of the house, and before 1602 had planted a fruit orchard. He is traditionally said to have interested himself in the garden, and to have planted (after 1609) with his own hands a mulberry tree, which was long a prominent feature of it. When this was cut down, in 1758, numerous relics were made from it, and were treated with an almost superstitious veneration (Halliwell-Phillips, i. 411–16). Shakespeare does not appear to have permanently settled at New Place till 1611. In 1609 the house, or part of it, was occupied by the town clerk, Thomas Greene, ‘alias Shakespeare,’ who claimed to be the poet's cousin. His grandmother seems to have been a Shakespeare. He often acted as the poet's legal adviser.
It was doubtless under Shakespeare's guidance that his father and mother set on foot in November 1597—six months after the acquisition of New Place—a lawsuit against John Lambert for the recovery of the mortgaged estate of Asbies in Wilmcote. The litigation dragged on for some years without result. Three letters written during 1598 by leading men at Stratford are still extant among the corporation's archives, and leave no doubt of the reputation for wealth and influence with which the purchase of New Place invested the poet in his fellow-townsmen's eyes. Abraham Sturley, who was once bailiff, writing early in 1598, apparently to a brother in London, says: ‘This is one special Appeals for aid from his fellow-townsmen.remembrance from our father's motion. It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakspere, is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or near about us: he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the instructions you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and would do us much good.’ Richard Quiney, another townsman, father of Thomas (afterwards one of Shakespeare's two sons-in-law), was, in the autumn of the same year, harassed by debt, and on 25 Oct. appealed to Shakespeare for a loan of money. ‘Loving countryman,’ the application ran, ‘I am bold of you as of a friend craving your help with xxxli.’ Quiney was staying at the Bell in Carter Lane, London, and his main business in the metropolis was to procure exemption for the town of Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. Abraham Sturley pointed out to him in a letter dated 4 Nov. 1598 that since the town was wholly unable, in consequence of the dearth of corn, to pay the tax, he hoped ‘that our countryman, Mr. Wm. Shak., would procure us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when, and where, and how.’
The financial prosperity, to which this correspondence and the transactions immediately preceding it point, has been treated as one of the chief mysteries of Shakespeare's Financial position before 1599.career, but the difficulties have been exaggerated. It was not until 1599, when the Globe Theatre was built, that he acquired any share in the profits of a playhouse. But his revenues as a successful dramatist and actor were by no means contemptible at an earlier date. His gains in the capacity of dramatist were certainly small. The highest price known to have been paid to an author for a play by an acting company was 10l.; 6l. was the ordinary rate. (In order to compare the sums mentioned here with the present currency, they should be multiplied by ten.) The publication of a play produced no profit for the author. The nineteen plays which may be set to Shakespeare's credit between 1591 and 1599 cannot consequently have brought him more than 150l., or some 17l. a year. But as an actor his income was far larger. An efficient actor received in 1635 as large a regular salary as 180l. The lowest known valuation set an actor's wages at 3s. a day, or about 45l. a year. Shakespeare's emoluments as an actor in 1599 are not likely to have fallen below 100l.; while the remuneration due to performances at court or in noblemen's houses, if the accounts of 1594 be accepted as the basis of reckoning, added some 15l. Shakespeare's friendly relations, too, with the printer Field, secured him, despite the absence of any copyright law, some part of the profits in the large and continuous sale of his poems. Thus over 130l. (equal to 1,300l. of to-day) would be Shakespeare's average annual revenue before 1599. Such a sum would be regarded as a substantial income in a country town. According to the author of ‘Ratseis Ghost,’ Shakespeare practised in London a strict frugality, and there seems no reason why he should not have been able in 1597 to draw from his savings 60l. wherewith to buy New Place. Whether his income or savings wholly justified his fellow-townsmen's opinion of his wealth in 1598, or sufficed between 1597 and 1599 to meet his expenses, in rebuilding the house, stocking the barns with grain, and in various legal proceedings, may be questioned. According to tradition, Southampton gave him a large gift of money to enable him ‘to go through with’ a purchase to which he had a mind. A munificent gift, added to professional gains, would amply account
