Desires of Credit in Early Modern Theory and Drama traces the near-simultaneous rise of economic theory, literary criticism, and public theater in London at the turn of the seventeenth century, and posits that connecting all three is a fascination with creating something out of nothing simply by acting as if it were there. Author Brian Sheerin contends that the motivating force behind both literary and economic inquiry at this time was the same basic quandary about the human imagination--specifically, how investments of belief can produce tangible consequences. Just as speculators were...