‘Anne Hathaway’

Carol Ann Duffy

Overview

This poem, like ‘Mrs Midas’, comes from ‘The World’s Wife’, Duffy’s first themed collection of poems. In this set of poems, Duffy considers both real and fictional characters, stories, histories and myths that focus on men, and gives voice to the women associated with them.

In this collection, Duffy writes a number of dramatic monologues from the perspective of women who have been traditionally silenced in history, mythology and fiction. A dramatic monologue is a poem that is spoken by a character. The monologues are essentially giving a voice back to these women, and at the same time allowing us to see the men in their lives from a different view point. The poem portrays both genders are equal in the relationship. The enjambment of "I held him" and "he held me" portrays how both are equivocal to each other and a sense of equality is restored.

Although ‘Havisham' was published a year earlier, it makes a good comparison with this poem since both take the perspective of a woman living without her lover - Havisham having been jilted at the altar, while Hathaway has been widowed.

Anne Hathaway

• Born 1555/56 – Died 6th of August 1623

• Married William Shakespeare in November 1582.

• She was already pregnant with their first child.

• She was 7 years older than Shakespeare who was 18 when they married.

• Like ‘Mrs Midas’, this poem gives voice to and empowers the female figures from the narrative of our past.

Sonnet Form

14 lines. Often associated with the theme of love.

A Shakespearean Sonnet consists of 3 quatrains with a set rhyming scheme and a rhyming couplet at the end. The quatrains usually present the key ideas explored by the poet with the resolution or 'volta' (an Italian term which literally translates as: the turn) arriving in the couplet.

In the poem, Duffy employs a softer rhyme with a much more relaxed, less restrictive rhyme scheme, combined with overtly sensual, erotic language and imagery. She uses a regular meter but her deliberate choices of assonance and alliteration are designed to imitate the lovers’ caresses, so that it is almost as though the words themselves are grazing each other.

Shakespeare wrote sonnets of iambic pentameter but with a much more disciplined structure. Duffy’s choice to subvert the form of the sonnet emphasises that these are the words of his wife and represent her own insight into her husband, an insight that cannot be shared or replicated by anyone else.

Metaphor

The full poem is a metaphor for their love and passion. The narrator compares their love and sexual relationship to poetry and the art of writing, suggesting that their love is deeper and more meaningful than many critics assumed.

Enjambment and unusual rhyming scheme

Very few of these lines end with a full stop and the rhyme of this sonnet is not as restricted as a traditional sonnet. This is to mirror the sensuality, fluidity and freedom of their love. The lines tend to end mid sentence but on the most seductive and passionate words.

Techniques which are used throughout …

‘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 he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses

The poem begins with an epigraph taken directly from Shakespeare’s will. While some critics have viewed this as an insult, Duffy presents a new perspective, using the bed as a metaphor for the intense passion and romance shared by the couple. The second best bed was in fact the couple’s marital bed, while the best was reserved for guests.

Duffy imagines, then, that this legacy was the playwright’s last romantic gesture Theirs was a marriage of equality. He left her his second best bed because it was the one in which they had enacted in a very real sense the drama of their relationship. Duffy uses her poem then to try and challenge the stereotypical assumptions about Shakespeare’s wife. She reimagines the gift of the second best bed, not as a petty demonstration of marital discontent, but as the place where husband and wife experienced their most romantic and intimate moments.

Much of the imagery in this poem is sexual and allows us to see the relationship between husband and wife as one that is both spiritually and physically fulfilling. She creates a fantasy landscape where Shakespeare’s writing and his love for Anne are intertwined. The idea of a bed being a ‘spinning world’ is striking: Duffy neatly presents the bed as a microcosmic centre of an imaginative, expansive universe ‘of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas’ alluding perhaps to S’s plays ‘As You Like It’, ‘Macbeth’ etc. = a link between these iconic works of literature and the poetry their love created (both literally and metaphorically.)

