The Full Text of “Anne Hathaway”
The Full Text of “Anne Hathaway”
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“Anne Hathaway” Introduction
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Carol Ann Duffy's "Anne Hathaway" first appeared in the British poet's 1999 collection, The World's Wife. As with the other poems in this collection, "Anne Hathaway" imagines the perspective of a female counterpart to a famous male figure—in this case, Anne Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare. In the poem, the widowed Hathaway reflects on the passionate love she shared with her husband, describing their physical intimacy using language typically used to talk about poetry. In doing so, Hathaway presents lovemaking as an artistic, creative act while also emphasizing the enduring power of her husband's writing. The poem isa sonnet (not coincidentally, a form Shakespeare helped popularize), and it riffs on a famous bit of trivia about the couple: Shakespeare bequeathed his "second best bed" to Hathaway in his will. While this might sound like an insult, this probably referred to the couple's marital bed, the "best bed" being set aside for guests.
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“Anne Hathaway” Summary
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The speaker describes the bed in which she and her husband made love as its own revolving world. This world was filled with dramatic, diverse landscapes—from forests and castles to cliffs and oceans, into which the speaker's husband would dive in search of treasure. Her husband's words were bright and forceful like stars shooting across the sky and then falling onto the speaker's lips in the form of kisses. Their bodies were in sync, like a pair of rhyming words, the speaker's body softly echoing her husband's, just as vowels echo each other in the poetic device known as assonance. His touch was like a verb gracefully performing an action upon the speaker, the noun in this sentence. Some nights the speaker would dream that she was one of her husband's plays or poems, as though their marital bed was a blank page upon which he wrote her into existence. Their bed was a stage for both romantic and dramatic performances, acted out using all the senses. The couple's guests slept in the best bed in the house, their drool-filled sleep akin to plain, unpoetic language. The widowed speaker, meanwhile, still holds her vibrant, good-humored husband alive within the metaphorical coffin of her memories, just as he used to hold her in their second-best bed.
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“Anne Hathaway” Themes
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Love and Passion as Art
"Anne Hathaway" celebrates love at its most glorious. Told from the perspective of Shakespeare's widow, Anne Hathaway, the poem presents the couple’s love as filled with physical and emotional passion. To this speaker, love and sexual intimacy can feel as transportive, transformative, and enduring as any work of art.
Fondly recalling her marriage to Shakespeare, Hathaway describes how the lovers delighted in one another's bodies. She calls "the bed we loved in […] a spinning world / of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas / where he would dive for pearls." Their passion was thrilling and even a bit disorienting in its power, making the world itself spin and transporting the lovers to far-off lands.
Not coincidentally, this is also what writing (at least good writing!) does. Furthering the link between sexual passion and art, the speaker’s description of lovemaking frequently alludes to her husband’s literary profession. She calls their nights together "romance and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste." The bed in this metaphor becomes a stage, the couple's nights of lovemaking plays acted out using all the senses.
Also note that the line about diving for pearls above, in addition to being a euphemism for oral sex, is probably an allusion to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest—and specifically to a song about transformation and change. Physical passion, this allusion subtly suggests, is akin to a precious, transformative kind of magic. The speaker even says she’d often dream that her husband had "written me," turning the bed itself into “a page beneath his writer’s hands.” Again, sex is likened to a creative act, a kind of artistic collaboration between the speaker and her husband.
While the couple’s sleeping “guests” may occupy “prose,” the speaker’s passionate love is poetry: a kind of song filled with devices like “assonance” and “rhyme.” Like the delicate balance of sounds in a sonnet (a form Shakespeare used in his own poetry, and the form this poem itself follows), the lovers' bodies complement and echo each other, together creating something beautiful.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-14
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Grief and the Power of Memory
In addition to celebrating the speaker’s passion for her husband, "Anne Hathaway" is also a poem about grief and the way that people may live on in the minds of those who love them. The speaker compares the way her husband “held” her in this bed to the way she now holds him in the metaphorical "casket" of her "widow's head"; though he's dead, her memories allow her to keep a part of her husband alive within herself.
Upon his death, Shakespeare famously left the "second best bed" to his wife in his will (rather than an insult from beyond the grave, this is probably because this was their marital bed; the “best,” meanwhile, was usually set aside for guests). Where others might see this bed as ordinary or mundane object, Hathaway sees a portal into entire worlds constructed by their nights of passion. She spends the poem explaining how the couple would make love in this bed and recalls intimate details of their relationship.
