Anne Hathaway
Carol Ann Duffy, The World’s Wife (1999)
Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, 1950s
Simone de Beauvoir
& Jean-Paul Sartre
1940’s
F. Scott & Zelda
Fitzgerald, 1930s
Vivienne Eliot, 1921
James Joyce & Nora Barnacle, 1931
Leo & Sonya
Tolstoy, 1890’s
Anne Hathaway
‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'
(from Shakespeare's will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.
Anne Hathaway
1555/56 – 6 August 1623
?
Drawing of Anne Hathaway by Sir Nathaniel Curzon, 1708
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.
Markup key:
prosodic devices
enjambment
euphemism
asyndeton
enumeration
metaphor
juxtaposition
allusion
language references
Form:
• English / Shakespearean sonnet
– 14 lines
– iambic pentameter (increasingly less regular as the poem
progresses)
– ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme is only very loosely
followed
– masculine vs. feminine rhyme: the former is blunt, strong,
obvious, at words’ end (“head” / “bed”); the latter is soft,
complex, delicate, sometimes assonance (“body” / “now”)
• Volta occurs in the rhyming couplet
• Enjambment in nearly every line
Literal meaning:
Shakespeare’s widow, Anne
Hathaway, describes the unique,
amazing and deeply poetic sex
life that she and Shakespeare
enjoyed in their second-best bed.
Figurative meaning:
Hathaway counters the assumption that Shakespeare slighted her
by leaving her his second-best bed in his will, using literary
devices to demonstrate how passionate and out-of-the-ordinary
their romance was, and also to blur the line between life and art.
Symbolism:
The bed
shared by
Shakespeare
and
Hathaway
here becomes
a potent
symbol for
love, passion
and loss.
Allusion:
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“forests”: As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“castles”: Macbeth, Hamlet
“torchlight”: Romeo and Juliet
“clifftops”: Hamlet
“seas”: The Tempest
“dive for pearls”: The Tempest
“the second-best bed”: Shakespeare’s will
Euphemism:
“The bed we loved in”
“we would
dive for
pearls”
Metaphor [1]:
• “The bed we loved in was a
spinning world / of forests,
castles, torchlight, clifftops,
seas”
• My lover's words / were
shooting stars which fell
to earth as kisses / on
these lips”
Metaphor [2]:
• “my body now
a softer rhyme
/ to his, now
echo,
assonance”
• “his touch / a
verb dancing in
the centre of a
noun.”
Metaphor [3]:
• “Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me”
• “the bed a page beneath his writer's hands.”
• “our guests
dozed on, /
dribbling their
prose.”
• “the casket of
my widow's head”
Juxtaposition:
• “In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, /
dribbling their prose.”
• “I hold him / he held me”
Prosodic devices:
• W:
“where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words / were”
• S:
“shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses / on these lips”
• O:
“body now a softer rhyme / . . . echo, assonance; his touch”
• D: “dozed on, / dribbling their prose.”
• L: “My living laughing love”
Language references:
• “My lover's words”
• “my body now a softer rhyme /
to his, now echo, assonance;”
• “his touch / a verb dancing in
the centre of a noun.”
• “I dreamed he'd written me”
• “the bed / a page beneath his
writer's hands.”
• “Romance / and drama played
by touch, by scent, by taste.”
• “dribbling their prose.”
Discussion questions:
• Based on what you know of his plays and sonnets, do you
imagine William Shakespeare to have been a passionate
and alluring man?
• How does this poem relate to “Little Red Cap” in terms
of its association of language with love / sensuality?
• Do you believe that a writer’s sensitivity to love and other
emotions in his or her work is likely to be indicative of
personal sensitivity?
Websites consulted
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AnneHathaway_CUL_Page4DetailB.jpg
http://www.bardweb.net/content/ac/hathaway.html
http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivia/facts/facts.htm
http://www.topix.com/album/detail/oak-forest-il/LDUNN24R6H2F2FQ9
http://vi.sualize.us/193_365_this_is_just_to_say_cakeys_words_pography_body_plums_picture_28k8.html
http://inkpression.blogspot.com/2011/04/bed-book.html
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/stothard-shakespearean-characters-n01830
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DennisJerz/EL267/014367.php
http://www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/gcse/carol-ann-duffy/michael-woods-on-carol-ann-duffy/anne-hathaway
http://www.thetutorpages.com/tutor-article/gcse-english/studying-anne-hathaway-by-carol-ann-duffy/2692
http://shakespearesolved.blogspot.com/2013_01_01_archive.html
http://www.jewelsdujour.com/2013/06/the-rising-star-of-natural-pearls/
http://www.bedsexplorer.com/2010/08/09/fantasy-tree-bed/
http://shugarlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/craig-and-rain-love.jpg
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/03/26/new-books-highlight-the-mystery-of-zelda-fitzgerald/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivienne_Haigh-Wood_Eliot
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/15/joyces-dublin-city-of-dreamers
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=24572
http://www.moonmentum.com/blog/codex/multimedia/simone-ernestine-lucie-marie-bertrand-de-beauvoir