Portrait of Anne Hathaway states: Did Curzon copy a portrait - long since vanished - of a young, soberly attractive woman of times past, and playfully offer it as an "imago vero" of Shakespeare's wife? That is more plausible (given the facetious tone of the verses) than a theory of deliberate imposition in the manner of the later fabricators; more plausible too than the infinitely exciting hypothesis that Curzon had somehow stumbled upon an authentic portrait of Anne Hathaway. Schoenbaum also notes that Curzon seemingly did not know the name of Shakespeare's wife (as she is simply called "Shakespear's Consort"). The drawing was made
Anne Whateley the wedding of "William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey". The entry in the register was discovered in the late nineteenth century by Reverend T.P. Wadley. Various explanations were offered. Initially it was assumed that Whateley was an alternative surname for Anne Hathaway herself. Wadley believed that it was probably an alias, used by Hathaway in order to keep the date of the marriage secret to obscure the fact that she was already pregnant. Another suggestion was that Anne Hathaway might legitimately have used the name, either because her father Richard Hathaway was in fact her step-father, her mother having previously been