Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/380

 for 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, 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 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 (. ii. 293), that the success of his improvised tragedy would ‘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. How many shares originally fell to Shakespeare there is no means of determining. Records of later subdivisions suggest that they did not exceed two. But the Globe was an exceptionally popular playhouse, and its receipts were large. In ‘Hamlet’ both a share and a half-share of ‘a fellowship in a cry of players’ are described as assets of enviable value (. ii. 294–6). 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 180l. 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 often quoted documents on which Collier depended to prove him a substantial shareholder in that playhouse have been long 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’ 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 for the seventeen plays completed between 1599 and 1611 may be estimated, in consideration of their exceptional popularity, at 170l. or some 15l. a year, while 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. With an annual professional income reaching near 600l. a year, Shakespeare could easily, with good management, have completed those purchases of houses and land at Stratford on which he laid out a total sum of 970l. between 1599 and 1613, or an annual average of 70l. 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, 350l. in money in addition to his real estate and personal belongings. His friends and fellow-actors, Heming and Condell, amassed equally large, if not larger, fortunes, while a contemporary theatrical proprietor, Edward Alleyn, purchased the manor of Dulwich for 10,000l. (in money of his own day), and devoted it, with much other property, to public uses, at the same time as he made ample provision for his family out of the residue of his estate. Gifts from patrons may have continued to occasionally augment Shakespeare's resources, but his wealth can be satisfactorily assigned to better attested agencies. There is no ground for treating it as of mysterious origin (cf., i. 312–19; , Stage, pp. 324–8).

Between 1599 and 1611, while London remained Shakespeare's chief home, he built up his estate at Stratford. In 1601 his father died, being buried on 8 Sept. He apparently left no will, and the poet, as the eldest son, inherited the houses in Henley Street, the only portion of the elder Shakespeare's or his wife's property which had not been