Unlike many artists, Shakespeare enjoyed prosperity during his own lifetime. It is impossible to calculate his actual income with any certainty, although as playwright, sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and later the King’s Men, and eventually a sharer (partner) in the Globe and Blackfriars theaters, he probably made at least £200 annually. This means that starting in about 1597, Shakespeare was earning at least $70,000 U.S.in 2023 terms. Later, he may have owned more than one share, thus increasing his income. His earnings meant he was able to support his family in Stratford-upon-Avon, live in London while he chose, and purchase numerous other properties.
Shakespeare invested his money effectively, purchasing several properties in and around Stratford, including a major investment in farm revenues. In 1597, he purchased New Place, the second largest home in Stratford. In 1602, Shakespeare purchased 107 acres of land near Stratford-upon-Avon for the large sum of £320. In 1605, he invested £440 to lease a portion of the income from the products of lands own by the Stratford Corporation; the income came from the tithes in corn, grain, hay, wool, and livestock. One record featured on
William Shakespere Lykewise holdeth one cottage and one garden by estimation a quarter of one acre and payeth rent yearly. He also owned a London rental property, which passed to his heirs upon his death, even though it had three other men (William Johnson, John Jackson, and John Heminges) as trustees on the deed.
Surviving financial records concerning Shakespeare are not all demonstrations of his prosperity or good management. He avoided (or forgot to pay) taxes on more than one occasion. For example, in the year after he purchased New Place, the expense of that large real estate purchase may have created a cash-flow problem for Shakespeare, since his name appears later in the same year as a defaulter on the payment of taxes on November 15, 1597—he owed the sum of five shillings (a quarter of a pound).
On other occasions, Shakespeare used the courts to his own advantage, bringing a suit against Philip Rogers for outstanding debt 39 shillings, 10 pence, the price of 20 bushels of malt used for making beer. That sum is equivalent to about £275 today. According to the National Archives in Britain, in Shakespeare’s time, it was about the price of a cow or 39 days of skilled labor by a tradesman.
But whatever minor troubles he might have had, he gained a reputation for having money, since one of his neighbors and Stratford alderman Richard Quiney (whose son Thomas was later to marry Shakespeare’s younger daughter Judith) wrote a letter asking for a loan of £30, but he likely never sent it. It survived in the records of the city of Stratford, and it is the only surviving letter written to Shakespeare.