[3] Whateley's existence has been deduced from an entry in the Episcopal register at Worcester which states in Latin "Anno Domini 1582...Novembris...27 die eiusdem mensis.

Item eodem die supradicto emanavit Licentia inter Wm Shaxpere et Annam Whateley de Temple Grafton."

The entry states that a marriage licence has been issued to Shakespeare and Anne Whateley to marry in the village of Temple Grafton.

The day afterwards, Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, friends of the Hathaway family from Stratford-upon-Avon, signed a surety of £40 as a financial guarantee for the wedding of "William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey".

[7] In 1905 Joseph William Gray in Shakespeare's Marriage gave a detailed argument for clerical error due to the existence of lawsuits involving Whateleys that were being written up by the same scribe.

I am sorry he treated her badly and left her unsupplied with money; that was needlessly cruel; but it is just the kindliest men who have these extraordinary lapses; Shakespeare's loathing for his wife was measureless.

[9]Some biographers, notably Ivor Brown and Anthony Burgess, followed Harris' lead, portraying Whateley as Shakespeare's true love.

[4][10]According to Stanley Wells in the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, most modern scholars take the same view as Gray, that the name Whateley was "almost certainly the result of clerical error".

[11] It may have arisen because the clerk was also recording information about a tithe appeal by a vicar, which included a reference to a person named Whateley.

[8] After Harris's initial argument a number of imaginative claims were made about Anne Whateley, most dramatically that she was the true author of Shakespeare's works.

Ross claims she was born in 1561, the daughter of the well-known seafarer Anthony Jenkinson, and that she was living a secluded life among the nuns of the Order of St. Clare when she met Shakespeare.

According to Ross's story, they fell in love, and Anne was about to leave the order to marry him when Hathaway revealed her pregnancy.

In Ross's view, Whateley wrote the sonnets as gifts to Shakespeare, and he states that her authorship can be deduced from them, in that they describe the history of her spiritual relationship with him.

[14] Ross alleged that she gave him the full collection when he left for London- which explains the dedication to the "well-wishing adventurer in setting forth"- and that she later wrote The Phoenix and the Turtle to commemorate their spiritual union.

Ross emphasises that his discovery removes all suggestion of homoeroticism from the sonnets, and thus "the taint of perversion, so odious to all lovers of Shakespeare, has been dissipated".

Ross argues that the sonnets reveal that Whateley also knew Edmund Spenser and helped him to write The Shepherd's Calendar.

[13][15] Hutcheson also claims to have identified a portrait of Whateley, the work of Sofonisba Anguissola, the several copies of which attest to the esteem in which she was held.

"[18] Proponents of other alternative authorship theories have also used Frank Harris' version of the Anne Whateley story, typically to portray Shakespeare as a duplicitous scapegrace, traits which are supposed to disqualify him as an author of great poetry.

[19] Robert Frazer, who believed that The Earl of Derby wrote the canon, argued that Shakespeare actually married Whateley, not Hathaway.

Both women portray Shakespeare's life as an actor and playwright as morally degrading, Whateley insisting that he would have been saved from this shameful profession had he married her.

[22] The play was broadcast on BBC television in 1953 starring Irene Worth as Anne and John Gregson as Shakespeare.

He is asked by his friend Richard Field to help him woo the beautiful and devout Anne Whateley, but falls in love with her himself.