On a Certain Tendency in Economic Criticism of Shakespeare

Abstract

F or a long time most commentators ignored the economic basis of Shakespeare’s theater. When critics mentioned it at all, they typically portrayed it as regrettable. An old historicist essay on The Merchant of Venice exaggerated this practice. Asking “Is Shylock Philip Henslowe?” (1948), Norman Nathan went on to identify the best-known “money man” in the early modern theater with Shakespeare’s notorious usurer. Nathan held that “Henslowe’s tightfistedness, especially in respect to playwrights, would be likely to antagonize Shakespeare, who, on several known occasions, lent money gratis.” 1 For Nathan, the à clef argument found support in a figurative parallel: “Henslowe lent money to playwrights. In return, they had to compose plays for him. Is this not, figuratively, demanding a pound of flesh in return for not being able to pay a debt by means of money?” 2 Such scapegoating of the early modern theater’s financial organizers appears too in the popular film Shakespeare in Love (1998), which opens with a loan shark and his henchmen roasting Henslowe’s feet “over the hot coals of a fire burning in a brazier.” 3 This scene follows, and is wittily set up by, a brief glance at a discarded playbill advertising The Lamentable Tragedie of the Moneylender Reveng’d . These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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