Sonnet, Dramatic monologue

Duffy's "Anne Hathaway" is a sonnet spoken in the voice of Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's
wife. Because Duffy imagines the speaker as one distinct character, we can call this poem a
dramatic monologue. A dramatic monologue doesn't have to follow any set form, it just has to
be spoken in the voice of a specific persona, real or imagined.
"Anne Hathaway" does have a form, though. It's a sonnet! It follows the most basic sonnet
rule: it has fourteen lines. But that's pretty much it otherwise, it breaks a lot of rules. For
example, it has no formal rhyme scheme and its meter is only roughly iambic pentameter.
Side note: iambic pentameter is a fancy way of explaining the consistent da-dum, da-dum, dadum, da-dum, da-dum (yep, five times!) rhythm of the lines. A perfect example is line 5 of
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.
O no! It is an ev-er fix-ed mark (sonnet 116, line 5, where the italics show the stress)
Compare this to a line from Duffy's poem:
drib-bling their prose. My liv-ing laugh-ing love (12)
Close, but no cigar!
Duffy definitely takes a lot more liberty with the form than Shakespeare does. But her poem
does include what is perhaps the signature Shakespearean sonnet feature: the couplet. Duffy's
sonnet, like all of Shakespeare's, ends with a strong couplet (a pair of rhyming lines). Adds a
nice punch, we think.
If you're interested in learning more about sonnets, check out what we have to say about them
in our poetry glossary. If you want to know more about Shakespeare's sonnets in particular,
we've got some handy study guides just waiting for you.

"Anne Hathaway," like many sonnets, is about love and all those nice things that
come along with it: sex, passion, and of course poetry. It's a message to the
world from Shakespeare's wife that she and her husband were very much in love,
despite the way other people might interpret his will. Their love is beautiful,
romantic, sexy; sounds like a pretty good relationship to us.

Background Context
This poem is taken from a collection by Carol Ann Duffy called The Worlds Wife. 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. For example, she writes a poem about a
modern day Medusa, allowing us to think more sympathetically about a woman whose story
normally presents her as the villain in a story about a heroic man. 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.
Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare. She was nine years older than her
husband, who married her when she was pregnant with their first child. They spent long
periods of time apart; he went to London to work in the theatres whilst she stayed behind in
Stratford upon Avon. When Shakespeare died, the only present he left his wife in his will was
the second best bed in the house. Many scholars have seen this as confirmation that the
couple had become estranged, and that this parting gift was meant to be a snub on
Shakespeares part. There has been much speculation about the great loves and muses in
Shakespeares life but very few people think that Anne Hathaway was one of them. In the
film Shakespeare in Love Anne Hathaway, whom we never see, is nothing more than an
inconvenience to her husband, getting in the way of his search for a true muse who will
inspire him to produce a masterpiece.
Carol Ann Duffy uses her poem to try and challenge these stereotypical assumptions about
Shakespeares 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. By doing so, she makes us question the
relationship between Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare, and the wifes contribution to the
work of her husband.
Language and Imagery
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. From being a
mundane gift to a neglected spouse, the bed in Annes eyes is transformed into a spinning
world/of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas. Duffy creates a magical world of
romance and intrigue, with subtle nods towards key elements in Shakespeares own plays,
such as the forest and castle in Macbeth or the sea of The Tempest. She creates a fantasy
landscape where Shakespeares writing and his love for Anne are intertwined. Shakespeares
words become shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses/on these lips. His words are stars
up in the sky that everyone can see and admire, but his poetry is also something intimate that
only Anne can experience and fully comprehend. For her, his works are something physical
that she can touch, an experience of Shakespeare that nobody else can have.
Duffy further develops this notion by using the language of poetry to describe the lovemaking
between Anne and Shakespeare. Sex and poetry are interwoven as his touch becomes a verb
dancing in the centre of a noun. Anne imagines she is a product of her husbands
imagination, written into existence through their passionate exchanges, whilst the second best
bed functions as a page beneath his writers hands. She is his ultimate muse, not just
inspiring him to produce great works but actually becoming them. Rather than living in an
atmosphere of hostility, the couple lives in a world of romance and drama, brought into
being through their physical and emotional love for each other.