Through these recollections, Hathaway keeps a part of Shakespeare alive. So vivid are her memories that she even dips briefly into the present tense in the poem, the immediacy of "my body now a softer rhyme" and "now echo" reflecting just how close she still feels to Shakespeare. She still senses Shakespeare as a real presence in her life, describing him as her "living laughing love"—perhaps showing how reliving her memories helps her deal with her grief and makes her feel less alone.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-10
- Lines 12-14
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The Enduring Power of Literature
Hathaway’s descriptions of Shakespeare as a lover also suggest Shakespeare’s enduring power as a writer: she compares their passion and intimacy to poetry, implying not simply the power of love but also of language to transport and transform audiences. Beyond honoring passionate love, then, "Anne Hathaway" can also be read as a poem in praise of writing itself.
The poem is brimming with allusions to Shakespeare's work, which ground its celebration of love in a celebration of classic literature:
- The bed Hathaway shared with her husband is a "spinning world," for example—likely a reference to the Globe theater where many of Shakespeare's plays were performed.
- Their lovemaking, meanwhile, transported the couple to "forests, castles [...] cliff-tops, seas / where he would dive for pearls.” These are all settings and images that can be found within Shakespeare’s plays (As You Like It, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest, just to name a few!).
- Hathaway says that Shakespeare's words were so powerful that they were like "shooting stars" landing on her lips, a clear testament to the force of his love and of his writing. She later adds that, during their lovemaking, she felt like he was writing her into existence.
- Even the poem's form references Shakespeare's work: “Anne Hathaway” is a sonnet, the form favored by the man it praises.
All these nods to Shakespeare as a writer imply that both passionate love and literature can be deeply thrilling and stoke the fires of the imagination. Hathaway’s memories further suggest what remains powerful in Shakespeare to readers today: her experience of being swept up in loving sex with him is like readers’ experience of his art. Just like Hathaway would be transported to entirely different worlds through their love, so too are readers of Shakespeare taken to strange and magical places through his plays. And it's in this sense that Shakespeare remains a "living laughing love"—his worlds being created anew through the active engagement of those read, perform, and watch his work.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-12
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Anne Hathaway”
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Before Line 1, Lines 1-3
"Item I gyve ...
... dive for pearls.The poem opens with an epigraph:
Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…
This is a quote taken from William Shakespeare's will, in which the playwright leaves his "second best bed" to his wife. While this sounds like an insult, it probably wasn't: in Shakespeare's day, the "best bed" was usually reserved for visitors and later bequeathed to one's children/heirs. The "second best bed," here, is actually the bed that Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, would have shared!
Using the bed as a kind of launchpad for her fond memories, the widowed Hathaway wastes no time in portraying her marriage as a loving, passionate one:
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
This metaphor depicts the couple's marital bed as an exciting, intensely intimate place—an entire world unto itself, one that revolves on its own axis. (The "spinning world" also probably alludes to the Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed.) Through their lovemaking, the couple was figuratively transported to "forests" and "castles"; to worlds lit up by "torchlight"; to the tops of "cliffs" and even into the ocean. Love and sex, here, are like writing: able to break open the imagination and conjure up entire worlds.
Not coincidentally, all of these locations appear in Shakespeare's plays: readers might think of Elsinore, the royal castle of Hamlet; the idyllic Forest of Arden from As You Like It; the foreboding cliffs of King Lear. Of course, lots of other plays fit the bill here too! Indeed, the asyndeton in the line—that is, the lack of an and—suggests these are just a few imagined places among many. The important point is that the poem establishes a link between passionate love and creative work.
Hathaway also refers to "seas / where [Shakespeare] would dive for pearls." This is, in all likelihood, a sensuous euphemism for oral sex. It's also probably an allusion to The Tempest—more specifically, to a famous song sung by the spirit Ariel:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.This song is about change and transformation, again suggesting that lovemaking, too, can be a transformative act.
Finally, these opening lines establish the poem's meter: Duffy uses a lose iambic pentameter here, meaning there are five iambs (feet with a da-DUM rhythm) per line. The meter isn't perfect—even line 1 has a variation on the third foot ("in was"):
The bed | we loved | in was | a spin- | ning world
Still, the iambic rhythm is pretty clear. Shakespeare famously used iambic pentameter in his own sonnets, and its appearance here thus links the poem to Shakespeare through both its images and its form.
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Lines 3-5
My lover’s words ...
... on these lips; -
Lines 5-7
my body now ...
... of a noun. -
Lines 8-12
Some nights I ...
... dribbling their prose. -
Lines 12-14
My living laughing ...
... next best bed.
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“Anne Hathaway” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
"Anne Hathaway" uses alliteration to add emphasis and lyricism to its language. Alliteration, consonance, and assonance all work together to signal that this is a work of poetry rather than prose. This is an important distinction: Hathaway herself implicitly deems her loving relationship with Shakespeare the stuff of poetry while dismissing the drab, "dribbling [...] prose" of visiting guests. Fittingly, then, moments of alliteration give the poem a kind of electric crackle and spark, hinting at the passionate nature of the couple's relationship.
Take line 2, for example, where the bright, crisp /c/ and /t/ sounds of "castles, torchlight, cliff-tops" make these imagined worlds seem all the more vivid on the page. Later, the flitting /t/ sounds of "touch" and "taste" have a sensuous tenderness to them, perhaps evoking the delicate hands of a lover.
Some of the most striking examples of alliteration occur in the last three lines, ramping up the poem's music and emotion as things come to an end. Hathaway calls Shakespeare her "living laughing love," for example, the triple hit of alliteration adding intensity and drama to this description.
The alliteration in lines 13 and 14 then highlights the chiasmus of the poem's final moments:
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.The two images here ("I hold him," "he held me") mirror each other, reflecting the enduring bond between Hathaway and Shakespeare; just as he held her in life, so she will hold him in death. The poem then closes with a final, powerful punch of alliteration: the bold /b/ sounds (and /eh/ assonance) of "best bed" end things on a memorably musical note.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 2: “castles,” “torchlight,” “cliff-tops”
- Lines 3-4: “words / were”
- Line 10: “touch,” “taste”
- Line 11: “bed,” “best”
- Line 12: “living laughing love”
- Line 13: “hold him,” “head”
- Line 14: “he held,” “best bed”
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Enjambment
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Juxtaposition
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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"Anne Hathaway" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Dive for pearls
- Dozed
- Dribbling
- Casket
- Next Best Bed
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(Location in poem: Line 3: “he would ,” “dive for pearls”)
A euphemism for oral sex, and a possible reference to Ariel's Song from Shakepeare's play The Tempest.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Anne Hathaway”
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Form
"Anne Hathaway" is a riff on the sonnet, a form famously mastered by Shakespeare himself. By writing in the sonnet form, Hathaway pays tribute to her late husband and exhibits his continuing influence over her life.
Sonnets have 14 lines and they're often written about love and passion. In that sense, "Anne Hathaway" falls in line perfectly. But this is a modern sonnet, and it breaks with tradition in terms of its rhyme scheme:
- Shakespearean sonnets feature three quatrains (four-line stanzas) with an alternating rhyme pattern (the first and third lines of each quatrain rhyme, as do the second and fourth).
- A Shakespearean sonnet then ends with a concluding couplet, which usually responds in some way to the previous 12 lines of the poem.
The first chunk of "Anne Hathaway" doesn't fit this form: there aren't any steady quatrains here. And yet, the poem does end with a rhyming couplet:
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.In a way, then, the poem mirrors the sentiment in lines 5 and 6:
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touchIn terms of its form, it's as though this poem is an "echo" of Shakespeare's poetry, just as Hathaway's body was an "echo" of her husband's. That is, it's like a fainter, softer version of his work.
It's also worth noting how the poem uses enjambment and caesura throughout. The end of sentences rarely corresponds to the ends of actual lines of verse, and, as a result, it feels as though the poem is pushing and pulling against its own shape. This, perhaps, subtly mirrors the way that Hathaway and Shakespeare seemed to transcend the formal constraints of their bed, traveling to new worlds through their love.
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Meter
"Anne Hathaway" uses a loose iambic pentameter, the traditional meter of sonnets. All this means is that each line has five iambs, poetic units that feature an unstressed beat followed by a stressed one: da-DUM.
Here's line 10 as an example:
and dra- | ma played | by touch, | by scent, | by taste.
Iambic pentameter, of course, is the classic Shakespearean meter—he uses it throughout his plays and all but one of the sonnets. Here, then, it places the poem in close relationship with Shakespeare's work itself.
The meter isn't perfect, however; Duffy keeps things sounding pretty natural rather than stiffly sticking to iambs throughout. Take line 1:
The bed | we loved | in was | a spin- | ning world
It's possible to scan this differently, but the most natural reading places an unstressed beat on "in," turning that third foot into a pyrrhic (two unstressed beats in a row).
Variations like this keep things from feeling too rigid or predictable.
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Rhyme Scheme
Though it's a sonnet, "Anne Hathaway" doesn't follow a conventional rhyme scheme.
Shakespearean sonnets feature an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG pattern. In other words, the first three quatrains feature an alternating pattern (lines 1 and 3 rhyme with each other, as do lines 2 and 4), while the final two lines create a couplet.
The first four lines of "Anne Hathaway" might look like they're going to follow this pattern, given the slant rhyme between "world" and "words" (lines 1 and 3). But rhymes then disappear until the poem's final couplet:
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.The absence of rhyme up to this point makes this final moment—a clear allusion to the Shakespearean sonnet form—ring out all the more strongly in the end.
Elsewhere, the lack of rhyme perhaps keeps the poem feeling modern and intimate rather than overly controlled. It also might fit with Hathaway's description of her body as "a softer rhyme / to his [Shakespeare's]." The poem is an "echo" of his writing, not an exact copy.
