The confessions of William Henry Ireland, containing the particulars of his fabrication of the Shakespeare Manuscripts;

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Introduction

In the annals of literary imposture, there is not a more striking instance of boldness on the one side and downright gullibility on the other, than that which is known to Shakespearian Students as the Ireland Forgeries. The contriver and perpetrator of these forgeries, was a young fellow in his eighteenth year, having but a moderate acquaintance with literature of any kind (even for one of his age), with very little knowledge of that of the Elizabethan period, and ignorant, entirely and absolutely ignorant, of the paleography, of the manners and customs, and even of the orthography of the period to which the papers that he produced pretended to belong. On the other hand, his dupes were, the most of them, men of mature years, of literary training, and strangest of all, in many cases scholars who had made the

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literature of the Shakespearian period their special study. Notwithstanding these extraordinary conditions, his success was for a while almost complete. Only a very few scholars and Shakespearian critics stood out against the authenticity of the manuscripts which he brought forward with a rapidity, which, alone should have alarmed credulity, supplying as he did, every want that was expressed, complying with every hint that was dropped, every suggestion that was made, and doing this with such unfailing promptitude and precision, that, looking back now at his proceedings, we wonder that, all other occasions of doubt apart, his dupes did not see that he was deceiving them to order, and that he was practising literally upon the maxim, Populus vult decipi et dicipiatur.

There is yet another reason for astonishment at the success of such a clumsy literary forgery. For only a few years had passed since " the marvellous boy" Thomas Chatterton, who was to William Ireland as an eagle to a mousing owl, had delighted and deceived the literary world with his famous Rowley manuscripts, the intrinsic

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merit of which, no less than the cleverness of their execution, was as far above Ireland's stupid and awkward performances as his ability and (notwithstanding his deceit) his moral tone were above the others. This imposture had been thoroughly exposed, and the poet-forger, dying by his own hand in abject wretchedness of soul and body, had been in his grave only twenty-five years, neither he nor his imposture forgotten (for editions of the Rowley poems and critical discussions as to their authenticity had been published at brief intervals since poor Chatterton's first venture), when an attorney's clerk older than Chatterton was even at his death, but still a boy, began to figure before the world in the person — of all men — of William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare himself has given us the key to the mystery of such a success. As " a jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it," so the success of an imposture depends chiefly upon the receptive disposition of those who are selected as its victims. In the last quarter of the last century, London was just in the mood to

X INTRODUCTION.

receive eagerly and credulously, any plausible pretence of discovery in the field of Shakespearian research. Shakespeare had first then attained that pinnacle of fame, to which succeeding years have only confirmed his title. Thirty years before, a crowd of more or less intelligent worshippers, led by David Garrick, had celebrated Shakespeare's birthday at Stratford-on-Avon, in a harmless but somewhat ridiculous jubilee, the fervour of which was somewhat dampened by a pouring rain ; and from that time forward, the fever grew apace. Shakespearian comment and annotation grew with it. Editors criticised Shakespeare and each other ; not always with equal love, if with equal wisdom. Commentators attacked editors, dipping their pens in gall, and finding their inspiration in draughts spiced with venom. Books of plays and poems in the Elizabethan period began to rise in price, owing to the demands of Shakespearian collectors, who were then as now not always Shakespearian students. Bookstalls were overhauled, garrets and lumber rooms were ransacked ; and happy was he who unearthed some

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black-letter play or pamphlet, worthless except for the fact of its having been written in the days of good Queen Bess or Gentle Jamie. Enough of Shakespeare's mulberry lay seasoning in cabinets, to have furnished beams and rafters for the restoration of New Place, then levelled with the ground. Portraits of Shakespeare of more or less inauthenticity, were brought forward for the delight of curious eyes ; and upon their claims to attention, articles and even books were written. Then Alderman Boy dell, afterwards Lord Mayor, an art publisher and picture dealer, who " had / a taste," and also a fortune, was preparing to bring out that stupendous and stupid series of illustrations of Shakespeare's dramas, which, notwithstanding the large sums he received for it, brought him to ruin.

It was upon a public in this mood that the young son of Samuel Ireland, well known as a dealer in antique books and prints, was tempted to palm off a series of papers, professing to be written by Shakespeare or by his friends and contemporaries in relation to him, and which begin-

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ning with aJease to which the dramatist's signature was forged, and rising to the manuscripts of King Lear and of Hamlet, culminated in a tragedy never before heard of, "Vortigern," which was actually produced at Drury Lane Theatre, as Shakespeare's, with John Philip Kemble in the principal part ! From this height, the young impostor fell suddenly and headlong. The play was damned on its merits, and just then Malone had completed ancj published his " Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers, &c.," which exploded the whole ridiculous sham, and left all concerned in it, whether as actors or as dupes, the laughing-stock of the world for ever after.