Fairy-tale/mystical/magical scene/imagery creates the intensity of their love/connection. ‘Spinning’ suggests how intoxicating/all-consuming their love was – almost as if when together, they were transported off to/created some other world together. Long listof images here exemplifies this too – intense, never ceasing etc.

Use of ‘we’ suggests equality in relationship and their mutual, shared love – both felt the same powerful emotions.

D focuses on the intimacy between the couple. Euphemism/metaphor of ‘diving for pearls.’ ‘Pearls’ = precious jewels which suggests his deep love/desire for her.

Lines are only loosely joined together through assonance, for example “world” and “words”. Softly and subtly joined together, as if to echo their tenderness.

Use of half-rhyme confirms this is a more relaxed version of the Sonnet and echoes how their relationship was easy and not the difficult one it was made out to be after his will was released etc.

Describing her husband as a ‘lover’ again suggests their physical relationship was vital and exciting. This is given further emphasis by the words ‘spinning’, ‘shooting’, ‘dancing’ and ‘laughing’.

‘My’ conveys sense of pride and possession

In their relationship, the couple found something precious and valuable, as implied by the pearls. This intimate, sensual tone is continued in the metaphor comparing her lover’s words to shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses.

Hathaway was seduced by her lover’s language and poetry, which literally seems to fall from the heavens as though a gift from the gods before transforming into the physical touch of a kiss. In this opening quatrain then, Duffy clearly illustrates the intensity of the romantic, passionate relationship of the two lovers.

Sibilance. The ‘s’ sound is soft and seductive just like Shakespeare and his writing. Could also represent fireworks to suggest the passion in their marriage.

on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, assonance; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun.Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed

Hathaway states that her lover’s words ‘echo’ as ‘assonance’ in her head. The words ‘on’, ‘body’, ‘softer’, ‘to’, ‘echo’, ‘assonance’, ‘touch’ and ‘noun’ are all linked by assonance; the ‘o’ sound does indeed echo through the lines as a softer rhyme. Alludes to sexual gratification?

Continuing the language metaphor. Suggesting that she is feminine while Shakespeare was masculine. She was powerless to his touch. Enjambment. She finds his touch exciting and erotic. “dancing” = his touch – moving, unpredictable, exciting. A verb = vital to a sentence and here it is imbedded in the noun – can’t function without each other. The line also alerts us to one of Shakespeare’s most famous means of energising language; he would often turn nouns into verbs. They also complete one another – allusion to sex.

In keeping with the expression of a separate identity, Anne Hathaway is presented as someone who is able to use words in an impressively poetic way. In this sense her personality rhymes with her husband’s. She refers to her body being a ‘softer rhyme’ to Shakespeare. This deliberate comparison elevates their love to something poetic and, in doing so, literary terms become loaded with sensuality.

Here, Duffy is subtly relating the poetic techniques of masculine rhyme and feminine rhyme to the actual lives of two people who could hardly be separated from art: ‘kisses’ at the end of line 4 is a feminine ending; ‘touch’ is a masculine one.

Anne imagines too that, like the characters in his plays, Shakespeare has 'written her', suggesting that it is only when she regards herself through his eyes and imagination that she feels fully alive.

Also suggests that she barely recognises herself as a separate being anymore – it’s like a dream/feels so far removed from who she used to be without him as he is such an integral pat of her life/being. Use of ‘now’ suggests life/r.ship with S. was vibrant/intoxicating.

The reference again to the bed at the end of line eight creates a link to the opening line of the poem and reinforces the symbolic significance of the bed as a representation of their love.

The imagery of imagination and words continues into the second half of the poem but with a less exotic, more muted expression. This is fitting as the poem makes the transition from physical and imaginative vitality to the revelation of the idea behind the second best bed and finally to the expression of loss and grief.

Her dreaming continues the motif of imagination which ends the poem with his continued life in her memory, and begins the notion of sleep which ends finally in death.

a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand 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 –

The enjambment from line eight continues the extended metaphor from the previous quatrain (bed is compared to the parchment on which the passion and excitement so associated with the playwright was written.)

