My earnest epistle to thee of four days since having elicited no
response, I did on the following day offer at the meeting of the
Brokers' Guild some of the shares of the stock in the Globe pledged
to me, and three shares were bidden at £9 each by my brother,
Nehemiah Shylock. As I offered next all the rest, one Henry
Wriothsley, Earl of Southampton, did ask to whom the shares
belonged, and when he was enlightened, did straightway take all the
shares and pay me the whole balance owing, and called me divers
opprobrious names. I answered not his railing with railing, for
sufferance is the badge of all our tribe, but such slander is illy
bestowed on one who has been your friend for long, and who was but
striving to avert his own destruction.

The next letter in order is from one William Kempe, who would seem to be
the business manager of the Globe Theatre, or the person having in
charge the unskilled labor connected with the playhouse.

GLOBE PLAYHOUSE, EMPLOYMENT BUREAU, May 25, 1602.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:

In much tribulation do I write thee as to the contention which hath
arisen among our stock actors and supes of the Globe. Nicholas
Bottom, whom you brought from the Parish workhouse in Stratford, is
in ill humor with thee in especial. He says when he played with you
in Ben Jonson's comedy, "Every Man in his Humor," he was by far the
better actor and did receive the plaudits of all; despite which he
now receives but 6 shillings each week, while you are become a man
of great wealth, having gotten, as he verily believes, as much as