Speculation over Shakespeare’s ‘lost years’, has brought many theories. One is the deer-poaching story, in which the young Shakespeare features as one of several Stratford youths engaged in the fairly regular stealing of deer from Sir Thomas Lucy's park at nearby Charlecote. Having been caught and prosecuted rather harshly by Sir Thomas, he is said to have revenged himself by composing a satirical ballad, which got him into such trouble that he was forced to flee to London. There is no contemporary evidence to substantiate this story, however, this tale was known, from a written record by Richard Davies (1708), to have been circulating at the end of the 17th century, drawing on an oral tradition which must have gone back much further. There is also, in the opening scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor, an exchange between Shallow, Slender and Evans which can be interpreted as a disparaging reference to the Lucy family. Clearly, then, though it would be unwise to accept the story in its fully-blown form, the tale may have had some basis in fact.