have been obliged to pay above the usance expected a further premium
of seventeen in the hundred, which I pray you to presently repay
me. I am told that shares in the Globe can now be bought at £15;
and inasmuch as yours were bought at £25, should you acquire other
shares at £15, it would serve to equate your havings.

The next letter, from the same broker, is written but a few days later.

THREADNEEDLE STREET, May 12, 1602.

To WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:

Acting as requested by you, I did one week ago buy for you three
shares in the Globe Theatre for £15 each, using in such purchase the
£15 given me by you, and £30, not of mine own, but which was
furnished me by a goldsmith of repute. Yesterday I learned that
shares were offered at £10 each, perchance from the efforts of
forestallers, as also from the preaching of a dissenter, who
fulminates that the end of the world is but three weeks away, which
hath induced great seriousness among the people. Unless you can pay
me, therefore, as much as £40, on the morrow I shall be constrained
to offer such shares to the highest bidder at the meeting of the
guild.

The next letter is also from the same Mordecai Shylock, and is dated
four days later.

THREADNEEDLE STREET, May 16, 1602.

To WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: