Anne Hathaway (poem) of my widow's head/ as he held me upon that next best bed". In "The Second Best Bed and the Legacy of Anne Hathaway", Katherine Scheil describes it as "… [centering] on an intimate relationship between the Shakespeares and the second best bed: 'The bed we loved in was a spinning world / of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas / where he would dive for pearls' while 'In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, / dribbling their prose'". She sees Duffy's poem as belonging to a category of recent takes on Anne Hathaway that "… have used
Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare) there is no reason to assume that this had not always been his intention. It is nearly certain that the respective families of the bride and groom had known one another. Three children were born to Hathaway and her husband: Susanna in 1583 and the twins Hamnet and Judith in 1585. Hamnet died at 11 years old during one of the frequent outbreaks of the bubonic plague and was buried in Stratford upon Avon on 11 August 1596. Apart from documents related to her marriage and the birth of her children, the only recorded reference to Hathaway in her lifetime