When we look at the papers that young Ireland produced, the history of the fabrication of which is given with naif detail in the following pages, it is amazing that it was thought necessary that a Shakespearian scholar of Edmund Malone's acquirements and ability, should write an octavo volume of more than four hundered pages, to prove that the " Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the hand and seal of

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William Shakespeare" (for that was the title under which an account of them with facsimiles was published by this young fellow's father) were spurious. The two books are the best evidence that could be produced of the great advance that has been made, not only by special students, but by the whole literary class in the knowledge of English Literature and antiquities. Were such papers as Ireland's brought forward now as manuscripts of Shakespeare's day, not to say as the product of his own hand, they would not receive serious attention for an hour. And even at that time they should have been brushed aside at once as the products of combined ignorance and impudence. Their very orthography ought to have been sufficient warrant for such treatment, even by the merest sciolist. What would any man who is but slightly read in the literature of the Elizabethan period say, if he were asked to accept as genuine the following professed " Address to the Readers" of King Lear ? —

" Iffe fromme Masterre Hollinneshedde I have inn somme lyttle deparrtedde fromme

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hymme, butte thatte Libbertye will notte I truste be blamedde bye mye gentle Readerres.

"WM Shakspeare."

Such English, and, moreover, such spelling, is not only absurd as the production of Shakespeare's age, but as that of any other. Malone showed, what there should not have been a day's necessity for his showing, that this is the spelling of no period of English literature. It is merely the product of a very ignorant person's attempt to imitate old spelling by a copious addition of double consonants and final e's to all the words to which he could venture to add them. The whole imposture was of a piece with this. There was not a line of it that was more worth serious attention. Malone showed that in these papers were some words that were unknown in the Elizabethan period, and others used in senses then undeveloped from them. It may be worth our while to examine, with him, one brief, but very characteristic specimen of these forgeries. It is a pretended autograph letter from Queen Elizabeth to the player and playwright.

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" Wee didde receive your prettye verses goode Masterre William through the hands off our Lorde Chamberlayne & wee do complemente thee orme theyre great excellence. Wee shalle departe fromme Londonne toe Hampstowne forre the holydayes, where wee shalle expect thee with thy beste Actorres that thou mayeste playe before ourselfe toe amuse usse bee notte slowe butte come to usse bye Tuesdaye nexte asse the lord Leycesterre wille be withe usse.

" Elizabeth B."

Apart from the spelling of this letter, which is simply ridiculous, particularly masterre, actorres, forre, asse, and usse, and from, the fact (astonishing when we consider the circumstances under which, the purpose for which, and the success with which, it was produced) that the handwriting in no part bears the least resemblance to that of Elizabeth, it contains words which would prove it spurious, even if its spelling were that of its pretended period, and its handwriting a perfect imitation of that of the person by whom it professes to have been

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written. Compliment, as a verb conveying' an expression of approbation, esteem, and pleasure, was not in use before the death of Elizabeth, and is almost unknown in literature until nearly fifty years later. - A like objection holds good against amuse, in the sense of " divert/' " entertain agreeably." In Elizabeth's time, and for a generation later, amuse was a reflective verb, meaning, "to be absorbed in thought upon f " to be wrapt up in." A man himself was amused in this or that subject, but he never amused another, either seriously or jocosely. The meaning of the word then was much like that which is now expressed by bemuse. Another word in this letter, ourselfe, has a very strange look in writing of its professed date. It was then rarely if ever written other than as two words, our self; until late in the seventeenth century we find my self, thy self and so forth. It is not surprising that an ignorant young attorney's clerk should make these mistakes, or that in writing manuscripts, which professed to be of Shakespeare's time, he should use accede, upset, and composition, in the sense of a writing, or that he should

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make Shakespeare style a nobleman, and lie but an earl (Southampton), "his Grace/' or that he should write down sums of money in Arabic numerals, all of which are glaring anachronisms. And altogether disregarding such evidence as we have as to Shakespeare's habits, and equally indifferent to the dramatic custom of the time, he makes him, on the one hand, carefully docket and file away the letter which he receives, and on the other, engage in the publication of his plays, at least in so far as to be concerned about the opinion of his readers. That William Ireland should have made such blunders is not surprising, but that he should nevertheless have filled all London, and indeed all reading England, with excitement over his wonderful discoveries, and have numbered scholars and critics of not undeserved eminence amongst his dupes, is passing strange. But he gave these people only what they were craving, and were eager to swallow, and as they cried for more he fed them according to their appetite and capacity of belief. Some idea of the "intelligent public's " state of mind in the last respect,

