Anne Hathaway

By Carol Ann Duffy

Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway was Shakespeares 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

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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

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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 Shakespeares plays and poems, and the lovers bodies are likened to parts of speech.

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The poem is written in sonnet form, which is highly appropriate as Shakespeare wrote more than 150 love sonnets. Although Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares did) with a rhyming couplet, emphasising Annes firm

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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

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Just like Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares plays. The variety of settings suggests the rich imagination the couple shared and perhaps the variety of their love-

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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

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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 husbands memory in the casket of her head as dearly as he

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The

language of Anne Hathaway is very suggestive and sexual; compare this to one other Duffy poem.

Possible

poems for comparison: Havisham Salome