Transcript Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway
LO: to understand the poem using
TSLAP
Anne Hathaway- Background
• Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare’s wife. 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.
• Anne has been portrayed in literature as many things over
the years since her death in 1623. There has been a
particular trend since the 1900s to view her as an
adulteress, a cradle-snatcher (Shakespeare was 18 when
they married, she, 26) and as a frigid shrew.
Anne Hathaway
• In his will, Shakespeare left her the “second best bed” and
many see this as either punishment for her adultery or as an
insult because he was forced into marriage after she fell
pregnant.
• However, Carol Ann Duffy does not agree. She sees
Shakespeare as funny, playful and sexy. Duffy thinks the bed
means something special to the couple as it represented the
physical love in their relationship. It was also customary for
guests to have the best bed.
Imagery
• In the poem, Anne celebrates the gift of the bed,
remembering the loving nights she and Shakespeare
spent in it. The imagery recalls some of
Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and the lovers’
bodies are likened to parts of speech.
Structure
• The poem is written in sonnet form, which is highly
appropriate as Shakespeare wrote more than 150 love
sonnets.
• Although Shakespeare’s sonnets kept to a strict rhyme
scheme, this sonnet is freer – perhaps to express the
freedom and lack of constraint that the couple experienced
in their love-making.
• However, the sonnet does end (as Shakespeare’s did) with a
rhyming couplet, emphasising Anne’s firm intention to hold
on to her husband’s memory.
Themes
• The poem is written in first person narrative voice, from
the point of view of the newly widowed Hathaway. She
remembers her husband with great love.
• The poet gives as voice to someone of whom history has
recorded little although the language is strictly too modern
to be spoken by the historical Anne
• She suggests that as lovers they were as inventive as
Shakespeare was in his poetry.
• Many of the images are undeniably erotic and Duffy no
doubts expects the reader to interpret them in a sexual
sense.
Language
• Just like Shakespeare’s works, the poem is full metaphor.
The first two lines list the romantic settings that the bed
became for the lovers – “a spinning world of forests, castles,
torchlight, clifftops, seas”.
• All these settings appear in Shakespeare’s plays.
• The variety of settings suggests the rich imagination the
couple shared – and perhaps the variety of their lovemaking.
Language
• The poem uses word play. Duffy makes parts of
speech into metaphors of love.
• His words become “kisses” their bodies “Rhyme”
with “echo” and “assonance”. He is the “verb” while
she is the “noun”. The bed is the “page” on which
their “drama” is written. While Anne and William
make poetry “romance and drama” together, their
guests make prose.
Language
• The language is suggestive and sexual; we can imagine
what Anne and Shakespeare were doing as he “dived for
pearls” when their “bodies rhymed” and when his touch
became “a verb dancing in the centre” of her noun. The
description of the guests’ coupling as “dribbling”
suggests a less successful erotic encounter.
• The final rhyming couplet contains a simile as well as a
metaphor. Anne holds her husband’s memory in the
“casket” of her head as dearly as he held her in bed. A
casket contains treasured contents; the memory of him
is very precious to her. Significantly, a casket plays an
important part in the love story A Merchant ofVenice.
An epigraph – a
quotation from
Shakespeare’s Will
Metaphoreffect?
The bed the
centre of
imaginary
universe
Literary terms used
to show their
relationship
WS wrote in
verse
Shakespearian
rhyming couplet
Anne Hathaway
Sonnet form- but does not rhyme. To suggest the
freeness of the love that the two had?
'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'
(from Shakespeare's will)
Giddy with love
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
Emphasises the
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
physical
relationship
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
She “rhymes”
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
with him but
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
retains own
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
identity
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
Links these
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
plays with
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
love/passion
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.
Alliteration, echo of
Holds precious memories- rhyming couplet,
like Shakespeare’s was. Anne is holding onto
her husband’s precious memories.
joyful sounds