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and of the unbounded presumption of the young adventurer, may be gathered from the facts that he professed to be able to produce Shakespeare's library, to the extent of ten or eleven hundred volumes, and also a full length portrait of him, painted in oil colours. Moreover, he declared that the unknown gentleman, living in a nameless place, in whose house he asserted that he had all these wonderful, priceless, and theretofore unheard-of things, said, that as they had been bequeathed by Shakespeare to a friend named William Ireland (by a deed forged by this young fellow), and as William Henry Ireland (the forger) was a direct descendant of the former, they were his by right of descent !

All this monstrous stuff was believed even by such men as Parr, and Wharton, and Chalmers. It is quite in character that Dr. Johnson's " Bozzy," after a tumbler of warm brandy and water, should utter his Nunc dimittis, because he " had lived to witness that day," and that he should kneel down, and suiting the action to the word, say, " I now kiss the invaluable relics of our bard, and thanks to God

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that I have lived to see them ;" but that Parr or Wharton should have been so imposed upon by the pretended profession of faith by Shakespeare, as to pronounce it superior to anything in the Liturgy of the English Church, is indeed amazing. The capacity of unquestioning belief, and the eagerness to be deceived on the part of some of those men, and they by no means the least learned, received its crowning illustration when on the first publication of the impudent young fabricators confession of his imposture, they refused to believe him, and insisted that his confession was false, and that the papers were genuine. A new controversy arose, but it was almost entirely on one side, the controvertists being mostly Ireland's dupes. There were defences, and apologies, and refutations, the titles of all of which are embalmed in the catalogues of Shakespeariana, the books themselves being now never looked at except by professed Shakespearian critics and commentators, hardly even by them, so entirely dead is the question which they discussed with so much bitterness, and in some cases with no little acuteness and

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learning. The most interesting of them all is Chalmers's " Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers," which, directed against Malone in a very carping, sneering spirit, is not without value to the student of Elizabethan literature, although it did not materially aifect the soundness of Malone s argument.* The latter, however, had the advantage — singular in such controversies — of being confirmed by the full and minute confession of the culprit, whose guilt was its object of proof — a confession which is, in itself, one of the most amusing and instructive revelations of human credulity in the annals of literature. And thus this astonishing imposture collapsed, even more

* Malone ushered in his book with these two quotations : —

" It is plain that in this slippery age we live in, it is very easy to make a book look as old as you would have it." — Lord Chief Justice in Lady Ivy's case: State Trials, vol. vii., p. 572.

11 But hear me further : Japhet, 'tis agreed,

"Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read, —

In all the courts of Pindus guiltless quite ;

But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write."

Pope.

Counsels, these, which 'all lovers of old books and manuscripts- would do well, and would have done well, to bear in mind ; but which have been sadly neglected, as we shall see.

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suddenly than it had been puffed up. It was the ruin of a very clever young man, one, who if he had not been branded by the stigma of imposture, might have achieved an honourable position in literature. Worse plays than " Vortigern" have been performed with success. It could not sustain the name he laid upon it, but an inferior reputation would not have been injured by its authorship, although this young fellow wrote it in two months.

Ireland's was the first Shakespearian forgery of importance. The last which has been discovered and fully proved had for its object only the establishment of the periods at which some of the plays were written, by a record of their performance at court at certain dates. An account of the circumstances of this forgery seems appropriate in this place. Little was said about it at the time of the discovery ; the most that was revealed having been told in an article in the London Athenceum, and even that consisted chiefly of extracts from the book in which the forged record was first published, with the announcement that the professed record of the performances at

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court had been pronounced a forgery. The affair is of so much interest that I shall tell the story as I learned it from the Rev. Alexander Dyce.

