ABSTRACT
In his mature years, Shakespeare came into prolonged and intimate contact with the life of the capital, which was not only the centre of national industry and commerce, but was already before Shakespeare’s death showing promise of that cosmopolitan pre-eminence which it has since attained. In Shakespeare’s time, the giving and the taking of credit was part of the daily business of all classes engaged in the larger forms of industry and commerce. In mediæval England no sharp line had been drawn, as a rule, between craftsman and shopkeeper, or between shopkeeper and wholesale merchant. This had been one of the main secrets of progress, just as in Scotland the maintenance of such distinctions by the burghs had been one of the causes of the relative backwardness of their commerce and industry.
