Hoarder, moneylender, tax dodger \u2014 it\u2019s not how we usually think of William Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
But we should, according to a group of academics who say the Bard was a ruthless businessman who grew wealthy dealing in grain during a time of famine.<\/p>\n
\n
Researchers from Aberystwyth University in Wales argue that we can\u2019t fully understand Shakespeare unless we study his often-overlooked business savvy.<\/p>\n
\u201cShakespeare the grain-hoarder has been redacted from history so that Shakespeare the creative genius could be born,\u201d the researchers say in a paper due to be delivered at the Hay literary festival in Wales in May.<\/p>\n
Jayne Archer, a lecturer in medieval and Renaissance literature at Aberystwyth, said that oversight is the product of \u201ca willful ignorance on behalf of critics and scholars who I think \u2014 perhaps through snobbery \u2014 cannot countenance the idea of a creative genius also being motivated by self-interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Archer and her colleagues Howard Thomas and Richard Marggraf Turley combed through historical archives to uncover details of the playwright\u2019s parallel life as a grain merchant and property owner in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon whose practices sometimes brought him into conflict with the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver a 15-year period he purchased and stored grain, malt and barley for resale at inflated prices to his neighbors and local tradesmen,\u201d they wrote, adding that Shakespeare \u201cpursued those who could not [or would not] pay him in full for these staples and used the profits to further his own money-lending activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was pursued by the authorities for tax evasion, and in 1598 was prosecuted for hoarding grain during a time of shortage. . . .<\/p>\n
Archer said the idea of Shakespeare as a hardheaded businessman may not fit with romantic notions of the sensitive artist, but we shouldn\u2019t judge him too harshly. Hoarding grain was his way of ensuring that his family and neighbors would not go hungry if a harvest failed.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemembering Shakespeare as a man of hunger makes him much more human, much more understandable, much more complex,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would not have thought of himself first and foremost as a writer. Possibly as an actor \u2014 but first and foremost as a good father, a good husband and a good citizen to the people of Stratford.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the playwright\u2019s funeral monument in Stratford\u2019s Holy Trinity Church reflected this. The original monument erected after his death in 1616 showed Shakespeare holding a sack of grain. In the 18th century, it was replaced with a more \u201cwriterly\u201d memorial depicting Shakespeare with a tasseled cushion and a quill pen.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
HT:\u00a0 Jackie<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the many unfortunate legacies of Romanticism (there were some fortunate ones as well) is the mystification of the artist, as if, say, a literary genius were some ethereal sensitive soul far above the crass material realm of everyday life.\u00a0 Whereas in reality, actual literary geniuses\u2013like Chaucer, Jane Austen, Dickens\u2013tend to be of solid, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,28],"tags":[869,2362],"class_list":["post-15066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-literature","tag-free-market-economics","tag-william-shakespeare"],"yoast_head":"\n
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