His Life and Genius 117 



Stratford and leaving school, and may therefore 

 have been both butcher's boy and attorney's 

 office-boy. 



All the more probable, seeing that he was not 

 a tame-spirited bey who always behaved quietly 

 and never got into mischief ; like that of most 

 boys, his conduct was wild and unruly sometimes. 

 Two undeniable events of his youthful life are 

 certainly significant. He was prosecuted and 

 punished for deer-poaching in Charlecote Park, 

 and is said to have retaliated by a lampoon fixed 

 to the gates of its owner, Sir Thomas Lucy, 

 whom, later in life, he rudely and vindictively 

 caricatured as Justice Shallow ; after which, to 

 avoid further pains and penalties, as alleged, he 

 hastily left Stratford. Before that, however, he 

 had plunged into a more serious trouble from 

 which he could not quite run away ; he had 

 married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years 

 older than himself, when he was not yet nineteen 

 years old, apparently forced to so early and 

 imprudent a marriage by the unlucky conse- 

 quence of an out-blaze of youthful passion. The 

 marriage took place on November 25, 1582, and 

 his first child was baptised six months after, on 

 May 6, 1583. As he had two more children 

 (twins) before he was twenty-one years old, there 

 were no doubt good reasons, besides probably 

 the spur of an instinct to gain a fuller life — " as 

 one that leaves a shallow plash to plunge him in 



