Throughout the play there are references to deer and venison in scenes with Justice Shallow, and Shakespeare certainly seems to know his way around a carcase when Falstaff says:
“Divide me like a bribe buck, each a haunch: I will
keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow
of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands.”
Creating the legend
It is of course entirely possible that the poaching legend came after the publication of The Merry Wives of Windsor when the links to Shakespeare’s rural youth were spotted. Another Lucy may have had a hand in this.
Actor and impresario David Garrick’s self-promoting Shakespeare Jubilee festival in 1769 made Stratford-upon-Avon the prime Shakespeare destination that it is today. “Bachelor” George Lucy helped revive the poaching story for this event and no-one knows how heavily embellished the legend became as a result of the Jubilee.
And finally…
In the early 1600s Shakespeare was buying property in Stratford-upon-Avon so was clearly no longer solely based in London and would have been aware of local events. Our volunteer Research Group has recently discovered an account of Thomas Lucy III (the first Sir Thomas’s grandson) being shipwrecked in 1609 – just a year before Shakespeare wrote The Tempest…