Chapter 10

Chapter 10140 wordsCompleted

Anne Hathaway opens by citing Shakespeare’s will, which bequeaths her his “second best bed.” She transforms that bed into an expansive, magical realm—forests, castles, torchlight, cliffs, seas where he dives for pearls. She describes his words as shooting stars that land as kisses on her lips, and likens her body to a softer rhyme echoing his, his touch a verb dancing within a noun. In her dream, the bed becomes a page beneath his writer’s hands, where romance and drama unfold through touch, scent, and taste. She contrasts this intimate space with another “best” bed where guests slumber, spilling their prose. Concluding, she declares her “living laughing love,” holding his memory in the “casket of [her] widow’s head,” mirroring how he once held her on that next‑best bed.