While it dhen probable that the sale of Shakespeare’s poems brought him in some financial return, he is not likely to have profited from the publication of his plays. The playwright at that time sold his product to the manager or company, and thereby gave up all rights. More profitable than playwriting was acting. Besides this, he became about a sharer, with Heming, Condell, Philips, and others, in the receipts of the Globe Theater, erected in by Richard and Cuthbert Burbage. In he became a sharer also in the smaller Blackfriars Theater, after it had been acquired by the Burbages. The evidence thus accumulated of Shakespeare’s having acquired a substantial fortune is corroborated by what we know of the earnings of other members of his profession, and it leaves no mystery about the source of the capital which he invested in real property in Stratford and London. The facts about Shakespeare. New York: The Macmillan company, Shakespeare Online. Renaissance records of Shakespear...