Shakespeare’s Financial Success Shakespeare’s Financial Success Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Law Money Published file. Updated metadata proofed added figure and citation. updated author respStmt. Created File Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
A photograph of an English coin depicting Queen Elizabeth I. Circa 1584–1596. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Shakespeare the Successful Artist

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.

A Man of Property

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 Shakespeare Documented shows 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.

Minor Financial Troubles

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.

Key Print Sources McDonald, Russ Getting and Spending. The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001, pp.233-237. Potter,Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Key Online Sources Bearman, Robert et al.The Only Surviving Letter to Shakespeare: Letter From Richard Quiney Asking for Shakespeare’s Assistance in Securing a Loan of £30.Shakespeare Documented. https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/node/123. Bearman, Robert et al.Declaration in the Stratford-Upon-Avon Court of Record, in a Suit Between William Shakespeare and Philip Rogers, Concerning Money Owed by Rogers for the Sale of Malt to Him by Shakespeare in 1604.Shakespeare Documented. http://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/node/521. Best, Michael. Shakespeare’s Income. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/last%20plays/income.html. Accessed 18 Feb. 2023. Best, Michael. A Major Purchase in Stratford, 1597.. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/early%20maturity/newplace.html. Accessed 18 Feb. 2023. Currency Converter, 1270–2017.National Archives, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2023.
Image Sources Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603). 1594–1596. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/188483.