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clan with the theatre may extend to more than the marriage of Frances Hathaway with a local impresario and the coincidence of the name Hemmings. A playwright with the same name as Ann’s father, Richard Hathaway, spelt as it is spelt in the will, ‘Hathway’, was one of the stable of playwrights retained by Philip Henslowe, owner—manager of the Rose Theatre, to furnish plays for the resident company, the Admiral’s Men. Because so few of these plays found their way into print, Henslowe’s diary is virtually our sole source of information about him. The Dictionary of National Biography tells us that Richard Hathway was almost certainly connected to the Warwickshire Hathaways but can give no grounds for the belief.
    As Hathway’s professional career is rather more typical than Shakespeare’s, it makes sense to give a detailed account of it. We first hear of Hathway in 1598 when he writes an entry dated 11 April in Henslowe’s ‘diary’ (actually a memorandum book) acknowledging receipt of twenty shillings as an advance for ‘The Life of Arthur King of England’, ‘to be delivered on Thursday next following after the date hereof’. 13 This, the only play for which Hathway was solely responsible, secured his membership of Henslowe’s crew of writers; he was paid not, as some think Shakespeare was, by being given shares in the company but in cash. The full sum was lent to the company by Henslowe the following day. ‘Lent unto the company the 12 of April 1598 to pay Master Hathway in full payment for his book of King Arthur the sum of four pounds’. 14 Henslowe did not give the title ‘Master’ to all his playwrights; it seems to have been reserved, though not consistently, for playwrights who were ‘sharers’, that is, shareholders in the theatre.
    Hathway is supposed then to have worked with Anthony Munday on ‘Valentine and Orson’. In January 1599 he, Robert Wilson, Michael Drayton and Munday received a payment of £4 on account to produce a play called ‘Owen Tudor’. On 16 October 1599 Thomas Downton acknowledged receipt of £10 ‘to pay Master Munday, Master Drayton, Master Wilson and Hathway for the first part of the life of Sir John Oldcastle and in earnest of the second part for the use of the company’. So successful in performance was The First Part of the true and honourable history of Sir John Oldcastle, the good lord of Cobham that Henslowe gave ten shillings to ‘Master Munday and the rest of the poets’ ‘as a gift’. 15 This is the only play associated with Hathway that ever found its way into print. When Sir John Oldcastle was licensed by the Stationers’ Company in August 1600, though a ‘second part’ was mentioned in the entry, all that the licensee, Thomas Pavier, managed to print was a first part, originally issued anonymously, and then reissued with Shakespeare’s name on the title-page. Ironically enough, when seven new plays were added to the second issue of the 1664 edition of the Shakespeare Folio, The First Part of the true and honourable history of Sir John Oldcastle was one of them.
    In 1600 Hathway contributed a fluent if rather uninteresting encomium ‘Of the Book’ to Belvedere or the Garden of the Muses , a printed commonplace book compiled for John Bodenham, a wealthy London tradesman who furnished funds for the collection and publication of poems in anthologies.
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    The sundry beams proceeding from one sun,
    The hive where many bees their honey bring,
    The sea to which a thousand rivers run,
    The garden where survives continual spring,
    The trophy hung with diverse painful hands,
    Abstract of knowledge, brief of eloquence,
    Aiding the weak, preserving him that stands,
    Guide to the soul and ruler of the sense,
    Such is this volume, and the freight hereof,
    However Ignorance presume to scoff. 16
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    On 14 June 1600 Hathway with Munday,