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for searching only. the world's greatest dramatist, instead of repeatedly whipping and imprisoning him as in Davies till he made him fly to advancement. Davies tells something of a peasant version and Rowe a gentleman's, but the fundar mental story is exactly the same.
In both stories also, Shakspere revenges himself by caricaturing Lucy. Davies says Shakspere made Lucy "his justice Clodpate and calls him a great man & y' in allusion to his name bore three lowses rampant for his Arms." There is no justice CIodpatela in Shakspere, of course, the allusion being to justice Shallow. And Justice Shallow had a dozen white lutes, which Sir Hugh Evans understood as a dozen white louses in his coat, not "three lowses rampant" as Davies had heard. The three lutes were the actual arms of Sir Thomas Lucy. So the informant of Davies knew the actual arms of the Lucy family. Rowe happens to know both Merry Wives and the Lucy arms. So Falstaff is in Rowe's version a deer-stealer, and Shakspere has given justice Shallow
very near the same Coat of Arms which Dugdak, in his Antiquities of that County, describes for a Family there, and makes the Welsh Parson descant very pleasantly upon 'em.
Rowe feels quite safe, for he knows that Dugdale has recorded "very near the same Coat of Arms" for a family near Stratford as Sir Hugh emphasizes for justice Shallow in Merry Wives. For Rowe considers that Dugdale and Merry Wives confirm each other to authenticate the story. This is the same process almost exactly by which the story had been created in the first place.
So far, it is clear that Davies has the fundamental story. In Davies, Shakspere is still the !laming youth, getting into mischief with reckless abandon and being forced to London and fame. But in Rowe run-away Shakspere has been toned up. Betterton and Rowe have the church records, which make of Shakspere a family man in a considerable way before he left Stratford. Shakspere can no longer be permitted to follow his dramatic urge to the big city and fortune at eighteen about 1582. Nor can he run from his butcher-master at the same approximate age. Neither can he be the persistently wildish and irresponsible poaching youth of the story recorded by Davies. So he is misled into the rather gentlemanly prank of deer-stealing only-no rabbits now-by ill companions. Rowe had his eye on Merry Wives again. For actually Falstaff had stolen only deer, as Rowe was a sufficiently careful and scholarly reader to know. Rowe and Betterton with their church records are clearly responsible for the change of Shakspere to a family man, and since this new position has been the occasion of toning up the prank into greater respectability, it follows that they are responsible also for these additions to the legend. So far, then, Davies has the authentic tradition, and the additions of Betterton and Rowe are only embroidered inferences in the light of the church records and Merry Wives. They are thus of no value on the fundamental question of the authenticity of the story.
But Shakspere must become not merely a more genteel person better to
is "A favourite character in the once popular comedy of Epsom Wells, 16g3, whose name was for many years the generic appellation of a foolish magistrate" (Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., Observationj on
TÃhe Charleeote 7~aditi0hs, P. 24).
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