kespeare's company, may
well have given that source of income the enhanced value of 20 pounds a
year. {203}

Thus Shakespeare in the later period of his life was earning above 600
pounds a year in money of the period. With so large a professional
income he could easily, with good management, have completed those
purchases of houses and land at Stratford on which he laid out, between
1599 and 1613, a total sum of 970 pounds, or an annual average of 70
pounds. 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.

Incomes of fellow-actors.

Shakespeare realised his theatrical shares several years before his death
in 1616, when he left, according to his will, 350 pounds in money in
addition to an extensive real estate and numerous personal belongings.
There was nothing exceptional in this comparative affluence. His friends
and fellow-actors, Heming and Condell, amassed equally large, if not
larger, fortunes. Burbage died in 1619 worth 300 pounds in land, besides
personal property; while a contemporary actor and theatrical proprietor,
Edward Alleyn, purchased the manor of Dulwich for 10,000 pounds (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
occasionally to 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. {204a}

Formation of the estate at Stratford 1601-10.

Between 1599 and 1611, while London remained Shakespeare's chief home, he
built up at Stratford a large landed estate which his purchase of New
Place had inaugurated. In 1601 his father died, being buried on
September 8. He apparently left no will, and the poet, as the eldest
son, inherited the houses in Henley Street, the only portion of the
property of the elder Shakespeare or of his wife which had not been
alienated to creditors. Shakespeare permitted his mother to reside in
one of the Henle