![Houghton MS Hyde 60 (4) - William Henry Ireland - Copy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Houghton_MS_Hyde_60_%284%29_-_William_Henry_Ireland_-_Copy.jpg)
The Ireland Shakespeare forgeries were a
cause célèbre
A cause célèbre (,''Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged'', 12th Edition, 2014. S.v. "cause célèbre". Retrieved November 30, 2018 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/cause+c%c3%a9l%c3%a8bre ,''Random House Kernerman Webs ...
in 1790s London, when author and engraver
Samuel Ireland announced the discovery of a treasure-trove of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
an manuscripts by his son
William Henry Ireland
William Henry Ireland (1775–1835) was an English forger of would-be Shakespearean documents and plays. He is less well known as a poet, writer of gothic novels and histories. Although he was apparently christened William-Henry, he was known ...
. Among them were the manuscripts of four plays, two of them previously unknown.
Upon the release of the manuscripts, such respected literary figures as
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer ...
(biographer of
Samuel Johnson) and poet laureate
Henry James Pye
Henry James Pye (; 20 February 1745 – 11 August 1813) was an English poet, and Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. His appointment owed nothing to poetic achievement, and was probably a reward for political favours. Pye was merely a ...
pronounced them genuine, as did various antiquarian experts.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (30 October 17517 July 1816) was an Irish satirist, a politician, a playwright, poet, and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He is known for his plays such as '' The Rivals'', '' The ...
, the leading theatre manager of his day, agreed to present one of the newly discovered plays with
John Philip Kemble
John Philip Kemble (1 February 1757 – 26 February 1823) was a British actor. He was born into a theatrical family as the eldest son of Roger Kemble, actor-manager of a touring troupe. His elder sister Sarah Siddons achieved fame with him o ...
in the starring role. Excitement over the biographical and literary significance of the find turned to acrimony, however, when it was charged that the documents were forgeries.
Edmond Malone
Edmond Malone (4 October 174125 May 1812) was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.
Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first p ...
, widely regarded as the greatest Shakespeare scholar of his time, conclusively showed that the language, orthography, and handwriting were not those of the times and persons to which they were credited. William Henry Ireland, the supposed discoverer, then confessed to the fraud.
Background
Although Shakespeare's works were readily available in versions both for the learned and for the general public, no satisfactory biography could be constructed. In spite of an intense search by would-be Shakespeare biographers from
Nicholas Rowe to
Edmond Malone
Edmond Malone (4 October 174125 May 1812) was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.
Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first p ...
, only scraps and legends turned up. There was an intense hope and expectation that some documents would surface to fill the gap.
Samuel Ireland was an eager collector of antique relics—his collection included a piece of
Charles II's cloak,
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three K ...
's leather jacket, and
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richar ...
's fruit knife—as well as a Shakespeare enthusiast. While gathering material for a forthcoming book, ''Picturesque Tours of the Upper, or Warwickshire Avon'', he passed through
Stratford on Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon (), commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, north-we ...
, Shakespeare's birthplace, by then already capitalising on this claim to fame, and made inquiries about the life of the dramatist. Although he had the satisfaction of being the first to introduce Shakespeare's crabtree and
Anne Hathaway
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, she was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2 ...
's cottage to the general public, Shakespeare documents eluded him.
His son
William Henry Ireland
William Henry Ireland (1775–1835) was an English forger of would-be Shakespearean documents and plays. He is less well known as a poet, writer of gothic novels and histories. Although he was apparently christened William-Henry, he was known ...
had a fascination with forgery. He was heavily influenced by the novel ''
Love and Madness
''Love and Madness'' is a 1780 English novel by Sir Herbert Croft. It was based on the 1779 murder of Martha Ray, the mistress of Lord Sandwich, by James Hackman. Its full title is ''Love and Madness, a Story too True: in a Series of Letters betw ...
'' by
Herbert Croft which contained lengthy passages on the forger
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Altho ...
. William witnessed his father's frustration first-hand. One moment, in particular, struck him forcibly. Knowing that the furniture and papers from
New Place
New Place () was William Shakespeare's final place of residence in Stratford-upon-Avon. He died there in 1616. Though the house no longer exists, the site is owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which maintains it as a specially-desig ...
