In this harebrained exploit we are told that he was
taken prisoner, and carried to the keeper's lodge, where he remained
all night in doleful captivity. When brought into the presence of
Sir Thomas Lucy, his treatment must have been galling and humiliating;
for it so wrought upon his spirit as to produce a rough pasquinade,
which was affixed to the park gate at Charlecot.*
* The following is the only stanza extant of this lampoon:-
A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, at London an asse,
If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,
Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it.
He thinks himself great;
Yet an asse in his state,
We allow by his ears but with asses to mate,
If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it,
Then sing lowsie Lucy whatever befall it.
This flagitious attack upon the dignity of the knight so incensed
him, that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put the severity of the
laws in force against the rhyming deer-stalker. Shakspeare did not
wait to brave the united puissance of a knight of the shire and a
country attorney. He forthwith abandoned the pleasant banks of the
Avon and his paternal trade; wandered away to London; became a
hanger-on to the theatres; then an actor; and, finally, wrote for
the stage; and thus, through the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy,
Stratford lost an indifferent wool-comber, and the world gained an
immortal poet.
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