Treasured possessions

• The poem is about an item that Shakespeare leaves his wife in his Last Will and Testament after his death.

• Why would you give your wife the ‘second best bed’? Who would sleep in the best bed?

Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …

Euphemisms

• ‘Anne Hathaway’ uses a lot of euphemisms.• A euphemism is a way of

describing something without using direct, or taboo language.• Euphemisms are used in this

poem to describe sex.

Metaphors

• A metaphor is a comparison where you say that something is something else. • ‘Anne Hathaway’ uses an extended metaphor, where one comparison

is developed throughout the poem.• The extended metaphor in this poem is the comparison of

Shakespeare’s writing to the sexual intercourse between Shakespeare and his wife.

The extended metaphor …

• The idea is that together, Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare make poetry as they make love, whereas the guests in the best bed can only hope to “dribble” prose, an inferior and less sensuous style of writing, in comparison to the poetry created in the second best bed.

What emotions do you think are expressed in the poem?

Anne Hathaway

‘Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed...’Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed...’

(from Shakespeare’s will)It was customary in Shakespeare’s time to give up the best bed in the house for guests. In this poem, Anne inherits the bed that she and her husband slept in. This bed is the focus of the poem.

It is a widespread belief amongst scholars that Shakespeare and his wife were estranged and that leaving her his ‘second best bed’ in his will was intended as a snub. In this poem, Duffy takes a different view.

The fact that she is addressed by her own name and not Mrs Shakespeare empowers her and suggests an equal partnership.

What does the poem say about the bed?

The bed we loved in was a spinning world

of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops,

This is how she remembers it, rather than the ‘second best bed’.

She feels that he took her to romantic, exciting places – like being in a fairy tale.

The word choice of ‘world’ illustrates how her experiences with Shakespeare were everything to her.

This metaphor creates a striking image: their bed was the centre of a magical, universe.

Settings from Shakespeare’s plays. The variety of settings suggests the rich imagination that the two shared.

seas

where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words

were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses

on these lips;

She sees their love as a hidden treasure. An erotic image

of oral sex.

This image suggests that their love was something rare and magical.

Her description of him as ‘lover’ suggests that their physical relationship was vital and exciting.

‘My’ gives a sense of pride and possession.

my body now a softer rhyme

to his, now echo, assonance; his touch

a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

Here, she sees their love as one of Shakespeare’s plays. A clear link is made between Shakespeare’s skill as a writer and his skills as a lover.

Their bodies fit together like a rhyming couplet.

This image of his touch gives a feeling of grace and delicacy. There is an unmistakeable sexual meaning to this too.

Indeed, there is a lot of assonance running through the poem (of the ‘o’ sound). This creates a soft rhythm.

Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed

a page beneath his writer’s hands.

She feels they existed in his imagination: their life was a fantasy.

Is she dreaming/wishing that she was part of his artistic creation?

Comparison between sheets and paper: blank to allow creation.

Romance

and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.

The word ‘drama’ makes reference to Shakespeare’s plays as well as to love. The word ‘Romance’ reinforces that their love was vital, not stale.

Erotic idea of sensory exploration.The words ‘Romance’ and ‘drama’ also suggest that their relationship is exciting and adventurous. The connotations of both words evoke feelings of passion.

In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,

dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –

Other people speak in boring prose: not beautiful poetry like Shakespeare. Here, prose is seen as inferior: lacking.

The light alliteration of these lines shows that she is celebrating the life they had together, not mourning his death.

The idea of contrast: ‘dozed’ and ‘dribbling’ create the image of a dull, laborious relationship and unskilful lovers.

Word choice of ‘living’ suggests that his memory lives on, and ‘my … love’ gives the impression that he is her only love.

I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head

as he held me upon that next best bed.

She felt safe and secure with him.

This seems ironic now: it isn’t second-best to Anne.

A ‘casket’ contains treasured contents: the memory of him is very precious to her.

This final rhyming couplet ends the poem with a sense of unity.

Having presented several very sexual images, Duffy leaves us with the picture of them holding each other suggesting that their relationship involved much more than just sex

Poetic Form: The Sonnet

• Like many of Shakespeare’s own poems, ‘Anne Hathaway’ is a sonnet.• A Shakespearean sonnet is 14 lines long and follows the rhyme scheme ABAB

CDCD EFEF GG.• Duffy keeps the rhyming couplet at the end, but otherwise her lines are only

loosely joined together through assonance, for example “world” and “words”. • The sonnet is an appropriate form for this poem as it functions as an homage

(Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets), and also perhaps as a means of keeping Shakespeare alive.

Language• The poem is written in the first-person from the point of view of the

newly widowed Anne. She remembers her husband with great love.• Just like many of the works of Shakespeare, the poem is filled with

metaphors.• There is a great deal of word play in the poem. Look at all of the

ways in which parts of speech become metaphors of love.• The language is suggestive and sexual.

• Does the language of the poem suggest that Anne, too, had a talent for writing poetry? Did making love with Anne inspire Shakespeare’s writing? Did Anne absorb her husband’s talent with words?

‘Anne Hathaway’ can be compared to the poem ‘Havisham’, also by Carol Ann Duffy.

Both poems have a female persona who has lost a man. The contrast between these poems is that ‘Anne Hathaway’ tells us about losing a loved one and remembering the good times they had together, whereas in ‘Havisham’, the persona is telling of her hate for the man who left her.

Also compare to ‘Valentine’ – both use extended metaphors to describe love using unusual objects