, Shakespeare's last residence, had been moved to Clopton house when New Place was demolished, Samuel Ireland reasoned that Shakespearean manuscripts might well be found there. Upon visiting however, he was informed by the current tenant that all the old papers—many of them Shakespeare's—had recently been burned. Samuel Ireland's distress at this news made a strong impression on the young man—even though it later turned out that this story was nothing more than a joke at Ireland's expense. According to the younger Ireland's confessions, it was to please his father that he embarked on the career of literary forgery that would ultimately ruin them both.
First documents
From a chance acquaintance met at a book-binder's the young man learned of a technique for simulating the appearance of ancient writing by using a special ink and then heating the paper. After a trial run creating a couple of relatively insignificant documents, he set out to devise something with Shakespeare's signature. His work at a legal firm gave him access to Elizabethan and Jacobean parchment deeds, so in December 1794 he cut a piece of parchment from one of them, used his special ink to write with and heated it over a candle. The result was a mortgage deed between Shakespeare and his fellow-actor
John Heminges
John Heminges (bapt. 25 November 1566 – 10 October 1630) was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. Along with Henry Condell, he was an editor of the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare ...
on one side, and Michael Fraser and his wife on the other. The text and signature he copied from the facsimile of the genuine 1612 mortgage deed printed in Malone's edition of Shakespeare. Ripping a seal from another early deed, young Ireland attached it to this concoction and presented the result to his father on 16 December. Samuel Ireland accepted it as authentic, and the next day took it to the Heralds' Office, which approved it as genuine.
Asked where he had turned up this deed, William Henry replied that he had found it in an old trunk belonging to a chance acquaintance who did not wish to have his name revealed. Mr. H., as he called him, had freely given him this deed. The young discoverer suggested that there might well be more documents where this had come from, and quickly followed this up with a promissory note from Shakespeare to Heminges—the only such note (had it been genuine) ever discovered from the period.
Further forgeries
With his next discovery William Henry moved from mere forgery to original art. Having learned—apparently from a chance remark by one of his father's friends rather than by research—that
Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton
Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, (pronunciation uncertain: "Rezley", "Rizely" (archaic), (present-day) and have been suggested; 6 October 1573 – 10 November 1624) was the only son of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of S ...
had been Shakespeare's patron, he decided to create correspondence between them. "Doe notte esteeme me a sluggarde nor tardye for thus havyinge delayed to answerre or rather toe thank you for youre greate Bountye," he has Shakespeare write sans punctuation. "
atitude is alle I have toe utter and that is tooe greate ande tooe sublyme a feeling for poore mortalls toe expresse O my Lord itte is a Budde which Bllossommes Bllooms butte never dyes." The Earl of Southampton replies in a similar vein, also sans punctuation, and with a similar spelling: “…as I have beene thye Freynde soe will I continue aughte thatte I canne doe forre thee praye commande me ande you shalle fynde mee Yours Southampton”. To explain how both letters could end up together in the same collection William Henry added a note explaining that Shakespeare’s was a “Copye” of the letter he sent. Samuel Ireland and his friends admired the style of the letters but not the earl’s penmanship; William Henry, not knowing that handwriting of the earl was extant, had written Southampton’s reply with his left hand.
A flood of documents now followed, all coming from Mr. H’s ostensibly-miraculous chest. Shakespeare’s “Profession of Faith” proved he was a Protestant, a letter to fellow-actor
Richard Cowley showed he was "a perfect good natured man", and a letter from
Queen Elizabeth made it clear that he was favoured by the most powerful person in the land. A sketch of himself that accompanied his letter to Cowley showed that he was a wretched draftsman with an impenetrable sense of humour. Described in the letter as a "whysycalle conceyte", it was (as Malone put it) "most truly whimsical, being a miserable drawing of our poet done by himself with a pen, from Martin Droeshout's print of him engraved seven years after his death…." There were also theatrical receipts, contracts, a letter and poem to his future wife,
"Anna Hatherrewaye", and even books from Shakespeare's library, complete with marginal annotations actually signed by the bard himself. Of most interest, however, were a manuscript of ''
King Lear
''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.
