8 
INTRODUCTION. 
information, and we are left to grope our way, so far as 
this important incident is concerned, mainly by the light 
of collateral circumstances. These, it must be admitted, 
serve in some respects to confirm the tradition. Shake¬ 
speare certainly quitted Stratford-upon-Avon when a young 
man, and it could have been no ordinary impulse which 
drove him to leave wife, children, friends, and occupa¬ 
tion, to take up his abode among strangers in a distant 
place. 
“ Then there is the pasquinade, and the unmistakable 
identification of Sir Thomas Lucy as Justice Shallow, 
in the Second Part of Henry IV., and in the opening 
scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor. The genuine¬ 
ness of the former may be doubted; but the ridicule 
in the Plays betokens a latent hostility to the Lucy 
family, which is unaccountable, except upon the 
supposition that the deerstealing foray is founded on 
facts.” 
The more legitimate sport in killing deer was by means 
of blood-hounds, and in The Midsummer Night's Dream 
we are furnished with an accurate description of the dogs 
in most repute :— 
“ My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
So flew’d, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
Crook-knee’d, and dew-lapp’d like Thessalian bulls ; 
Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells, 
