CAROL DUFFY’S  “ANNE HATHAWAY” TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

1^st Method

This poem is a sonnet written by Carol Anne Duffy during the ‘90s.

“Anne Hathaway” is a sonnet because it is made of 14 lines and it is organized in 3 quatrains and a couplet.

The rhyme scheme follows the Shakespearian model: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

One of the sonnet’s topic is: the poem’s writing compared to making love.

In this poem the speaking voice, Anne Hathaway who was Shakespeare’s wife, remembers how she and her husband used to make love. She compares the way they used to make love to the writing of a poetry.

The first quatrain introduces generally the topic: in this stanza the speaking voice tells about how her and her husband’s love was like.

The second quatrain develops the topic and Anne talks about her lover such as he would have been the sky and she the earth.

In the last quatrain the speaking voice, Anne, compares herself to a white page beneath her husband hand. In this quatrain there is a resumed of the topic.

At the end the rhyming couplet generally has the function to resume the topic and gives a solution to the problem. In this case the couplet gives just an end to the sonnet. The speaking voice repeats that her and her lover’s bed was just the second choice of Shakespeare.

In the first quatrain the speaking voice introduces the first element of a poem: words. This word is connected to “world” by the rhyme, because words are the world of poetry.

In the others quatrains are mentioned others elements connected to poetry: rhyme, assonance, verb, noun, romance, drama, prose. This elements allow the intelligent reader to understand that the way the speaking voice is talking about making love corresponds to the way a writer writes a sonnet.

The intelligent reader can also understand the idea Anne has about Shakespeare: she considers him a great man because he is a great writer. But she also knows she is not Shakespeare’s first choice.

In this poem Carol Duffy takes inspiration from Shakespearean sonnets, she uses some elements such as the forest and the castle which are present in Shakespeare’s poems too.

The speaking voice talks about the “bed where they loved” as a “spinning world” which is far away from the world of the other humans, infact the bed becomes their own world. For Anne Shakespeare’s works are something that only she can understand and in her opinion they are something physical she can touch and an experience of Shakespeare that nobody else can have.

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.

2nd Method

This poem is a sonnet written by Carol Anne Duffy during the ‘90s.

“Anne Hathaway” is a sonnet because it is made of 14 lines and it is organized in 3 quatrains and a couplet. The intelligent reader can understand from the title the poem is told in the first person.

The rhyme scheme follows the Shakespearian model: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

One of the sonnet’s topic is: the poem’s writing compared to making love.

In this poem the speaking voice, Anne Hathaway who was Shakespeare’s wife, remembers how she and her husband used to make love. She compares the way they used to make love to the writing of a poetry.

The first quatrain introduces generally the topic: in this stanza the speaking voice tells about how her and her husband’s love was like. In the first quatrain the speaking voice introduces the first element of a poem: words. This word is connected to “world” by the rhyme, because words are the world of poetry.

The second quatrain develops the topic and Anne talks about her lover such as he would have been the sky and she the earth.

In the last quatrain the speaking voice, Anne, compares herself to a white page beneath her husband hand. In this quatrain there is a resumed of the topic.

At the end the rhyming couplet generally has the function to resume the topic and gives a solution to the problem. In this case the couplet gives just an end to the sonnet. The speaking voice repeats that her and her lover’s bed was just the second choice of Shakespeare.

In these quatrains are mentioned others elements connected to poetry: rhyme, assonance, verb, noun, romance, drama, prose. This elements allow the intelligent reader to understand that the way the speaking voice is talking about making love corresponds to the way a writer writes a sonnet.

The intelligent reader can also understand the idea Anne has about Shakespeare: she considers him a great man because he is a great writer. But she also knows she is not Shakespeare’s first choice.

In this poem Carol Duffy takes inspiration from Shakespearean sonnets, she uses some elements such as the forest and the castle which are present in Shakespeare’s poems too.

The speaking voice talks about the “bed where they loved” as a “spinning world” which is far away from the world of the other humans, infact the bed becomes their own world. For Anne Shakespeare’s works are something that only she can understand and in her opinion they are something physical she can touch and an experience of Shakespeare that nobody else can have.

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.