Malone may be said to have raised the deer-stealing incident in Shakespeare's early life to a degree of importance that it hardly deserved, considering the commonness of the offence about the period when our great dramatist is generally supposed to have left Stratford-upon-Avon for London. Malone's argument, which Gifford thought too long drawn out, was, that as Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, therefore he could have no deer; and consequently that Shakespeare could not have stolen deer which the old knight did not possess. It is evident that this reasoning is inconclusive, because, taking it even for a point established that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, it is not thereby proved that he had no deer. To shew then that he had deer, or at all events to shew the probability that he had deer, I adduced the fact in my Life of Shakespeare, that when Lord Keeper Egerton entertained Queen Elizabeth shortly before her death, Sir Thomas Lucy made him a present of a buck as a contribution to the feast. Here again the evidence was clearly inconclusive, because Sir Thomas Lucy might have given the buck to Sir Thomas Egerton, without having any deer in his park, or even in his possession. Nevertheless, considering the manners of the time, it was not at all likely that he should have done so; and I believe that of late years it has been generally supposed that Sir Thomas Lucy, if he had not a park, had deer; and that it was possible, therefore, that Shakespeare should have been involved in some poaching affair, and might have quitted his native town for the metropolis to avoid proceedings against him.