All the romance and drama contained in these pages was played out or begun on their bed, and again Duffy implies that the inspiration for his characters and plots came from their love where S’s creativity was then actualised and brought to existence in his work.

The word ‘romance’ is deliberately placed at the end of the line to emphasise that this is what she most associates with their relationship. The senses touch, scent, and taste are employed to reinforce just how vividly she can still recall their relationship, as though through immersing herself in these memories she can experience this passion once more.

In a marked contrast, she compares the poetry and sensuality of their r.ship with those who slept in the other bed. In a withering, disparaging comment she asserts that they are only capable of dribbling their prose.

The implication is clear - poetry (and their r.ship by extension) symbolises the most skilful and creative use of language while prose (relationships of others) by comparison is ordinary, utilitarian and unexceptional. Parenthesis of ‘the best’ is her mocking those who suggest the bed she was left was inferior, when in the supposedly ‘best’ bed it is devoid of passion etc.

At the end of this quatrain, Duffy employs elongated alliteration in the phrase ‘living laughing love’ to emphasise again how vividly and clearly the speaker can recall their passion, suggesting that her lover continues in some ways to exist and survive in her memory.

The dash creates a pause to allow us to reflect on this idea and prepare us for the resolution and the final couplet. = a dramatic pause to stress the contrast between the vitality of their living relationship to the realisation that he now can only live on in her mind.

I hold him in the casket of my widow’s headas he held me upon that next best bed.

The final couplet ends with the masculine full rhyme of ‘head’ and ‘bed’ to provide a defined conclusion to the poem and their relationship – only through death would they part (contrary to public’s view.) Final rhyme is plosive and harsh and definite just like the end of their marriage, through his death and the pain/agony this would have caused.

Continued tenderness for him mirrors their tenderness with one another in life: ‘I hold him as he held me.’

Simile – She felt secure in his hold and he held her tightly as she promises to do to his memory now.

The metaphor of holding her lover in the protective casket of her imagination reiterates the idea presented in the previous line that, in our way, our memory of a deceased loved one allows their continued existence.

Duffy seems to suggest that this is much more fitting than an urn or coffin which, although they may contain the physical remnants of a body, can never capture the energy or vitality of the person's character. By remembering her husband, and replaying her memories of their passion, the speaker is really honouring his true legacy and repaying him for the way that he held her in ‘that next best bed.’

It is fitting that Anne Hathaway writes in the form that her husband so famously used. This in itself is an act of homage and, possibly, a means of keeping him alive. Shakespeare’s famous sonnet 18 concludes with ‘So long lives this and this gives life to thee’, which voices the commonly held view that humans might die but a work of art can last forever, effectively immortalising its subject.

Themes

• passion • sensual erotic love • death and remembrance

In the poem, Duffy concentrates on conveying that this was a marriage based on an all - encompassing, deeply physical relationship. She uses the physical legacy of the bed left by Shakespeare to his wife to meditate on this specific aspect of their relationship. In doing so, she presents a couple completely in tune with each other both sexually and emotionally.

Fittingly, in a poem about the world’s greatest ever poet and wordsmith, she uses language itself as an extended metaphor to convey the intensity of their passion. As well as emphasising the profound physical connection of the lovers, Duffy also considers that the most fitting way to honour our dead loved ones is by preserving the most enduring, vivid aspects of their character in our memories, thus allowing them to continue to survive.

• ‘Havisham’ - both tell the story of a woman’s life after love/a relationship.

• ‘Mrs Midas’ – Both have a famous spouse and are described from the woman’s perspective.

• Valentine – Unusual perspective of poet on a topic (Love.)

• ‘Originally’ and ‘War Photographer’ – looking back/reflecting on past experiences to understand who you now are or how you have reached this point.

• Use your grid to track the similarities and differences of the poems we have already studied.

Links with other poems