It was customary in Shakespeares time to give up the best bed in the house for guests. Anne
imagines the guests in the next room, dribbling their prose, whilst herself and her husband
create poetry and drama. Anne and Shakespeare inhabit a world full of senses, played by
touch, by scent, by taste, whilst all the guests are able to do is dribble. The poem concludes
with Anne claiming that all her memories of her husband are stored in the casket of my
widows head. He is preserved not in a coffin or urn, not even in his writing, but in the
thoughts inside Annes head, implying that the real William Shakespeare was a man that only
his wife could ever truly know.
Poetic Devices
The poem is written in the form of a sonnet. Shakespeares most famous poems about love
were written in this form, and Duffys choice here suggests that this poem is both a homage
to Shakespeares romantic sonnet and at the same time a re-examining of the poet and
playwright from a different angle. Whilst she keeps the rough outline of the sonnet, Duffy
does not use the traditional rhyme scheme that all Shakespearian sonnets follow; ABAB
CDCD EFEF GG. She keeps the rhyming couplet at the end, but otherwise her lines are only
loosely joined together through assonance, for example world and words. The lines are
softly and subtly joined together, as if to echo the physical relationship between Anne and
Shakespeare. Duffys 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.
The poem is rich in metaphors, such as the spinning world of the bed or the lovers
words as shooting stars. The metaphors allow the world of Shakespeares poetry to
intertwine with the physical reality of his marriage to Anne. Enjambement is used to allow
the lines to flow into each other, again implying the deep and intricate connection that existed
between Anne and Shakespeare. The sibilance in lines such as shooting stars which fell to
earth as kisses, allow Duffy to evoke the sense of Shakespeares words sweeping across the
sky in an arc that begins and ends with Anne. The alliteration in living laughing love allows
the words to dance across the page, suggesting the effervescence of the poetic relationship
between the pair and is suitably juxtaposed with the dull dribbling of the prose of the
guests. The poem contains a great deal of verbs such as dancing, dive, dozed and
dribbling. The verbs help to suggest that the couples relationship is an active and
passionate one.
Themes
This is a poem about love and one that could usefully be compared to Shakespeares own
sonnets on the topic, in particular Sonnet 130, where he compares his mistress to the
standards normally required of women in poetry, and concludes that even though she is not
the divine goddess other poets write about, to him she is just as beautiful in spite of, or maybe
even because of, her human imperfections. Anne Hathaway is about a marriage where the
couple create their own romance, one that does not involve conforming to other peoples

expectations. The poem allows the reader an insight into a relationship of mutual love and
respect, where the couple create a retreat from the rest of the world through poetry, a world
which is symbolised by the second best bed. The power of literature and the imagination is
hence a central idea in the poem. The poem creates significance around the bed which can
only be truly understood by the couple themselves. The poem is hence in one sense about
reinventing material objects.
Another theme that runs through the poem is Annes loss of her husband and her genuine
grief. A reader might perhaps expect Anne Hathaway to be angry and resentful, permanently
overshadowed and side-lined by her husband, but Duffys Anne is only full of admiration and
love for her husband, cherishing her precious memories that nobody else can share. Although
Duffy gives Anne a voice, she actually subverts the readers expectations through the
emotions expressed by the character. This is in contrast to another poem by Carol Ann Duffy,
Havisham, where Miss Havisham from Great Expectations remains bitter and vengeful
towards the lover who jilted her. There is no such anger or resentment in this poem, only a
widow grieving a beloved husband. Anne Hathaway allows us a different perspective of
Shakespeare, a man sometimes represented as a philandering husband who put his writing
above all else. We instead perceive him as a devoted husband, who saw writing not as
something separate to marriage, but as something deeply embedded within it. Therefore
another key theme in the poem is the true identity of William Shakespeare, a man about
whom scholars still know surprisingly little. By presenting this poem in the voice of Anne
Hathaway, Duffy wants us to appreciate that Anne was a central part of his life, as well as a
passionate, creative and articulate woman in her own right.