Shakespeare's lifetime coincided with the consolidation of modern capitalism, and his plays reveal his interest in economics--defined as a rational system for calculating and comparing the value of commodities--and especially the economics of time. Shakespeare's plays offer a critique of the new capitalism by showing the extent to which it can and cannot be applied to time, the commodity people value most. In "Henry IV," Hal acts as a kind of temporal financier, investing time according to sound economic principles in order to redeem it at a high rate of return. In "All's Well That Ends Well," Helena teaches the king that the value of time is qualitative rather than quantitative, thereby transcending capitalism's assumption that a small amount of time, even if joyful, cannot be more valuable than a longer time, even if of despair. Shakespeare's conception of the laws of economics delineates the outer limits of his romanticism: characters in his plays never reach the utopia of time standing still, but rather attain happiness only as the end product of enduring less desirable times and organizing time to their own advantage. In this way, Shakespeare's characters attain the theatrical illusion of enlarging the boundaries of life and momentarily suspending the tyranny of time. (CC)