Lend me your ears and I’ll show you how Shakespeare’s entrepreneurial skills were critical to his artistic and commercial success. And I’ll suggest what 21st-century creative entrepreneurs can learn from Shakespeare’s example.

Everyone knows Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language. But did you know he was also a highly successful entrepreneur?

Like Dick Whittington, the young Shakespeare left his rural home town to seek his fortune in London. In common with many entrepreneurs, he didn’t have the benefit of a family fortune or a university education – just his talent, ambition and an enormous capacity for hard work.

In the course of his career in the great city, Shakespeare became a shareholder in an acting troupe called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who beat off fierce competition to become the most famous and successful theatre company in the land. They played to packed houses of paying customers and received regular summons to perform before Queen Elizabeth and King James. Shakespeare rose from the ranks of commoners to the status of a gentleman, taking great pride in the coat of arms he was awarded. And he earned enough money to buy the biggest house in his home town and retire there in comfort.

This story doesn’t quite fit the Romantic image of the starving artist or the poet wandering lonely as a cloud – but Shakespeare lived 200 years before Romanticism, so perhaps we can forgive him.

In fact, if you ask me, entrepreneurship was not only compatible with Shakespeare’s art, it made him a better writer. Read more