n 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 25 pounds daily, or some 8,000
pounds a year. According to the documents of 1635, an actor-sharer at
the Globe received above 200 pounds a year on each share, besides his
actor's salary of 180 pounds. Thus Shakespeare drew from the Globe
Theatre, at the lowest estimate, more than 500 pounds 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 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' in it 'men-players which were Hemings, Condell,
Shakespeare, etc.' 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 100 pounds a year to
his income, and that not until 1610.

Later income.

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, {202} while 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 pounds each or 340 pounds in all--nearly 30 pounds a year.
At the same time the increase in the number of Court performances under
James I, and the additional favour bestowed on Sha