SUCCESS

Shakespeare was a successful actor, poet, and playwright with a share in the profits of the Chamberlain’ situation was improving-with help from William's own money-making ventures perhaps? Within a year, the glover's son who's left his home town to seek his fortune in London was able to buy the second largest house in Stratford-New Place-and install his wife and daughters there. Shakespeare had learned his trade- writing and acting-and was now in a position to profit from it.
 

NEW PLAYHOUSES

In 1572 an `Acte for the punishment of Vagabondes’ (someone without a settled home ) had made it necessary for companies of travelling actors to find the patronage of a powerful nobleman to protect them from possible arrest.

THE EXCITEMENT OF THE CITY

London by Elizabethan standards was a huge city of over 200,000 people crammed into narrow streets and dark alleyways, criss-crossed by ditches and drains A dangerous city of thieves, prostitutes, spies and confidence tricksters. A city of enormous contrasts, with the great wealth of nobility, royalty and rich merchants rubbing shoulders with utter poverty and degradation. A place of tremendous energy, where life could be lived to the full, not least because it could be snuffed out at any moment, by murder or disease.