This is contrary to Salome, a biblical character who has been bought forward to the Twentieth Century by Duffy. In the bible we learn that Salome asked for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. There are two views to this story. The first being that Salome fancied John but knew she couldn’t have him alive so decided to have him dead. The other view, which I personally believe, is that, as John didn’t like Salome’s mother’s sinful relationship with King Herod, Salome was following orders to have John dead. I thought before reading the poem that Salome was a cruel, callous, mad individual. My view didn’t change once I had read the poem either. In the poem Salome we see a woman who appears driven not by love but by hate and revenge, she has a very negative, angry outlook towards men and love. “It was time to turf out the blighter, the beater or biter”. An alliterative quote, both poems use the poetic device, alliteration. Salome is a murderer with no morality and likens her habit to that of any other more ‘normal’ habit. “Never again! I needed to clean up my act, get fitter, cut out the booze and the fags and the sex”. The four stanzas in the poem reflect her mind, insanely flicking from one point to another. All the stanzas in the poem are about something different. The poem uses enjambment it is where a sentence at the end of one verse runs over to the start of the next. Enjambment makes the poem run faster and reflects Salome’s mad mind. “Peter?
“Simon? Andrew? John?”
In Salome the historical view and the new view are the same, the only thing that has changed is that Duffy has bought Salome into the 20th Century so we can relate more to her. In contrast, in Anne Hathaway the historical view and the new voice are contrary to each other. Before we read the poems, we think that both women will be bitter; we learn that Anne is not, however Salome is.
Both of the poems are set in a bed. Using many different language and poetic devices, some already mentioned, the two poems both draw vivid images into the reader’s mind of what is going on. Salome is set out into four stanzas’, which get shorter as the poem goes on. This reflects the fact that Salome is waking up. Anne Hathaway is set out in a sonnet to reflect her love for her husband, Shakespeare and to celebrate his work. Salome uses personification, which allows us to get involved and to understand her. Personification brings the reader into her world. Salome does this by using two different techniques. She uses colloquial language which makes it sound like she is chatting to us. “Good, looking of course, dark hair, rather matted”. Salome also uses rhetorical questions which allow us to form an opinion about her. “Woke up with a head on the pillow beside me-whose?-what did it matter?”
The bed which Salome sleeps upon is described as a slaughter as it is where she kills the men she sleeps with. ‘Who’d come like a lamb to the slaughter, to Salome’s bed’. This quote suggests that the men are easy to seduce and it is their fault she killed them. The second-best bed upon which Anne Hathaway sleeps upon is described using as the energetic, adventurous place where her and Shakespeare expressed their love for each other, the clever metaphorical quote mentioned here shows this. “The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where he would dive for pearls”. All of these objects are mentioned in Shakespeare’s works somewhere, this poem is therefore a tribute towards Shakespeare’s clever language. “Some nights I dreamed he’d written me the bed a page beneath his writer’s hands”. Anne is thankful for the life and time she spent with her husband, “I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head as he held me upon that next bed”. Whereas cold-blooded Salome never feels any remorse after killing undeserving men, infact she holds them in part to blame for their death. “Woke up with a head on the pillow beside me-whose?-what did it matter?” She doesn’t seem to care about the men she kills and knows she will do it again sooner or later. “In the mirror I saw my eyes glitter”. She likes the feeling of being in control of someone’s life. “And there like I said-and ain’t life a bitch-was his head on a platter”. The language used in this quote is slang it shows me that Salome has been bought forward to the 20th Century.
It seems that Duffy has based her modern character on a promiscuous Salome that gets what she wants and cares very little about the consequences. This is quite the opposite to how Duffy presents Anne Hathaway. Anne Hathaway misses her husband terribly, she celebrates his work and their passionate love affair with each other. Salome is a very negative poem whereas Anne Hathaway is a positive, uplifting poem.
