Thomas Lucy - Shakespeare

Shakespeare

According to tradition the young Shakespeare wrote a lampoon of Lucy at some point in the mid 1580s. This either led to an attempt to prosecute him or to his prudent departure from the area. There are versions of a local ballad mocking Lucy's name and another suggesting his wife was unfaithful. Both were written down by collectors in the late 17th century. The former turns "Lucy" into "lousy",

A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, at London an ass,
If lousy is Lucy as some folks miscall it
Then Lucy is lousy whatever befall it.

Edmond Malone noted a different ballad seemingly ridiculing Lucy's marriage, which was still being sung in Stratford c. 1687–90 when Joshua Barnes heard it and wrote it down. There is no evidence that Shakespeare wrote either ballad.

Another story, first recorded by Richard Davies in the late 17th century, is that the young man was involved in poaching from Lucy's estate. Davies wrote, "Shakespeare was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir ----- Lucy who oft had him whipped and sometimes imprisoned and at last mad him fly his native country to his great advancement." The story was also related by Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, who links it to the ballad, Not true- There was not a herd of deer on Lucy's estate until many years after Shakspear's death.

For this he was prosecuted by that Gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill Usage, he made a Ballad upon him. And tho' this, probably the first Essay of his Poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the Prosecution against him to that degree, that he was oblig'd to leave his Business and Family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in London.

There are no surviving legal records to prove or disprove the poaching incident, or the ballad incident. The poaching story became popular in the Victorian period, appearing in many illustrations and paintings.

Shakespeare is sometimes thought to have satirised Lucy with the character of Justice Shallow, who appears in Henry IV, Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The latter play appears to contain jokes about Lucy's name similar to the "lousy" ballad, when Shallow and his dim-witted relative Slender discuss the "luces" (pike) in their coat of arms, which unintentionally becomes literally lice-ridden when this is misinterpreted as a "dozen white louses". Lucy's coat of arms contained "luces".