Anne Hathaway

1. Anne Hathaway By Carol Ann Duffy

2. Anne Hathaway Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare’s wife. They married in 1582, when Anne was already pregnant, and had three children together. Although Shakespeare spent many years working in London, he made frequent visits to their home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Anne has been portrayed in literature as many things over the years since her death in 1623. There has been a particular trend since the 1900s to view her as an adulteress, a cradle-snatcher (Shakespeare was 18 when they married, she, 26) and as a frigid shrew.

3. Anne Hathaway In his will, Shakespeare left her the “second best bed” and many see this as either punishment for her adultery or as an insult because he was forced into marriage after she fell pregnant. However, Carol Ann Duffy does not agree. She sees Shakespeare as funny, playful and sexy. Duffy thinks the bed means something special to the couple as it represented the physical love in their relationship. It was also customary for guests to have the best bed.

4. Anne Hathaway In the poem, Anne celebrates the gift of the bed, remembering the loving nights she and Shakespeare spent in it. The imagery recalls some of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and the lovers’ bodies are likened to parts of speech.

5. Anne Hathaway The poem is written in sonnet form, which is highly appropriate as Shakespeare wrote more than 150 love sonnets. Although Shakespeare’s sonnets kept to a strict rhyme scheme, this sonnet is freer – perhaps to express the freedom and lack of constraint that the couple experienced in their love-making. However, the sonnet does end (as Shakespeare’s did) with a rhyming couplet, emphasising Anne’s firm intention to hold on to her husband’s memory.

6. Anne Hathaway The poem is written in first person narrative voice, from the point of view of the newly widowed Hathaway. She remembers her husband with great love. The poet gives as voice to someone of whom history has recorded little although the language is strictly too modern to be spoken by the historical Anne She suggests that as lovers they were as inventive as Shakespeare was in his poetry. Many of the images are undeniably erotic and Duffy no doubts expects the reader to interpret them in a sexual sense.

7. Anne Hathaway Just like Shakespeare’s works, the poem is full metaphor. The first two lines list the romantic settings that the bed became for the lovers – “a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas”. All these settings appear in Shakespeare’s plays. The variety of settings suggests the rich imagination the couple shared – and perhaps the variety of their love-making.

8. Anne Hathaway The poem uses word play. Duffy makes parts of speech into metaphors of love. His words become “kisses” their bodies “Rhyme” with “echo” and “assonance” he is the “verb” while she is the “noun”. The bed is the “page” on which their “drama” is written. While Anne and William make poetry “romance and drama” together, their guests make prose.

9. Anne Hathaway The language is suggestive and sexual; we can imagine what Anne and Shakespeare were doing as he “dived for pearls” when their “bodies rhymed” and when his touch became “a verb dancing in the centre” of her noun. The description of the guests’ coupling as “dribbling” suggests a less successful erotic encounter. The final rhyming couplet contains a simile as well as a metaphor. Anne holds her husband’s memory in the “casket” of her head as dearly as he held her in bed. A casket contains treasured contents; the memory of him is very precious to her. Significantly, a casket plays an important part in the love story A Merchant of Venice.

10. Anne Hathaway The language of Anne Hathaway is very suggestive and sexual; compare this to one other Duffy poem. Possible poems for comparison: Havisham Salome