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Drayton and Thomas Dekker furnished Henslowe with the script of the first part of ‘The Fair Constance of Rome’ for a full payment of forty-four shillings, and received an advance of twenty shillings to write a second part. Henslowe records an advance of forty shillings to Masters Rankins and Hathway on 3 January 1601 for ‘a book called Hannibal and Scipio’ 17 Hathway’s receipt of the same date also appears: ‘Received by us Richard Hathway and William Rankins in part of payment for the play of “Hannibal and Scipio” the sum of forty shillings’. 18 Also that year the duo produced ‘The blind Beggar of Alexandria’ featuring Henry VIII’s clown Scoggins and the poet John Skelton as characters, against an advance of thirty shillings paid on 26 January, and further payment of forty shillings on 25 February and a final payment of eighteen shillings on 8 March. 19
    Sixteen days later Hathway was commissioned with Rankins to write ‘a play called The Conquest of Spain’ with an advance of ten shillings, was paid a further five shillings on 4 April, twenty shillings on 11 April and another four shillings on 16 April, all of which seems to indicate that he was delivering the play in dribs and drabs. This play was eventually rejected by the company: the entries relating to it in the ‘diary’ are cancelled. An undated letter to Henslowe from Samuel Rowley that can be found among the Alleyn MSS at Dulwich College throws a rather disturbing light on the situation:
    M Henslowe, I pray you let Master Hathway have his papers again of the play of John of Gaunt and, for the repayment of the money back again, he is content to give you a bill of his hand to be paid at some certain time as in your discretion you shall think good. Which done you may cross it out of your book and keep the bill or else we’ll stand so much indebted to you and keep the bill ourselves. 20
    Hathway had clearly been paid the money and spent it, for he was obviously unable to return it when the play was rejected. Henslowe must have been satisfied with his IOU for Hathway continued to write for the Admiral’s Men, but then Henslowe was only too happy to keep his playwrights in debt to him, because it increased the pressure on them to produce playtexts on demand. In OctoberHenslowe paid advances totalling forty-three shillings for ‘The Six Clothiers of the West’, to Hathway, William Haughton and Wentworth Smith. 21 An undated entry in Hathway’s hand records receipt of a payment ‘in earnest’ of forty shillings for a second part ‘of the six clothiers’. 22 On 6 January 1602 Henslowe paid a first advance of fifty shillings to Hathway and Smith for ‘Too Good to be True, or the Poor Northern Man’, but by 7 January Henry Chettle had joined them for a further £3 10s in full payment. 23 On 17 November 1602, Hathway, Day and Smith received £6 in full payment for ‘A Book called as Merry as May be’. 24 On 4 November 1602 Henslowe paid Hathway an advance of forty shillings for ‘The Black Dog of Newgate’, but a marginal note records it as ‘John Day’s Comedy’ and the second payment of forty shillings is recorded as to Hathway, Day, Smith ‘and the other poet’. A final payment of forty shillings was made on 20 December. 25 ‘The Black Dog of Newgate’, part 1, was acted by Worcester’s Men in 1602, while ‘The Boast of Billingsgate’ on which Hathway worked with Day (for two payment of forty shillings) in March 1603 was played by the Admiral’s Men. 26 Hathway seems to have had some part in ‘The Fortunate General: a French History’ acted by Worcester’s Men that year, and worked with Day and Smith on a companion piece, ‘The Unfortunate General’, acted early in 1603. Henslowe records two payments of thirty shillings to Hathway and Smith ‘in earnest’ of a play he