Duffy – Anne Hathaway – First Level Analysis
By Liz Allen
Read the following surface-level analysis of ‘Anne Hathway’ and consider how you
might provide a more conceptualised critique that takes into account Duffy’s wider
project.
You should consider:
 Duffy’s feminism
 The context of the poem as part of The World’s Wife
 The role of women in historiography
 The legend of Shakespeare
In her poem entitled 'Anne Hathaway', Carol Ann Duffy adopts the persona of
Shakespeare's widow. The introductory quote from Shakespeare's will 'Item I gyve
unto my wife my second best bed' reminds us that Shakespeare's best bed was
reserved for guests, and that Anne inherited the one that she and her husband slept in.
This bed becomes the focus of the fourteen-line poem.
In the opening two lines, Duffy uses a metaphor to express the magic of the bed in
which Shakespeare made love to Anne: it was 'a spinning world / of forests, castles,
torchlight, clifftops, seas'. More metaphors follow in lines three and four as Anne
Hathaway recalls their lovemaking; she expresses the notion that Shakespeare would
'dive for pearls', and she describes the sweet words he said to her as 'shooting stars'
that landed on her lips when he kissed her.
From line five to line ten Duffy uses imagery in a fascinating way that relates directly
to the fact that Shakespeare was a writer. Anne sees her body as 'a softer rhyme to his
... now assonance', assonance being a figure of speech in which the same vowel sound
is repeated. Then follows the charming personification of his touch, portrayed as 'a
verb dancing in the centre of a noun', giving a feeling of grace and delicacy. Anne
says that she sometimes dreamed that Shakespeare had 'written' her, wishing that she
herself were part of his artistic creation. She metaphorically imagines the bed as 'a
page beneath his writer's hands'. She sees their lovemaking as drama enacted through
'touch', 'scent' and 'taste'.
In lines eleven and twelve a contrast is created to the early magic of the poem in the
description of how the guests, in the best bed, 'dozed on, / dribbling their prose'; no
poetic lovemaking for them! But line twelve then switches to Anne's alliterative
description of Shakespeare as 'My living laughing love'. She tells us in line thirteen
how she treasures her memories of him with the metaphor 'I hold him in .the casket of
my widow's head'. The final line compares this act to the way in which Shakespeare
held Anne so lovingly in that second-best bed. The last two lines are a rhyming
couplet, just as the last two lines of a Shakesperian sonnet would be, ending the poem
with a sense of unity.
Duffy's 'Anne Hathaway' is a poem full of rich imagery, the tale of a woman who
remembers her husband in a wonderful, loving way with no hint of sorrow. It is
beautiful to read and to dwell on the magical pictures that are painted within it.