English and British royal mistress from Katherine of Aragon (as she had borne him no male heir), he attempted to seduce Anne; she repudiated his advances, and he married her instead on 25 January 1533. He is rumoured to have taken another mistress, Mary Shelton, soon after this marriage, but the details are unclear. Henry went on to marry Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. Jane Seymour, like Anne, refused to be his mistress and became his third wife. From this time there is no record of his having had a mistress; he had enough to do with his wives. His
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