To What Extent is Anne Hathaway Typical of the Collection The World's Wife?

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'Anne Hathaway' is written in a very similar style to all the other poems in The World's Wife. "My lover's words were shooting starts that fell to earth as kisses" is a metaphor emphasising the brilliance of his words and implying that they originated in heaven, thus making them perfect. Duffy frequently uses imagery thus. "The bed a page beneath his writer's hands" is an example of figurative language in the semantic field of writing, which is associated with Shakespeare. Similarly, 'Mrs Aesop' is filled with morals such as "the pot that called the kettle [black]", as fables are what Aesop is remembered for, and 'Frau Freud' is centred around euphemisms for penis, as penis envy was Freud's legacy. This use of subject-specific lexemes is frequently used by Duffy to invoke thoughts of the famous figures concerned.

Just as "I had wept for a night and a day / over my loss" in 'Mrs Lazarus' contains enjambement, very few lines in 'Anne Hathaway' are endstopped, resulting in a flowing syntax emphasising the fluidity of their love. Duffy does, however, use caesura on the line "...a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance and drama...", dividing the ensuing "romance