So long ago as the year 1842, Mr. Peter Cunningham, a clerk in the Audit Office, Somerset House, London, a gentleman cf some literary and antiquarian acquirements, edited a volume entitled, "Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James L, from the Office Book of the Masters and Yeomen." This volume was published by the Shakespeare Society, in the council of which were the Marquis of Normandy, Lord Francis Egerton (Earl of Ellesmere), the Reverend Alexander Dyce, Mr. John Payne Collier, Mr. George L. Craik, Mr. James Orchard Halliwell, Mr. William Macready, Mr. Henry Milman, Mr. Henry Talfourd, Sir Frederick Madden, Mr. Thomas Wright, and Mr. Cunningham himself. The council of the society did not assume any responsibility for the opinions expressed in the books it published ; but it was responsible for the genuineness of what it gave its members for their fees and

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dues ; that is, that its books should be what they professed to be, and from this responsibility the council never shrank. The social and literary position of its members was such, that the genuineness of whatever bore its imprimatur was accepted without question. Mr. Cunningham's book was a reprint of the accounts and expenditures from the royal privy purse for masks, revels, plays, and interludes, at court, from the year 1517 to 1612. The particularity of the entries in the account books, and the fact that they extend over the time which is known as the Elizabethan period of our drama, made this volume one of much interest to every student and lover of English dramatic literature.

But two of the little account books which Mr. Cunningham republished contained four pages which excited more interest than all the rest together. For on three pages of the book for 1604 — 5 were records of the performance at the palace " by his majesties plaiers " of these plays among others : " The Moor of Venis " " A play of the Merry Wives of Windsor" "A play called ' Mesur for Mesur/ " " The play of Errors,"

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" A play of Loves Labours Lost " " Henry the Fift" "A play of the Marchant of Venis ;" and in the margin which professed to give the names of "the Poets wch mayd the plaies " these were said to have been written by " Shaxberd." In another account— that for 1611 — 12 — " A play called the ' Tempest ; " was recorded as having been performed on Hallowmas night, and one " called ' Ye Winters Night Tayle ' n as having been presented on the 5th of November. Contemporary record as to Shakespeare and his works is so rare that these were accepted as of no small value, not the least of which was that they were of service in determining the date of the production of some of Shakespeare's plays, as to which we have no direct evidence ; and for twenty-five years this part of Mr. Cunningham's reprint of the " Account of the Revels at Court " was accepted without question as authority by Shakespearian scholars.

The story about the book had passed out of mind, though not out of memory, when in the summer of 1868 an oldish, broken down man appeared at the British Museum

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and presented for sale a manuscript volume which contained, he said, records of much value about the early English drama and which "his friend Mr. Collier said was worth sixty guineas." This man was Peter Cunningham ; and the volume was that one of the " Revel's Accounts " which contained the record of the performance of nine plays by " Shaxberd." The volume was retained for examination before purchase, was found to be public property, and was of course held as such. So interesting a volume attracted the attention of the experts of the Audit Office, and they very soon discovered that although the book was genuine, that part of it which was of greater interest than all the rest, the leaves containing the record of the performance of Shakespeare's plays was a forgery, a gross forgery from beginning to end. Sir Thos. Duffus Hardy of the Rolls Court, than whom there was no better authority in England, not excepting Sir Frederick Madden himself, so pronounced it, and so did the distinguished Shakespearian scholars, the Rev. Alexander Dyce and Mr. J. O. Halliwell, although they had founded part of their editorial labours upon

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it. As to the other book, the accounts of 1611—12, in which " The Tempest " and "A Winters Tale " are mentioned, there appears to have been some doubt. In the Audit Office and by Sir Thos. Duffus Hardy, that also was, I believe, held to be a forgery ; but other experts believed that it was genuine. It is to be remarked that the former and more important entries were made upon two leaves lying loose in the volume, and that these leaves, and these only of all the volume had in the margin the names of the writers of the plays. There was other writing upon the margins, generally mere index words for convenience of reference ; but here only in the course of thirteen books, which when put into print make two hundred and twenty-six octavo pages, wTas the name of the author of a play, mask, or interlude given. This circumstance in itself, of which no notice seems to have been taken when the book was published, casts great suspicion upon the pages on which these records appear ; and when it is found that they are loose and were never bound into the volume, suspicion approaches certainty. But the

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evidence of the writing itself is held to settle the question at once for any person familiar with old manuscript.

