Shakespeare in Bed

Since I have been immersed in Shakespeare lately, this sonnet by Carol Ann Duffy caught my attention:

Anne Hathaway*

"Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed..."
(from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where he would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses

on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme

to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love--
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

*Shakespeare's wife.They married when he was 18 and she was 26.

The picture is of Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, which I visited in December.