“And still the creature mourn’d its fate, and how it came to pass That Lucy here a scarecrow is, in London town an ass![1] And ended still its sad complaints with offers of its life, twenty hundred times exclaimed, ‘Oh! haven’t you a knife?’ “There’s brawny limbs in Stratford town, there’s hearts without a fear, There’s tender souls who really have compassion on a deer; And last night was without a moon, a night of nights to give Fit dying consolation to a deer that may not live. “The dappled brute lay on the grass, a knife was in its side; Another from its yearning throat let forth its vital tide. It said, as tho’ escaping from the worst that could befall, ‘Now, thank my stars, I shall not smoke on board at Charlecote Hall!’ “Oh, happy deer! Above your friends exalted high by fate, You’re not condemned like all the herds to Lucy’s glutton plate; But every morsel of your flesh, from shoulder to the haunch, Tho’ bred and killed in Charlecote Park, hath lined an honest paunch.” Footnote 1: “In the country a scarecrow, in London an ass!”—_Shakespeare’s Satire on Sir Thomas Lucy._ The household were truly scandalised at this bravado. The night came on, and still the prisoners sang and laughed. In the morning Sir Thomas took his chair of state, and ordered the culprits to his presence. The servants hurried to the cellar—but the birds were flown. How they effected their escape remaineth to this day a mystery, though it cannot be disguised that heavy suspicion fell upon four of the maids. The story went that Shakespeare was a day or two afterwards passed on the London road. This tale was corroborated by John-a-Combes. For, many years afterwards, a townsman of Stratford, who had quitted his native place for the Indies just at the time that Warwickshire rang with the deeds of the deer-stealers, returned home, and amongst other gossip was heard to ask the thrifty money-getter what became of that rare spark, Will Shakespeare, him who entered Sir Thomas’s park at Charlecote. “Marry, sir,” replied John; “the worst has become of him, for after that robbery he went to London, where he turned stage actor, and writ plays, _King Lear_, _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, and such things.” [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] SHAKESPEARE AT “BANK-SIDE”[2]