Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare) the bed he bequeaths her as "the second best" to remind her of the best bed of their memories. The novel was dramatised for BBC radio in 1998 with Maggie Steed playing Hathaway. The Connie Willis short story "Winter's Tale," which combines factual information about Anne Hathaway with a fictitious Shakespeare identity theory, also characterises the nature of the relationship as loving and the bequeath of the second-best bed as romantically significant. Anne Hathaway appears in Neil Gaiman's comic book section , part of "The Sandman" series. She and Shakespeare share a tumultuous, yet affectionate, relationship. Gaiman's interpretation suggests that
Anne Hathaway for the musical, Charles Isherwood of "Variety" called Hathaway the highlight of the show and "remarkably unaffected and winning", praising her convincing performance. She won a Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Female. Later, Hathaway voiced the audiobook release of the first three books in "The Princess Diaries" novels. Hathaway portrayed princesses and appeared in family-oriented films over the next three years, subsequently becoming known in mainstream media as a children's role model. After voicing Haru Yoshioka for the English version of "The Cat Returns" (2002), she starred in Douglas McGrath's comedy-drama "Nicholas Nickleby" (2002), which opened to positive reviews.