Now, how did the poet obtain this thousand pounds or so? English
apologists naturally assume that he was a "good business man"; with
delicious unconscious irony they one and all picture the man who hated
tradesmen as himself a sort of thrifty tradesman-soul--a master of
practical life who looked after the pennies from the beginning. These
commentators all treat Shakespeare as the Hebrews treated God; they make
him in their own likeness. In Shakespeare's case this practice leads to
absurdity. Let us take the strongest advocate of the accepted view.
Dryasdust is at pains to prove that Shakespeare's emoluments, even as an
actor in the '90's, were not likely to have fallen below a hundred a
year; but even Dryasdust admits that his large earnings came after 1599,
from his shares in the Globe Theatre, and is inclined "to accept the
tradition that Shakespeare received from the Earl of Southampton a large
gift of money." As Southampton came of age in 1595, he may well out of
his riches have helped the man who had dedicated his poems to him with
servile adulation.
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