Life of William Shakespeare of his plays, presumably as a selling point. There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition to writing many of the plays his company enacted and concerned with business and financial details as part-owner of the company, continued to act in various parts, such as the ghost of Hamlet's father, Adam in "As You Like It", and the Chorus in "Henry V". He appears to have moved across the River Thames to Southwark sometime around 1599. In 1604, Shakespeare acted as a matchmaker for his landlord's daughter. Legal documents from 1612, when the case was brought to trial, show that
The Plays of William Shakespeare debt was soon repaid by Tonson, who had contracted Johnson to publish the work; this motivated Johnson to finish the edition to repay the favour. Although it took him another seven years to finish, Johnson completed a few volumes of his "Shakespeare" to prove his commitment to the project. Johnson admitted to John Hawkins, "my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of." However, the money was not a strong enough motivator and in 1758, partly as a way to avoid having