"Over a 15-year period he purchased and stored grain, malt and barley for resale at inflated prices to his neighbors and local tradesmen," they wrote, adding that Shakespeare "pursued those who could not (or would not) pay him in full for these staples and used the profits to further his own money-lending activities." However, a new study has found that he was repeatedly prosecuted and fined for illegally hoarding food, and threatened with jail for failing to pay his taxes, The Sunday Times reported.  Bad Bard: a tax dodger and famine profiteer 
 
 Jonathan Cake as Coriolanus: the play is set during a famine (Mark Ellidge) 
 
 FOR centuries it has been regarded as a plea for the starving poor, but could Shakespeare’s Coriolanus have been his way of trying to expunge a guilty conscience? The research sheds new light on Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus - written around the time of a 1607 peasant revolt in the Midlands - which centres on riots over grain-hoarding by the wealthy few.
– William Shakespeare was, of course, an acclaimed playwright—but according to researchers, he was also a grain hoarder, tax evader, and all-around "ruthless" businessman. "Shakespeare the grain-hoarder has been redacted from history so that Shakespeare the creative genius could be born," say the academics in a paper that will be presented at a May literary festival. They paint the picture of a grain merchant and landowner who got rich by buying and storing grain, malt, and barley, which he resold at higher prices during times of famine, the AP reports. He then "pursued those who could not (or would not) pay him in full for these staples and used the profits to further his own money-lending activities," according to the paper. Shakespeare was actually prosecuted in 1598 for hoarding grain during a food shortage, and that's not all: He was also wanted for tax evasion. He was fined for both, and threatened with jail over the tax issue, reports the Telegraph, citing the Sunday Times. The AP notes that these details weren't entirely unknown, and one of the researchers says critics and scholars tend to ignore this information because they "cannot countenance the idea of a creative genius also being motivated by self-interest." But, she adds, these details actually inform Shakespeare's work: In Coriolanus, for example, the people complain when rich merchants exploit the famine in order to maximize profits; and in King Lear, "there is a very subtle depiction of how dividing up land also involves impacts on the distribution of food."