always
entitled to her dower rights. The evidence is thus too slight to be of
value.

Some other motive, then, than unhappiness in married life ought to be
assigned for Shakespeare's departure to London. No doubt, the fact
that his father was now a discredited bankrupt, against whom suits were
pending, had something to do with his {7} decision to better his family
fortunes in another town. Traveling companies of players may have told
him of London life. Possibly some scrape, like that preserved in the
deer-stealing tradition and the resultant persecution, made the young
man, now only twenty-one, restive and eager to be gone.

+The Tradition concerning Deer Stealing+.--Nicholas Howe, in 1709, in
his edition of Shakespeare says: "He had by a misfortune common enough
to young fellows fallen into bad company, and among them, some that
made a frequent practice of deer stealing, engaged him with them more
than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of
Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was persecuted by that
gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to
revenge that ill-usage, he made a parody 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 he was obliged to leave his business and
family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in London." Archdeacon
Davies of Saperton, Gloucestershire, in the late seventeenth century
testifies independently to the same tradition. Justice Shallow in the
_Merry Wives of Windsor_ is on this latter authority to be identified
with Sir Thomas Lucy. He is represented in the play as having come
from Gloucester to Windsor. He "will make a Star Chamber matter of it"
that Sir John Falstaff has "defied my men, killed my deer, and broke
open my lodge." He bears on his "old coat" (of arms) a "dozen white
luces" (small fishes), and there is a lot of chatter about "quartering"
this coat, which is without point unless a pun is intended. {8} Now
"three luces Hauriant argent" were the arms of the Charlecote Lucys, it
is certain. There is some reason then, for connecting Shallow with Sir
Thomas Lucy, and an apparent basis for the deer-stealing tradition,
although the incident in the play may, of course, have suggested the
myth. Davies goes on to say that Shakespeare was whipped and
imprisoned; for this there is no other evidence.

+Early Life in London+.--The earliest known reference t