hood, went by we can but conjecture. How they came to a close we are told by Shakespeare's first biographer, Rowe: "He had by a misfortune, common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in London." According to Archdeacon Davies, vicar of Sapperton in the county of Gloucester, who died in 1708, Sir Thomas Lucy had the young poacher "oft whipped and sometimes imprisoned", in revenge for which Shakespeare afterwards made him "his Justice Clodpate [Justice Shallow: clodpate meaning foolish] and calls him a great man, and that in allusion to his name bore three louses rampant for his arms". The first stanza of the ballad which Rowe speaks of as lost is given by Oldys on the authority of "a very aged gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Stratford", and it contains the same offensive play on the name Lucy "O lowsie Lucy"—as that in the passage to which Davies refers.

We can hardly doubt that there is a kernel of truth in these traditions. Malone endeavoured to

THE DEER-STEALING STORY.

13

disprove the deer-stealing story by showing that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park at Charlcote; but he may have had deer there; or the scene of the adventure, instead of Charlcote, may have been the adjoining sequestered estate of Fulbroke, over which Sir Thomas, as a local magnate devoted to the crown, may have kept watch and ward. It has been suggested that he may have felt some animosity against the Shakespeare family as possibly having sympathy with the old religion, for Sir Thomas was not only a game preserver but a zealous Protestant. The offence of poaching was commonly regarded at the time by those who did not suffer from it as a venial frolic of youth; "the students of Oxford, the centre of the kingdom's learning and intelligence," says Halliwell-Phillipps, "had been for many generations the most notorious poachers in all England". There can be no doubt that Shakespeare retained some ill-will against the Lucy family. In The Merry Wives of Windsor Justice Shallow fumes with violent indignation against Sir John Falstaff, whom he charges with having beaten his men, killed his deer, and broken open his lodge. We are informed by Slender that in the Shallow coat of arms are a "dozen white luces", translated by Evans, the Welsh parson, with unconscious humour, into "a dozen white louses' which "do become an old coat well". Sir Thomas was a member of that strong Protestant commission which reported that Shakespeare's father did not attend church in 1592 for fear of process for debt, a circumstance which might have kept the early soreness of feeling from subsiding. If it is any satisfaction to us we have some reason to believe

✓

that the barb prepared for Sir Thomas Lucy struck home, and that the family did not forget the mockery of their old coat. A copy of the 1619 Quarto edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor was discovered not very long since among the family records, the only copy of any one of Shakespeare's plays in the early editions found at Charlcote.

§ 8. In what year Shakespeare quitted Stratford we cannot tell; it can hardly have been earlier than <51585, and may have been a year or two later. Nor can we say with certainty how he came to join himself to a company of players. From early childhood he had opportunities of seeing dramatic performances. Perhaps he inherited from his father a taste for the drama; theatrical entertainments, as has been noticed by Halliwell-Phillipps, are first heard of at Stratford-on-Avon during the year of John Shakespeare's bailiffship. While the players declaimed in the Guildhall the boy may have looked on, standing between his father's legs, as his contemporary Willis tells us he did when he saw The Cradle of Security acted before the aldermen and common council of the city of Gloucester. He may have witnessed the performance of the mysteries at Coventry on the > Corpus Christi festival; his phrase "out-herods Herod" is a reminiscence of the ramping and raging king by whose command the innocents of Bethlehem were slaughtered; his comparison of the flea on Bardolph's fiery nose to "a black soul burning in hell-fire" was the grotesque fancy of one who had probably watched the exhibition of the damned with their sooty faces and black and yellow garb in the pageant at Coventry. Various companies of

CONNECTION WITH THE THEATRE.

15

players visited Stratford from time to time and performed under the patronage of the corporation; before Shakespeare forsook his home, says Dyce, "he had doubtless seen the best dramatic productions, such as they were, represented by the best actors then alive". He may have made acquaintance with some of the London players, but the assertion that the famous Burbage was from Warwickshire, and that Thomas Greene, an actor of James I.'s time, was a Stratford man, have been made without sufficient evidence. Leicester's players visited Stratford in 1587; it is supposed by Mr. Fleay that Shakespeare joined them during or immediately after their arrival, and during their travels received his earliest instruction in comic acting from Kempe and Pope, who soon after became noted. performers.1 But this is mere conjecture, and the early traditions do not favour the notion that Shakespeare left his native town with the design of taking to the stage. They rather lead us to believe that after his arrival in London he gradually found his way towards his future profession.

According to a tradition, which is alleged to have come down to us through Sir William D'Avenant, the first employment of Shakespeare in connection with the theatre was that of holding the horses of gentlemen who had ridden to the playhouse. The first building erected (1576) for the exhibition of dramatic performances in England was that known as "The Theatre", situated in the parish of Shoreditch. It was the property of James Burbage, father

1 A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare, by F. G. Fleay, p. 8.

Br. Voye Fichas Burloge

16

INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE.

of Shakespeare's fellow-actor, the great tragedian, Richard Burbage. James Burbage kept liverystables close by Smithfield, and it is an ingenious suggestion of Halliwell-Phillipps that, on arriving in London, Shakespeare may have sold at Smithfield the horse on which he rode up to town, may then and there have made the acquaintance of James Burbage, and may have been employed by him to take care of the horses of Burbage's Smithfield customers who visited the theatre. The tradition adds that Shakespeare made himself popular, and soon had to hire lads to assist him, who, "when Will Shakespeare was summoned were immediately to present themselves, 'I am Shakespeare's boy, sir'"; whence the young lackeys, after their master's fortune had raised him to higher employment, continued to be known as "Shakespeare's Boys". An old parish-clerk of Stratford, towards the close of the seventeenth century, informed visitors that the dramatist was first received into the playhouse as "a serviture", that is, as an attendant on the players. The stage-tradition of a hundred years ago was that he acted as the prompter's assistant, giving the performers notice to be ready when their presence was required on the stage.

§ 9. It is not surprising that Shakespeare's early years in connection with the theatre should have left no record behind them. We know that he did not cut himself adrift from Stratford and his own family, for in 1587 he joined his father in an effort to assign the title of the Asbies property to John Lambert in consideration of the cancelling of the previous mortgage and the payment of £20. But