It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane ...
'' Shakespeare had prepared for the press, a few stray leaves of "''
Hamblette''", and two previously unknown plays, ''
Vortigern and Rowena
''Vortigern and Rowena'', or ''Vortigern, an Historical Play'', is a play that was touted as a newly discovered work by William Shakespeare when it first appeared in 1796. It was eventually revealed to be a Shakespeare hoax, the product of promi ...
'' and ''Henry II''.
Artifacts on display
From the moment of discovery Samuel Ireland invited friends in to see his new possessions. On 20 December 1794
Sir Frederick Eden came to examine the seal on the Fraser lease. He announced that it represented a
quintain, a device used in lance practice, and the conclusion was that Shakespeare had used it as a play on his own name. In February 1795 however he issued a general invitation to literary men to come to his house and examine them. The exhibition was a roaring success.
Samuel Parr
Samuel Parr (26 January 1747 – 6 March 1825), was an English schoolmaster, writer, minister and Doctor of Law. He was known in his time for political writing, and (flatteringly) as "the Whig Johnson", though his reputation has lasted less well ...
and
Joseph Warton on hearing Samuel Ireland read the "Profession of Faith" proclaimed it superior to anything in the English liturgy.
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer ...
got down on his knees to kiss the relics. Scottish antiquarian
George Chalmers and educator
Richard Valpy visited frequently, and editor
James Boaden, author
Herbert Croft, and poet-laureate
Henry James Pye
Henry James Pye (; 20 February 1745 – 11 August 1813) was an English poet, and Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. His appointment owed nothing to poetic achievement, and was probably a reward for political favours. Pye was merely a ...
(among others) testified publicly to their belief in the authenticity of the papers.
One hitch developed when an alert visitor noted that a document supposedly written by the
Earl of Leicester
Earl of Leicester is a title that has been created seven times. The first title was granted during the 12th century in the Peerage of England. The current title is in the Peerage of the United Kingdom and was created in 1837.
Early creatio ...
was dated 1590, whereas the nobleman had died in 1588. When Samuel Ireland confronted his son with this information, William Henry wanted to burn the document, but his father demurred. He suggested that the document might have been misdated at some later time, and the two agreed to tear off the date. The item was displayed, and subsequently printed, in this mutilated form. At least two scholars, antiquary
Joseph Ritson
Joseph Ritson (2 October 1752 – 23 September 1803) was an English antiquary who was well known for his 1795 compilation of the Robin Hood legend. After a visit to France in 1791, he became a staunch supporter of the ideals of the French Rev ...
and classicist
Richard Porson, correctly recognised the documents as forgeries, and editor
Henry Bate Dudley
The Reverend Sir Henry Bate Dudley, 1st Baronet (25 August 1745 – 1 February 1824) was a British minister, magistrate and playwright. He was born in Fenny Compton, Warwickshire, but in 1763 his father moved the family to Essex to take up a Rec ...
started lampooning the papers as early as 17 February 1795.
As Samuel Ireland did not invite the two greatest Shakespeare scholars of the day, Edmond Malone and
George Steevens
George Steevens (10 May 1736 – 22 January 1800) was an English Shakespearean commentator.
Biography Early life
He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at ...
, to examine the manuscripts, suspicion was aroused. As one writer noted "The publick would certainly have been gratified to know, that these extraordinary MSS. had been deemed genuine by Dr. Farmer, Messrs. Stevens or Malone; whose literary characters might have served as letters of credence." Samuel Ireland later observed that he was "of a different sentiment with regard to the sanction, which his
alone'sinspection would afford them." He did however attempt to get
Richard Farmer to look at the papers without success.
The exhibition, which roused much public excitement, continued for more than a year. On 17 November Ireland and his son carried the papers to St. James's Palace, where the Duke of Clarence and Mrs. Jordan examined them, and on 30 December Ireland submitted them to the Prince of Wales at Carlton House.