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“Anne Hathaway” Speaker
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As the title suggests, this poem is written from the perspective of Anne Hathaway, William Shakespeare's widow.
Shakespeare, of course, is one of the most famous writers of all time, known for his masterful use of the English language across both plays and poems. But while readers have undoubtedly heard of Shakespeare, most probably know little, if anything, about his wife. This poem doesn't delve too far into her actual life, instead imagining her perspective on her husband's death. Using Hathaway's voice here allows the reader to consider Shakespeare as a person and not just as a poet/playwright—that is, to see the man behind the myth.
Hathaway has nothing but good things to say about Shakespeare in this poem, and she joyously recalls the nights they spend together in their "second best bed" (their marital bed). Hathaway appears passionate, loving, and admiring of her husband's skills as both a writer and a lover.
Indeed, the Hathaway of this poem clearly has immense respect for Shakespeare's talents, drawing on writing-related metaphors to illustrate the beauty and passion of their lovemaking. She states at the poem's end that she preserves her husband within the coffin of her own mind, holding onto his memory just as he once "held" her in their bed.
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“Anne Hathaway” Setting
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The poem takes place sometime after the death of Renaissance poet and playwright William Shakespeare, who died in 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon. This was the town he called home when he wasn't working in London.
The poem imagines Shakespeare's widow, Anne Hathaway, reflecting on her physical relationship with her husband, perhaps in their shared home after learning that he'd left her their "second best bed"—that is, their marital bed—in his will. This humble setting sharply contrasts with the diverse landscapes that the speaker says she and her husband traveled to while making love: "forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas." This contrast speaks to the power and passion of their love, which was able to metaphorically transport the couple around the world.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Anne Hathaway”
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Literary Context
Carol Ann Duffy is among the most acclaimed and high-profile poets in the contemporary UK. Born in Scotland in 1955, she became the UK's first female poet laureate in 2009 and served in the position for the next 10 years.
“Anne Hathaway” was published in Duffy's fifth poetry collection, The World’s Wife (1999). In this collection, Duffy writes from the viewpoints of the wives, sisters, and female contemporaries of famous and infamous men. Some of her characters include Mrs. Pilate, Queen Kong, Mrs. Sisyphus, Frau Freud, Circe, Elvis’s Twin Sister, and Pygmalion’s Bride. In witty, conversational language, The World’s Wife subverts traditional male perspectives, examining instead the ways that women's stories have been ignored or overlooked.
Duffy was deeply influenced by Sylvia Plath, whose Collected Works she received for her 25th birthday. She would go on to edit an edition of Plath’s poems, and to write a piece for The Guardian about how Plath's work, with its revolutionary interest in women's internal lives, blazed a trail Duffy would follow in her own poetry.
William Shakespeare, of course, needs little introduction. The famous Renaissance author is perhaps best known for his many plays (including works subtly alluded to here, such as The Tempest and Hamlet), but Shakespeare's sonnets have also become some of the most widely read and popular poems in the English language. The sonnet form itself was popularized in the 14th century by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch, who wrote many sonnets about unrequited love. Many of the sonnets written in the next 400 years were, in some way or another, also about love, and Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets is no exception.
Historical Context
Duffy was born in Scotland in 1955 and came of age during second-wave feminism. While early feminism had been focused primarily on securing women's right to vote, second-wave feminism addressed a wider range of issues including reproductive rights, domestic violence, workplace equality, and more. Second-wave feminism was responding to many of the restrictive gender norms of the mid-20th century, including the idea that women's purpose in life was to become demure mothers and wives.
Of course, the poem itself has little to suggest the period in which it was written. Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare's real-life wife, and the poem is spoken from her perspective after his death, effectively situating it between 1616 and 1623. Hathaway was a little older than Shakespeare; they were 26 and 18, respectively, when they married. Not much is known about Hathaway's personality nor about the relationship between her and Shakespeare (though this poem speculates that they were a loving and tight-knit couple).
Shakespeare really did leave the "second best bed" to Hathaway in his will. There was no actual mention of the "best bed," and scholars have debated Shakespeare's logic. Some see it as a slight, while others (including Duffy in this poem) take the view that the second best bed was in fact the bed that a couple shared.
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More “Anne Hathaway” Resources
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External Resources
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Duffy's Influence — Read an article by novelist Jeanette Winterson in which she discusses Duffy's poetry, focusing on Duffy's belief that poetry should be a pleasure.
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Biography of Carol Ann Duffy — Learn more about Duffy's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
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Duffy on the Power of Poetry — Read an article about Duffy's recent Pandemic Poetry project, in which she discusses how poetry can help people through troubling times.
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Anne Hathaway's Story — Learn more about Shakespeare's wife.
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Shakespeare's Will — Check out a scan, transcription, and analysis of Shakespeare's will.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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