Shakespeare was depicted as having been apprehended by a local gamekeeper whilst stealing a deer. Over the years the Lucy family made much of this story, particularly in 1769, the year of Garrick’s festival in Stratford. David Garrick was the most famous actor of his day. The Stratford Corporation commissioned a Gainsborough portrait for the Jubilee and paid him 60 guineas. The original Gainsborough hung in Stratford Town Hall and was destroyed in a fire caused by a cigarette which completely gutted the ballroom in 1946. Our copy hangs in the Charlecote library and shows Garrick leaning against a bust of Shakespeare. Ours is a Nineteenth Century copy and has been described as a notable relic.

Garrick’s Jubilee took place over three days in September 1769 and was attended by large numbers of nobility and gentry . Garrick had written a play called Jubilee. Unfortunately it poured with rain and the amphitheatre was flooded and the Grand procession was abandoned and special fireworks brought up from London were washed out. The procession would have consisted of 170 Shakespearean characters from 19 different plays. Many of the participants were famous actors and the costumes were borrowed from the Drury Lane Theatre. Garrick later staged it there and it was the hit of the season allowing him to recoup some of his losses.
But the Jubilee brought the deer-stealing legend to life and visitors drove out from Stratford to Charlecote. A barn was named as the Shakespeare barn and there was a Shakespeare collapsing style. The villagers of Charlecote sold souvenirs selling bits of Shakespeare’s cloak, bits of horn from the buck he poached and wooden ornaments from the mulberry tree where Shakespeare rested in his later years.
So what do we make of this?

In the Charlecote Collection we still have the coat Bachelor George had made for attending the Garrick Festival