Note 197a — XII—THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE

I do not think we shall over-estimate the present value of Shakespeare’s income if we multiply each of its items by eight, but it is difficult to state authoritatively the ratio between the value of money in Shakespeare’s time and in our own. The money value of corn then and now is nearly identical; but other necessaries of life—meat, milk, eggs, wool, building materials, and the like—were by comparison ludicrously cheap in Shakespeare’s day. If we strike the average between the low price of these commodities and the comparatively high price of corn, the average price of necessaries will be found to be in Shakespeare’s day about an eighth of what it is now. The cost of luxuries is also now about eight times the price that it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Sixpence was the usual price of a new quarto or octavo book such as would now be sold at prices ranging between three shillings and sixpence and six shillings. Half a crown was charged for the best-placed seats in the best theatres. The purchasing power of one Elizabethan pound might be generally defined in regard to both necessaries and luxuries as equivalent to that of eight pounds of the present currency.