After the shattering and scandalous crash of 1720, financial pamphleteering boomed, one writer proposing that all bargains made during the Bubble should be construed as made by lunatics and should therefore be annulled. Seven years later he would write The Beggar's Opera. Irrational exuberance pervades the stock market.
Speculators pay ever-higher prices for shares despite scant evidence of underlying value.
Skeptics warn that the bubble will burst. This must be England in 1720. The South Sea Company was founded in 1711 by Robert Harley, who wished to create political allies. The leader of the Tory party and soon to be lord treasurer, Harley wanted an end to the unpopular War of the Spanish Succession. The South Sea Company, as set up by act of Parliament, had a monopoly to conduct England's trade with Spain's colonies in the West Indies and South America.