In middle of 1590s, Shakespeare wrote several plays reflecting on social, moral, and economic problems of debt. Perhaps most obvious of these plays is The Merchant of Venice, in which main plot revolves around an unpaid and relative social and moral standings of man holding and man owing it. However, in Henriad Shakespeare also focuses intently on stresses produced by system of and credit, particularly through behavior and language associated with Falstaffin Henry IV plays. At end of 2 Henry IV, Shakespeare's epilogue employs financial metaphor to beseech audience for good will toward play:I meant indeed to pay you with this, which if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promis'd you I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies. Bate me some, and I will pay you some, and (as most debtors do) promise you infinitely; and so I kneel down before you-but indeed, to pray for Queen. If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? And yet that were but light payment, to out of your debt. (10-20)The convenient first step into jig that typically followed plays attempts to dance out of historical controversy stemming from unfavorable representation of Sir John Oldcastle (later renamed Falstaff) in original Henry IV play.1 However, ending also foregrounds concern with monetary that has been running through both of Henry IV plays, chiefly in two veins: material images of particularly gravitate around Falstaff, and metaphorical uses of imagery are associated with monarchy.The motivation for Shakespeare to feature so prominently in these several plays written over such short span of his career merits critical attention. 2 Although Richard II expresses concern with costs of wars in Ireland and with parasitical effect on national economy of certain courtiers, debts incurred in Richard II are largely political and moral.3 However, as economic challenges deepened in Shakespeare's England in mid-1590s, Shakespeare's history plays added more complex economic layers and metaphors, including introduction of Falstaff's monetary debts, penury of king's soldiers, legal maneuverings to resolve credit disputes, and an implicit political debate over responsibility for and poverty within nation. Shakespeare develops this economic motif across two Henry IV plays, and also carries over this concern into Henry V, tying plays together and generating sustained dialogue about how figures in political and historical concerns of as well as how it is significant for Elizabethan society in 1590s.This is not first article to comment on financial motif in Henry IV plays-debts, purses, and promises of money run throughout plays, and critics have long taken note. H.R. Coursen, for one, has remarked upon metaphorical debts in political world of plays: Indebtedness, robbery, promises to pay and failures to pay, devaluation-commodity-are measurements of Bolingbroke's kingdom (109). Among recent critics, Jesse Lander observes the admittedly obtrusive language of credit and debt (137) in 1 Henry IV in conjunction with counterfeiting of coins and king's image, and Nina Levine has even more pointedly connected sixteenth-century material and social contexts of commerce and credit with depictions of Prince Hal and Falstaffin both Henry IV plays. Levine's account, in particular, makes strong case for reading credit and exchange activities in as parallel to monarchical discourses on power, and community of credit that she describes is compelling and strongly rooted in recent scholarship on material culture. However, while Levine observes in passing way in which instances of credit and exchanges in plays supply a resonant point of reference for world outside play (414), she offers scant account of specific historical conditions of 1590s England beyond broadly conceived community of credit that provides foundation of her interpretation. …