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Appeals for aid from his fellowtownsmen.

Financial position before

1599.

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six months after his acquisition of New Place - a lawsuit against John Lambert for the recovery of the mortgaged estate of Asbies in Wilmcote. The litigation dragged on for some years without result.

Three letters written during 1598 by leading men at Stratford are still extant among the Corporation's archives, and leave no doubt of the reputation for wealth and influence with which the purchase of New Place invested the poet in his fellow-townsmen's eyes. Abraham Sturley, who was once bailiff, writing early in 1598, apparently to a brother in London, says: "This is one special remembrance from our father's motion. It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakspere, is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or near about us: he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the instructions you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and would do us much good.' Richard Quiney, another townsman, father of Thomas (afterwards one of Shakespeare's two sons-in-law), was, in the autumn of the same year, harassed by debt, and on October 25 appealed to Shakespeare for a loan of money. 'Loving countryman,' the application ran, 'I am bold of you as of a friend craving your help with xxx li.' Quiney was staying at the Bell Inn in Carter Lane, London, and his main business in the metropolis was to procure exemption for the town of Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. Abraham Sturley, writing to Quiney from Stratford ten days later (on November 4, 1598), pointed out to him that since the town was wholly unable, in consequence of the dearth of corn, to pay the tax, he hoped 'that our countryman, Mr. Wm. Shak., would procure us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when, and where, and how.'

The financial prosperity to which this correspondence and the transactions immediately preceding it point has been treated as one of the chief mysteries of Shakespeare's career, but the difficulties are gratuitous. There is practically nothing in Shakespeare's financial position that a study of the contemporary conditions of theatrical life does not fully explain, although in estimating the present value of Shakespeare's income we must multiply each of its items by eight. It was not until 1599, when the Globe Theatre was

built, that he acquired any share in the profits of a playhouse. But his revenues as a successful dramatist and actor were by no means contemptible at an earlier date. His gains in the capacity of dramatist formed the smaller source of income. The highest price known to have been paid before 1599 to an author for a play by the manager of an acting company was 117.; 67. was the lowest rate. A small additional gratuity- rarely apparently exceeding ten shillings

was bestowed on a dramatist whose piece on its first production was especially well received; and the author was by custom allotted, by way of 'benefit,' a certain proportion of the receipts of the theatre on the production of a play for the second time. Other sums, amounting at times to as much as 47., were bestowed on the author for revising and altering an old play for a revival. The nineteen plays which may be set to Shakespeare's credit between 1591 and 1599, combined with such revising work as fell to his lot during those eight years, cannot consequently have brought him less than 200/., or some 20l. a year. Eight or nine of these plays were published during the period, but the publishers operated independently of the author, taking all the risks and, at the same time, all the receipts. The publication of Shakespeare's plays in no way affected his monetary resources, although his friendly relations with the printer Field doubtless secured him, despite the absence of any copyright law, some part of the profits in the large and continuous sale of his poems.

But it was as an actor that at an early date he acquired a genuinely substantial and secure income. There is abundance of contemporary evidence to show that the stage was for an efficient actor an assured avenue to comparative wealth. In 1590 Robert Greene describes in his tract entitled 'Never too Late' a meeting with a player whom he took by his 'outward habit' to be 'a gentleman of great living' and a 'substantial man.' The player informed Greene that he had at the beginning of his career travelled on foot, bearing his theatrical properties on his back, but he prospered so rapidly that at the time of speaking 'his very share in playing apparel would not be sold for 2007.' Among his neighbours 'where he dwelt' he was reputed able 'at his proper cost to build a windmill.' In the university play, "The Return from Parnassus' (1601?), a poor student enviously complains of the wealth

Financial position

after 1599.

and position which a successful actor derived from his calling.

England affords those glorious vagabonds,

That carried erst their fardles on their backs,
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,
Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,

And pages to attend their masterships;
With mouthing words that better wits had framed,
They purchase lands and now esquires are made.

The travelling actors, from whom the highwayman Gamaliel Ratsey extorted a free performance in 1604, were represented as men with the certainty of a rich competency in prospect. An efficient actor received in 1635 as large a regular salary as 180/. The lowest known valuation set an actor's wages at 3s. a day or about 457. a year. Shakespeare's emoluments as an actor before 1599 are not likely to have fallen below 100l.; while the remuneration due to performances at Court or in noblemen's houses, if the accounts of 1594 be accepted as the basis of reckoning, added some 157.

