect with his mother’s curiosity and fondness for getting muddy in nature. Through his untimely early death, these parental gifts are unable to come fully to fruition. As a result, his father and later his mother seek consolation in the theater, where older boys can take on Hamnet’s name and show how the boy they made between them might have grown.