Download Ann Hathaway - Deans Community High School

By Carol Ann Duffy
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What is it about? (Content)
What themes are covered?
What tone does the poem have?
What literary devices have been used?
How effective is the poem for the reader?
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What is it about? A woman who reflects on the
love shared between her and her late husband
What themes are covered? Love, romance,
dreams
What tone does the poem have? Soft, loving,
reflective
What literary devices have been used?
Enjambment, metaphor, caesura, rhyming
couplet, simile, sensory imagery
1.
Referring to the section “The bed…” to “…these lips”
(lines 1-5), show how the poet creates a sense of joy
and happiness. (4 marks)
2.
In lines 5-10, there are many references to writing
poetry and plays. Choose any two examples of this
and explain in detail how each one adds to your
understanding of the speaker’s feelings. (4 marks)
3.
Look closely at the last four lines (lines 11-14).
a)
b)
How does the poet make clear how different the guests
are from the speaker and her lover? (2 marks)
What feelings does the speaker show for her lover at the
end of the poem? (2 marks)
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'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.
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Shakespeare’s neglected wife
The only sonnet in ‘The World’s Wife’
Mirror of Shakespeare’s Sonnets with beautiful,
romantic imagery which questions the
perceptions of Hathaway and the idea that it
was the ‘second best bed’ that Shakespeare left
to her in his will
Intimacies between Hathaway and
Shakespeare made clear in the poem
Questions what happens in relationships
behind closed doors
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The word sonnet comes from the mid-sixteenth
century Italian sonetto meaning ‘little sound’ or
‘song’.
Traditional sonnets consist of 14 lines and are
written in iambic pentameter and are either
Shakespearean or Petrarchan. The Shakespearean
sonnet has an abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme (3
quatrains and then a rhyming couplet)
In Anne Hathaway the theme of the poem, love, is
ideal for the sonnet form. Indeed, Duffy could
hardly have chosen another form, since it
celebrates the relationship between Shakespeare,
whose collection of sonnets contains some of the
greatest love poems, and his wife.
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This poem is a celebration of Anne Hathaway’s
love for her dead husband, spoken through her,
and in her own name. The quotation at the start of
the poem is an epigraph from Shakespeare’s will,
in which he leaves his wife his second best bed.
This has proved a curiosity over the years, and
scholars have puzzled over its meaning. Duffy
takes the view, as many do, that the custom at the
time was to reserve the best bed for guests. In the
poem the bed becomes a metaphor for marital
love. It is the place where Anne Hathaway’s
intimate thoughts and past experiences are played
out against the memory of Shakespeare’s
creativity.
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The ‘spinning world’ of the first line that she
inhabits in her mind is the world of
Shakespeare and all its abundance. The
landscape in the second line is from the forests
of Arden and the world of ‘A Midsummer
Night’s Dream’ and ‘As You Like it’; the
battlements of Elsinore in ‘Hamlet’ and the seas
of ‘The Tempest’, where he would ‘dive for
pearls’: a metaphor for sex.
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The poem is articulate and lyrical
Full of traditional poetic techniques- metaphor,
alliteration and assonance etc
Shakespeare lies in the ‘casket of my widow’s
head’ at the end of the poem. As a casket is a
strongbox it could be said that he is kept
immortal in his wife’s imagination, through his
own creative genius and in the celebration of
this poem
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Pick out 3 examples of metaphor in the poem
and fully analyse them. Remember that you
should be explaining the literal meaning of the
metaphor (denotation) before telling me what
the connotations of it are and why it is
effective.
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This metaphor represents the depth of their love and
the fact that their marriage was full of joy. By
comparing the bed to a ‘spinning world’ we are given
the impression that Hathaway and Shakespeare’s
marriage was full of the creativity that he expressed in
his writing. It allows us an insight into their
conversations and makes us imagine that Shakespeare
discussed the characters and plot of his plays with his
wife. The word ‘spinning’ suggests movement and we
are left with the impression that Shakespeare worked
quickly and was full of ideas. ‘world’ implies that they
discussed everything and that nothing was off limits.
This is effective as it opens the poem by telling us that
their marriage was a happy one, setting the tone.
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Throughout this poem there are a number of poetic/ literary
techniques used which you might not be used to. Copy down the
meanings below and make sure that you understand their use
within the poem.
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Oxymoron- when two contradictory words or phrases are placed
next to each other for effect
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Caesura- a strong pause in a line, often found next to enjambment
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Enjambment- when a sentence in poetry travels onto the next line
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Sibilant ‘s’ - creation of a hissing sound
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Olfactory senses- contributing to the sense of smell
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Assonance- the repetition of a vowel sound (often in the middle of
words) – contrast to alliteration which is the repetition of a
consonant sound (usually at the start of a word)
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Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare’s wife. He
married her in 1582 and they had three children,
Susanna, the eldest, and twins, Hamnet and Judith.
Hamnet sadly died when he was twelve.
Although Anne was older than Shakespeare, she
outlived him, and famously, he left her his ‘second
best bed’ in his will. Shakespeare worked in
London, but it is clear that he made regular visits
to his home in Stratford-on-Avon and both his
house and Anne Hathaway’s cottage can still be
seen. It is likely that the second best bed was the
one which he shared with his wife, while the best
bed was kept for visitors, and this is the idea that
Duffy explores in her poem.
