Middlemarch vocabulary

According to Rowe, [Shakespeare] fled to escape from the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote-park, near Stratford, from whose park he and some other young men had stolen deer [...] The knight, we are told, was indignant and vindictive, and the transgressor took his revenge by writing and affixing to the gate of Charlecote-park a satirical ballad, of which the first stanza has been preserved [...] His biographers in general are of opinion that his resentment against his persecutor did not die out, and that after his death and the lapse of many years he ridiculed him in the character of Justice Shallow in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

George Eliot. Middlemarch