It seems very strange that all this passed unnoticed when the volume was published. Sir Frederick Madden, Mr. Halliwell, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Wright and Mr. Collier, all of them members of the Council of the Shakespeare Society, must, it would seem, either of them, have detected the forgery if they had given Mr. Cunningham's old book ten minutes' proper examination. It must be that it was accepted upon his word and his recommendation, and was printed and uttered to the world with the authority of the Society without any examination whatever. But whatever their confidence in Mr. Cunningham's character and their knowledge of his position, it would seem that the natural interest of such men in such a matter would have led them, for their own pleasure and satisfaction, to look so closely at the old book that the spurious character of these leaves would have been at once detected. But the eagerness for personal details about Shakespeare and his plays, which has been the chief stock in

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trade of forgers from Ireland's time down, seems not to have failed even in this instance, and in such a body of men ; and the book was accepted and went forth without the expression of a doubt under the imprimatur of the Shakespeare Society. As to the authorship of the forgery, suspicion of course fell at once upon the man who had brought the old manuscript books to light and edited them, and who after so many years offered them for sale. Mr. Cunningham had a good position and was well connected. But for many years he had given himself up to habits which enfeeble the mind and often destroy the moral sense ; and it is quite possible that to the failure of his memory we owe the evidence which he furnished against himself. His account of the old volume of accounts was, that he found it in the cellar of the Audit Office, Somerset House. Thus the first point against him was that he appropriated this valuable piece of property to himself, and after keeping it for twenty-five years offered it for sale as his own. No man of intelligence would have been so foolhardy in his sober senses.

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Next it was found that in his published volume he omitted one genuine entry which clashed with the forgeries. And finally, Sir Thos. Duffus Hardy had in his possession a small sheet of paper on which were free — not traced — imitations of the hand-writing of several of the persons connected with the Revels in the time of James I. ; and these, it is quite certain, were made by Cunningham. And yet strangely enough this piece of evidence tells at first somewhat in his favour. For this piece of paper is pasted in his own printed copy of the " Revels Book " which he edited ; and this volume he himself gave to — of all men in the world — Duffus Hardy, facile princeps of record readers, as he well knew ; no one better. But the explanation of his offering to sell a stolen public record to the British Museum also explains this otherwise unaccountable conduct. The poor creature's brain had become so muddled, and his memory was so far gone, that he did not remember what he had done, and did not know what he was doing.

The most important question in regard to this wretched affair is ; In what does it

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affect our supposed slender stock of knowledge in regard to Shakespeare ? Happily it proves to be of very little consequence. The only points which the forged passages were supposed to have determined were the fact of the performance of certain of Shakespeare's plays before King James L, and the time before which some of them must have been written. The discovery of the forgery unsettles us as to not more than two of the latter, " Measure for Measure " and the " Tempest." For all the other plays mentioned in both the passages in question we have contemporary authority, which cannot be forged, as to their production before the date under which they appear in the " Bevel Books." And if it should be found, as I am inclined to think it will, that the second book — the one without the names of the poets who made the plays in the margin, is genuine throughout, the date of production of only one play will lose the support it was supposed before to have. This is " Measure for Measure," which carries its period written plainly in its language and its versification. The presence of the one great name in the

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margin should have awakened suspicion ; but it was such a captivating variety of the countless ways of spelling Shakespeare's name, that it won ready acceptance for the

forgery. " By G ," said the facetious

Mr. J. F., when the forgeries and their probable authorship were discussed in London, " I give Peter credit for such an ingenious misnomer as Shaxberd." As to the presentation of the plays at Court, that is a smaH matter. If King Jamie did not choose to have the " Moor of Venice/' "The Tempest," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," " Henry the Fifth " and " The Merchant of Yenice n performed before him, why, only so much the worse for King Jamie.

And now let us hope we have got to the end of Shakespeare forgeries. But who knows ? They have been attempted again and again, have almost always been successful at first, but seem doomed in the end to detection.

R G. W.

Preface

IN the year 1796 I gave to the world a concise pamphlet, in which I avowed myself the fabricator of the manuscripts attributed by me to Shakspeare.

The papers themselves, and the circumstances attending their production, had so highly excited the public curiosity that the whole edition was disposed of in a few hours : and so great has since been the eagerness to procure a copy, that, though originally published at one shilling, a single impression has been sold, in a public auction-room, at the extravagant price of a guinea.

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PREFACE.

This fact was known to many of my friends, who in consequence have often expressed surprise that I did not republish the pamphlet, and have frequently importuned me to do so : but the revival of the subject, I conceived, might rather tend to injure than benefit me as a literary character : besides, I had already suffered much from the agitation of the question, and had reason to wish it might for ever rest in peace. The consideration, however, that I do but injure my own reputation by silently bearing a more than merited portion of obloquy has at length incited me to give a narrative of the facts in the order in which they occurred, and a simple relation of the motives as they arose and operated on my conduct, that the world may be enabled to judge between my contemners and me, and that