''Vortigern and Rowena''
As early as 26 December 1794 William Henry had announced the existence of Shakespeare's unknown play ''Vortigern and Rowena'', but it was not until March that he was able to present his father with the manuscript. It came with Shakespeare's correspondence with a printer purporting to explain why the play was unpublished. Both
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (30 October 17517 July 1816) was an Irish satirist, a politician, a playwright, poet, and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He is known for his plays such as '' The Rivals'', '' The ...
of
Drury Lane Theatre and
Thomas Harris
William Thomas Harris III (born 1940/1941) is an American writer, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter. The majority of his works have been adapted into films and television, the most notab ...
of
Covent Garden expressed an interest in producing the play. Sheridan was the winner in this competition. Prompted by fears that a descendant of Shakespeare might surface to claim the rights to his productions, William Henry produced a deed to prove that one of his ancestors, coincidentally named William Henry Ireland, had saved Shakespeare from drowning, and that Shakespeare had rewarded him with all the newly discovered manuscripts.
Publication of the MSS
Samuel Ireland announced the publication of the papers on 4 March 1795, and the volume itself appeared in December of that year. William Henry had bitterly opposed this move, but his father was determined. Included were such items as the "Profession of Faith," the letter from Queen Elizabeth, and the manuscript of ''King Lear''. ''Henry II'', ''Vortigern'', and the marginalia were excluded from this volume.
Shortly after the appearance of the book Samuel Ireland's neighbour,
Albany Wallis, who had discovered one of the few authentic signatures of Shakespeare, came up with a new and startling discovery. He had turned up a genuine John Heminges signature, and of course it looked nothing like the signatures William Henry had produced. When the forger learned of this problem, however, he soon produced Heminges signatures that resembled the authentic one. It seems, William Henry explained, that there were ''two'' actors named John Heminges active at the time—hence the dissimilar signatures.
The volume was not well received. The first reply was James Boaden's ''A Letter to George Steevens'' (16 January 1796). Boaden concentrated on the manuscript of ''Lear'', observing that if this is Shakespeare's original, and the printed versions contaminated with alterations by the actors, then the players are "at once converted ... into the most elaborate and polished masters of versification, and Shakspeare into a writer without the necessary ear for rhythm—a man who produced a series of harmonious versification by chance, and lost the supreme ascendancy in his art, from the not being able to number ten syllables upon his fingers." He also took aim at the spelling. Samuel Ireland's friends and supporters raced in with replies. Colonel
Francis Webb, writing under the name "Philalethes," argued that as the paper was old the documents must have belonged to Shakespeare's time; there would have been no reason to forge them then; therefore they must be genuine. Matthew Wyatt took potshots at Boaden by contrasting his views as a believer with those after his conversion.
Walley Chamberlain Oulton
Walley Chamberlain Oulton (1770?–1820?) was an Irish playwright, theatre historian and man of letters.
Life
Born in Dublin, he was educated there in a private school. While a schoolboy he achieved some reputation as a writer of farces and musica ...
maintained that the papers were so voluminous that forgery was out of the question. He expressed a hope that ''Vortigern'' would turn out to be genuine, as it might well revitalise contemporary drama. He looked to the judgment of the audience for the play's vindication.
Exposure
Two crushing blows came quickly. The first was the publication of Malone's volume of over four hundred pages on 31 March 1796. Exposing the forgeries in detail, he showed one by one that each document was flawed in its handwriting, its language, its orthography, and its history. The spelling of the documents was not only not that of Shakespeare's time, it was that of no time whatsoever. Numerous historical inaccuracies—not least of which was the reference to the
Globe
A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...
before that playhouse had been built—exposed the forger's ignorance. The handwriting of the Queen and Southampton did not at all resemble authentic examples. Words appearing in the forgeries (''upset'', for example) were not used in Shakespeare's time, or were used in a different sense than that of the papers.
The second blow came two days later, on 2 April, with the failure of ''Vortigern'' at Drury Lane Theatre. The excitement was intense and the crowd volatile; tickets had sold out early and seats were hard come by. While at first the play seemed to be a success with the audience, soon fits of laughter were heard and at one point the play came to a complete halt till order was restored. When Barrymore announced another performance of the play, the audience rebelled, and chaos reigned until the management substituted something else. William Henry Ireland blamed the actors, particularly Kemble, along with a "Malone faction," for the failure of his play. Others attributed it to the quality of the play itself. ''Vortigern's'' opening night was also its final performance.
