Study Shows Shakespeare As Ruthless Businessman

This April 1 Associated Press article's description of William Shakespeare - "hoarder, moneylender, tax dodger" - says these words aren't usually how we think of the famed dramatist.  Researchers from Aberystwyth University in Wales argue we should:

...we can't fully understand Shakespeare unless we study his often-overlooked business savvy.

''Shakespeare the grain-hoarder has been redacted from history so that Shakespeare the creative genius could be born,'' the researchers say in a paper due to be delivered at the Hay literary festival in Wales in May.

Jayne Archer, a lecturer in medieval and Renaissance literature at Aberystwyth, said that oversight is the product of ''a willful ignorance on behalf of critics and scholars who I think - perhaps through snobbery - cannot countenance the idea of a creative genius also being motivated by self-interest.''

Archer and her colleagues Howard Thomas and Richard Marggraf Turley combed through historical archives to uncover details of the playwright's 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.

''Over a 15-year period he purchased and stored grain, malt and barley for resale at inflated prices to his neighbors and local tradesmen,'' they wrote, adding that Shakespeare ''pursued 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.''    He was pursued by the authorities for tax evasion, and in 1598 was prosecuted for hoarding grain during a time of shortage.

The charge sheet against Shakespeare was not entirely unknown, though it may come as shock to some literature lovers. But the authors argue that modern readers and scholars are out of touch with the harsh realities the writer and his contemporaries faced.

Gives new meaning to the title, Wicked Will.