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As well as plays, Shakespeare wrote a large
number of sonnets, mostly about love, and it is
this form that is used here, to give Anne
Hathaway a voice. The poem is written in
iambic pentameter, Shakespeare’s rhythm, and
ends with a rhyming couplet, as do all his
sonnets. Again, like William’s sonnets, this
uses an extended metaphor to compare their
nights together to Anne’s husband’s wonderful
writing and to celebrate his achievements both
as a writer and a lover.
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The first two lines are a tribute to Shakespeare’s
imagination, where the bed becomes the whole
world, encompassing
forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where he would dive for pearls
suggesting not only the varied settings of
Shakespeare’s plays, but also areas of sexual
pleasure. His words are shooting stars which light
up the universe, but which for Anne fell to earth as
kisses / on these lips. The rest of the world may have
the benefit of the words, but it is she who has the
love.
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The rhythms of their lovemaking are described in
literary terminology, where her response to his
movements becomes
a softer rhyme / to his, now echo, assonance, revealing the
way she follows or repeats
what he does. it is not hard to guess what is referred to
as
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun
when we remember that a verb is active and his verb is
inside her noun.
Her occasional dreams make her feel like a character
from one of Shakespeare’s plays – as though he has
created her and given her life in the bed, which is
compared to a page where he uses his writer’s hands.
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The idea of vivid experience is continued through
the use of the senses, and the extension of the idea
of the page/bed
Romance / and drama played by touch, by scent, by
taste.
Lovemaking as romance and drama is conveyed
sensually to the reader through the imagination of
what is involved in the touch, scent and taste. It
may also recall to the reader their knowledge of
Shakespeare’s writing about love, in the sonnets or
in plays [most famously ‘Romeo and Juliet’], which
could suggest that he knows a good deal about the
subject.
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The wonderful experiences that Anne Hathaway has
are contrasted with those of the guests
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on / dribbling
their prose
where the language of love is ‘dribbled prose’ rather
than the ‘shooting stars’ of drama and poetry.
Anne’s final couplet is about remembrance. She
compares her widow’s head to a casket. Normally this
would hold the ashes of a dead person, but Anne’s
memories of Will are of a living laughing love , the
alliteration pointing up the reality of her recollection,
and of their time together
as he held me upon that next best bed.
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Duffy connects the two ideas through the rhyming
of head / bed and through the repetition of I hold him
/ he held me.
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This is one of the most celebratory poems in the
collection, where Duffy imagines Shakespeare as
an artist both in words and in lovemaking; where
the two are intimately woven together so that
making love through words and language is
brought vividly to life. She also uses
Shakespeare’s technique of comparing love, or a
lover, to something greater in time or the natural
world, and finishing on a note of remembrance.
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SONNET XVIII
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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare
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Anne Hathaway
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Anne Hathaway (1556-1623) was a real woman famous for being the wife of William Shakespeare.
(We do know some things about her - she was nine
years older than her husband, but outlived him by
seven years. They married in 1582, when Anne
was already pregnant, and had three children
together. Although Shakespeare spent many years
working in London, he made frequent visits to
their home in Stratford-upon-Avon.)
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In the poem Anne sees her relationship with
Shakespeare in terms of his own writing. She uses the
sonnet form (though she does not follow all the
conventions of rhyme or metre) which Shakespeare
favoured. She suggests that as lovers they were as
inventive as Shakespeare was in his dramatic poetry and their bed might contain “forests, castles,
torchlight”, “clifftops” and “seas where he would dive
for pearls”. These images are very obviously erotic,
and Ms. Duffy no doubt expects the reader to interpret
them in a sexual sense. Where Shakespeare's words
were” shooting stars” (blazing in glory across the sky)
for her there was the more down-to-earth consequence
of “kisses/on these lips”.
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She also finds in the dramatist's technique of
“rhyme...echo...assonance” a metaphor for his physical
contact - a “verb” (action) which danced in the centre
of her “noun”. Though the best bed was reserved for
the guests, they only dribbled “prose” (inferior
pleasure) while she and her lover, on the second best
bed enjoyed the best of “Romance/and drama”. The
language here has obvious connotations of sexual
intercourse - we can guess what his verb and her noun
are and what the one is doing in the other, while the
guests' “dribbling” suggests a less successful erotic
encounter.
Does this poem change the way you think of William
Shakespeare?
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The poem relies on double meanings very like
those we find in Shakespeare's own work. It gives
a voice to someone of whom history has recorded
little. The language is strictly too modern to be
spoken by the historical Anne Hathaway
(especially the word order and the meanings) but
the lexicon (vocabulary) is not obviously
anachronistic - that is, most of the words here
could have been spoken by the real Anne
Hathaway, though not quite with these meanings
and probably not in this order.
Questions
1.
What does this poem say about the nature of
imagination?
2.
Explain, in your own words, how the central
image of the “second best
bed” works in the
poem.
3.
How well does the poet adapt the sonnet form
here?
4.
In what ways does this poem appeal to the
senses?
5.
Is this poem more about Anne or her husband,
or is it about them both, as a couple?