Aftermath
For the Irelands, father and son, the failure of the play, coupled with Malone's exposure of the hoax, was an unmitigated disaster. Samuel Ireland still believed the papers to be Shakespeare's, and refused to listen to anything his son had to say. William Henry confessed the forgery to his sisters, to his mother, and to Albany Wallis, but his father did not believe his story. The public, not surprisingly, accused Samuel Ireland of the fraud. Sales of his books suffered.
Blaming Malone for his misfortunes, Samuel Ireland set out to write a book that would destroy the scholar's reputation. With the aid of
Thomas Caldecott he attacked Malone for using forensic techniques like handwriting comparison to settle a literary question, rather than relying on taste and aesthetic sensibilities. Concerned for his father's reputation William Henry rushed into print with a pamphlet confessing to the forgeries, and his father replied immediately with a vindication of his conduct in the whole affair. This combination roused suspicions. George Steevens accused the two of collusion:
The hopeful youth takes on himself the guilt of the entire forgery, and strains hard to exculpate his worthy father from the slightest participation in it. The father, on the contrary, declares that his son had not sufficient abilities for the execution of so difficult a task. Between them, in short, there is a pretended quarrel, that they may not look as if they were acting in concert on the present occasion.
The charge would stick. George Chalmers' ''Apology for the Believers'' and Samuel Ireland's ''Investigation'' concentrated on attacking Malone rather than exonerating Samuel, and the public verdict was probably summed up in a print by John Nixon depicting the entire Ireland family engaged in forging the papers.
The culpability of Samuel Ireland remained a controversial topic for years to come. Although his son's ''Confessions'' (1805) did a great deal to establish his innocence, not everybody was convinced. Accounts by
Clement Mansfield Ingleby in 1859 and George Dawson in 1888 took the position that the father was responsible for the forgeries and the son's ''Confession'' was a tissue of lies. The acquisition of Samuel Ireland's papers by the British Museum in 1876, however, provided a wealth of evidence that Samuel was the victim rather than the perpetrator of the fraud, and Ingleby changed his position in his 1881 paper on the Ireland Affair.
Legacy
After Samuel Ireland's death in 1800, the original forgeries, bound in three folio volumes, were sold to
John "Dog" Dent,
MP and bibliophile. The collections passed through several hands before being acquired by
Mary Morley Crapo Hyde (1912—2003) and her first husband, Donald Hyde (1909—1966). She left the volumes to
Harvard's
Houghton Library
Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of ...
after her death.
British writer
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William ...
provides an imaginative account of the Irelands' forgeries in his novel ''The Lambs of London'' published by Chatto & Windus in 2004. In the same year,
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
broadcast
Martyn Wade's play about the forgeries, ''Another Shakespeare''.
Examples of Ireland Shakespeare forgeries
Images of forged signatures and notes of William Shakespeare in ''The courtier of Counte Baldessar Castilio Diuided into foure bookes. Verie necessarie and profitable for young gentlemen and gentlewomen, abiding in court, palace, or place.'' Translated into English by Tho. Hobby. , London : Printed by Thomas Creede, 1603.
''The Courtyer ... done into Englyshe'' by Thomas Hoby. B.L. as catalogued at the British Library
See Notes: With spurious autographs of Shakespeare, forged by Samuel W. H. Ireland.
Image:Castiglione-p1.jpg, Title page
Image:Castiglione-p2.jpg, Title page, verso
Image:Castiglione-p7.jpg, Page B4
See also
*Hitler Diaries
The Hitler Diaries (german: Hitler-Tagebücher) were a series of sixty volumes of journals purportedly written by Adolf Hitler, but forged by Konrad Kujau between 1981 and 1983. The diaries were purchased in 1983 for 9.3 million Deutsche ...
* James Maybrick#Jack the Ripper diary
*Literary forgery
Literary forgery (also known as literary mystification, literary fraud or literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir ...
* Shakespeare authorship question
Notes
In the following DNB refers to Sidney Lee, "Samuel Ireland" in ''Dictionary of National Biography'', London, 1892, volume 29, pp. 31–36.