Thus over 130%. (equal to 1,040%. of to-day) would be Shakespeare's average annual revenue before 1599. Such a sum would be regarded as a very large income in a country town. According to the author of 'Ratseis Ghost,' the actor, who may well have been meant for Shakespeare, practised in London a strict frugality, and there seems no reason why Shakespeare should not have been able in 1597 to draw from his savings 60l. wherewith to buy New Place. His resources might well justify his fellow-townsmen's opinion of his wealth in 1598, and suffice between 1597 and 1599 to meet his expenses, in rebuilding the house, stocking the barns with grain, and conducting various legal proceedings. But, according to tradition, he had in the Earl of Southampton a wealthy and generous friend who on one occasion gave him a large gift of money to enable ‘him to go through with a purchase to which he had a mind. A munificent gift, added to professional gains, leaves nothing unaccounted for in Shakespeare's financial position before 1599.

After 1599

his sources of income from the theatre greatly increased. In 1635 the heirs of the actor Richard Burbage were engaged in litigation respecting their proprietary rights in the two playhouses, the Globe and the Blackfriars theatres.

The documents relating to this litigation supply authentic, although not very detailed, information of Shakespeare's interest in theatrical property. Richard Burbage, with his brother Cuthbert, erected at their sole cost the Globe Theatre in the winter of 1598-9, and the Blackfriars Theatre, which their father was building at the time of his death in 1597, was also their property. After completing the Globe they leased out, for twenty-one years, shares in the receipts of the theatre to 'those deserving men Shakespeare, Hemings, Condell, Philips, and others.' All the shareholders named were, like Burbage, active members of Shakespeare's company of players. The shares, which numbered sixteen in all, carried with them the obligation of providing for the expenses of the playhouse, and were doubtless in the first instance freely bestowed. Hamlet claims, in the play scene (III. ii. 293), that the success of his improvised tragedy deserved to 'get him a fellowship in a cry of players -a proof that a successful dramatist might reasonably expect such a reward for a conspicuous effort. In 'Hamlet,' moreover, both a share and a half-share of ‘a fellowship in a cry of players' are described as assets of enviable value (III. ii. 294-6). How many shares originally fell to Shakespeare there is no means of determining. Records of later subdivisions suggest that they did not exceed two. The Globe was an exceptionally large and popular playhouse. It would accommodate some two thousand spectators, whose places cost them sums varying between twopence and half a crown. The receipts were therefore considerable, hardly less than 257. daily, or some 8,000l. a year. According to the documents of 1635, an actor-sharer at the Globe received above 200l. a year on each share besides his actor's salary of 180/. Thus Shakespeare drew from the Globe Theatre, at the lowest estimate, more than 500l. a year in all.

His interest in the Blackfriars Theatre was comparatively unimportant, and is less easy to estimate. The oftenquoted documents on which Collier depended to prove him a substantial shareholder in that playhouse have long been proved to be forgeries. The pleas in the lawsuit of 1635 show that the Burbages, the owners, leased the Blackfriars Theatre after its establishment in 1597 for a long term of years to the master of the Children of the Chapel, but bought out the lessee at the end of 1609, and then 'placed'

Later income.

Incomes of fellowactors.

in it 'men-players which were Hemings, Condell, Shakespeare, &c. To these and other actors they allotted shares in the receipts, the shares numbering eight in all. The profits were far smaller than at the Globe, and if Shakespeare held one share (certainty on the point is impossible), it added not more than 100l. a year to his income, and that not until 1610.

His remuneration as dramatist between 1599 and 1611 was also by no means contemptible. Prices paid to dramatists for plays rose rapidly in the early years of the seventeenth century. In 1613 Robert Daborne, a playwright of insignificant reputation, charged for a drama as much as 25. Similarly the value of the author's 'benefits' grew with the growing vogue of the theatre. The exceptional popularity of Shakespeare's plays after 1599 gave him the full advantage of higher rates of pecuniary reward in all directions, and the seventeen plays which were produced by him between that year and the close of his professional career in 1611 probably brought him an average return of 20%. each or 340/. in all-nearly 30l. a year. At the same time the increase in the number of Court performances under James I, and the additional favour bestowed on Shakespeare's company, may well have given that source of income the enhanced value of 20l. a year.

Thus Shakespeare in the later period of his life was earning above 600l. a year in money of the period. With so large a professional income he could easily, with good management, have completed those purchases of houses and land at Stratford on which he laid out, between 1599 and 1613, a total sum of 970., or an annual average of 70%. These properties, it must be remembered, represented investments, and he drew rent from most of them. He traded, too, in agricultural produce. There is nothing inherently improbable in the statement of John Ward, the seventeenth-century vicar of Stratford, that in his last years 'he spent at the rate of a thousand a year, as I have heard,' although we may reasonably make allowance for exaggeration in the round figures.

Shakespeare realised his theatrical shares several years before his death in 1616, when he left, according to his will, 350/. in money in addition to an extensive real estate and numerous personal belongings. There was nothing exceptional in this comparative affluence, His friends and

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