Scores of business advice manuals, double-entry handbooks, and trade publicity briefs give the early modern merchant help on guaranteeing the value of his word. The Rhetoric of Credit looks at the rhetorical handling of the just price of goods, cash and credit; analyses the uses of the heroism in trade; shows how the ethos of the merchant is enhanced in dealing with bankruptcy and sovereign dept, and distinguishes between miser and usurer. Such shifts between the fields of social and financial credit structure the three plays that it goes on to examine: If You Know Not Me (1), The Alchemist, and Eastword Ho!