References
Controversial literature
* James Boaden, ''A Letter to George Steevens'', London, 16 January 1796.
* Philalethes (Francis Webb), ''Shakspeare's Manuscript, in the possession of Mr. Ireland, examined'', 28 January 1796.
* F. G. Waldron, ''Free Reflections on Miscellaneous Papers'', 1 February 1796.
Page images at Internet Archive
Page images at Google Books
* Matthew Wyatt, ''A Comparative Review of the Opinions of Mr. James Boaden'', 3 February 1796. (Included i
Shakespeare Tracts Volume 1: Page images at Internet Archives
* Walley Chamberlain Oulton, ''Vortigern Under Consideration; with general remarks on Mr. James Boaden's Letter'', 15 February 1796.
* Anonymous, ''Precious Relics; or the tragedy of Vortigern rehearsed'', 15 March 1796.
* Edmond Malone, ''An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments'', London, 30 March 1796.
Page images at Internet Archive
* Samuel Ireland, ''Mr. Ireland's Vindication of His Conduct'', London, 6 January 1797. ( Text at Wikisource; Included i
Shakespeare Tracts Volume 1: Page images at Internet Archive
* George Chalmers, ''An Apology for the Believers'', London, 1797.
Page images at Google
* Samuel Ireland, ''An Investigation of Mr. Malone's Claim to the Character of Scholar, or Critic'', London, August 1797. (Included i
Shakespeare Tracts Volume 1: Page images at Internet Archive
)
Accounts of the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries
* William Henry Ireland, ''Authentic Account of the Shakespearian MSS'', 1796. Text at Wikisource
Page images at Google.
* William Henry Ireland, ''Confessions'', 1805.
Page images at Google
* H. C. L., "Ireland and the Shakspere Forgeries," in ''The United States Magazine and Democratic Review'', July and August 1845, pp. 78–86
Page images at Google Books
* Frederick Lawrence, "Remarkable Literary Impostures No. II," in ''Sharpe's London Magazine'', December 1848.
* Anonymous, "The Successful Forgery," in ''Bizarre'', 23 and 30 April 1853.
* Clement Mansfield Ingleby, "W. H. Ireland's Confessions," in ''The Shakespeare Fabrications'', London, 1859, pp. 99–103.
Page images at Google
* T. J. Arnold, "The Ireland Forgeries," in ''Fraser's Magazine,'' August 1860, pp. 167–178.
Page images at Google.
* Anonymous, "Two Impostors of the Eighteenth Century," ''Eclectic Magazine'', July 1879.
* Clement Mansfield Ingleby, "The Literary Career of a Shakespeare Forger," in volume 2 of ''Shakespeare: the Man and the Book'' (London, 1881).
* George Dawson, “Literary Forgeries and Impostures” in ''Shakespeare and Other Lectures'', 1888.
* James Anson Farrer, “The Immortal Hoax of Ireland,” in ''Literary Forgeries'' (London, 1907), pp. 226–249.
Page images at Google
* John Mair, ''The Fourth Forger'', New York, 1939.
* Frank E. Halliday, "Shakespeare Fabricated" in ''The Cult of Shakespeare'', New York, 1957.
* Bernard Grebanier, ''The Great Shakespeare Forgery'', 1965.
* Samuel Schoenbaum, "Part Three: Edmond Malone" chapters VII through XI, in ''Shakespeare's Lives'', New York, 1970.
* Jeffrey Kahan, ''Reforging Shakespeare: The Story of a Theatrical Scandal'', 1998, Bethlehem London, Lehigh University Press; Associated University Presses. .
* Patricia Pierce, ''The Great Shakespeare Fraud'', 2004.
Other works cited
* Samuel Ireland, ''Picturesque Views of the Upper, or Warwickshire Avon'', London, 1795.
Page images at Google
* Samuel Ireland, ''Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakspeare'', 1796.
* Eu. Hood, "Fly-Leaves, No. XXXI: Pseudo-Shakspeare," in Gentleman's Magazine, May 1826, pp. 421–423.
Page images at Google
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ireland Shakespeare Forgeries
1790s works
Literary forgeries
William Shakespeare
1790s in London
Shakespeare authorship question