Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway

The positive side of love
1. Hathaway has been widowed. Left with Shakespeare's second best bed, instead of being insulted, Duffy uses the bed as a metaphor for intense passion and romance.
  1. Structure
    1. Duffy employs a Shakespearian sonnet form which has associations with romantic poetry.
    2. The rhyme is much more relaxed and less restrictive, combined with erotic language and imagery.
    3. Duffy uses a regular meter but deliberately uses assonance and alliteration
      1. "body/now"
      2. "living laughing love"
      3. to mimic the random touching during love making, as if the words themselves are grazing each other.
    4. Duffy frequently uses enjambment to convey how freely and continuous their love flowed between each other as well as emphasizing the importance of certain words/phrases.
      1. "lover's words/were shooting stars"
  2. Quadrant 1
    1. Duffy compares the bed to a
      1. "spinning world"
        suggesting their love made Hathaway dizzy and was encompassing.
    2. Duffy makes no reference to Hathaway as a partner/mother, but rather a lover, reinforcing their passion and romance.
    3. "forests,castles,torchlight,clifftops,seas"
      1. Recalls the settings of come of Shakespeare's most famous works, such as Macbeth, Hamlet and The Tempest, creating a link between these iconic works as echo's of excitement that took place in this bed.
    4. "pearls"
      1. Suggest that the couple found something precious and valuable in their lovemaking.
        This intimate, sensual tone is reinforced by comparing her lovers words to
        "shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses"
        Suggesting Hathaway was seduced by her lover's language and poetry.
  3. Quadrant 2
    1. Anne's body is a
      1. "softer rhyme"
        to her lovers harder, more masculine body.
    2. Duffy describes his erotic touch as
      1. "a verb dancing in the centre of a noun"
        suggesting their love making was poetic and linguistically sensual.
    3. Hathaway also imagines that, like his characters, Shakespeare had
      1. "written her"
        suggesting that she is only fully alive through the eyes and imagination of her lover.
    4. "the bed"
      1. This reference creates a link to the opening line of the poem, reinforcing the significance of the bed as a representation of their love.
  4. Quadrant 3
    1. The enjambment from line 8 continues the extended metaphor from the previous quadrant as the bed is compared to the parchment on which the passion and excitement associated with the playwright was written.
      1. "Romance/ and drama"
        Suggests that the inspiration for Shakespeare's characters come from their lovemaking.
        Placed at the end of the line to emphasize that this is what she most associates with their relationship.
    2. Duffy uses sensory imagery
      1. "touch"
      2. "scent"
      3. "taste"
      4. to reinforce how vividly she can recall their lovemaking, as though remembering these memories she can experience this passion again.
    3. Duffy compares their poetic and sensual lovemaking to those's who slept in the
      1. "other bed"
        She claims those who slept in the best bed are only capable of
        "dribbling their prose"
        implying they are ordinary and unexceptional whilst her and Shakespeare's bed is skilful and creative, like the language used in this poetry.
    4. Duffy employs the use of elongated assonance
      1. "my living laughing love-"
        Emphasizing how vividly she can recall their passion, suggesting that her lover continues to exist and survive through her memories. The dash creates a pause to allow the reader to reflect on this idea and prepare for the resolution.
The entire poem is a metaphor comparing the couple's love making to the process of artistic and poetic creativity.
The couplet
1. Ends with a masculine full rhyme.
  1. "head"
  2. "bed"
  3. to provide a defined conclusion.
2. The metaphor of holding her lover in the protective
  1. "casket"
    1. of her imagination reinforces the idea presented in the previous line that in a way memory allows us to live forever.
    2. Duffy suggests this is much more fitting than an urn or a coffin as although they may contain the physical remnants of a body, they can never capture the vitality of the persons character.
3. By remembrance, she is really honouring his true legacy.

Next up

Description

Resource summary

Similar

	Created by 321qureshi about 11 years ago