Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare) is imagined by James Joyce's character Stephen Dedalus, who makes a number of references to Hathaway. In "Ulysses", he speculates that the gift of the infamous "second-best bed" was a punishment for her adultery, and earlier in the same novel, Dedalus analyses Shakespeare's marriage with a pun: "He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way." Anne also appears in Hubert Osborne's "The Shakespeare Play" (c.1911) and its sequel "The Good Men Do" (1917), which dramatises a meeting between the newly widowed Anne and her supposed old rival for William's
Anne Hathaway premiered at the 2008 Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals and Hathaway garnered widespread acclaim for her performance. Peter Travers called Hathaway "raw and riveting as Kym" and added that she "acts the hell out of it, achieving a state of sorrowful grace." Hathaway's performance garnered nominations for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Drama. Hathaway starred in "Bride Wars" (2009), which she described as "hideously commercial – gloriously so". The romantic comedy, in which she and Kate Hudson played two best friends who become rivals after their weddings are scheduled