The Shakespeare Forgeries: Part 1

This week on The Secret Sits, I am going to tell you the stories of a literary forger or two, all based around the most illustrious dramatist and poet to ever live, William Shakespeare.  But don’t worry, we are also going to have some fun telling these stories.

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Transcript

[Underscore Music]

Today on The Secret Sits, I am going to tell you the stories of a literary forger or two, all based around the most illustrious dramatis and poet to ever live, William Shakespeare.  But don’t worry, we are also going to have some fun telling these stories.

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Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

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Literary crimes, may not be the most popular form of True Crime Stories, they sometimes lack the thrills and chills that accompany our favorite True Crimes, Capers and Conundrums.  However; there have been a few of these literary crime stories that are captivating, because they are the most audacious forgeries in human civilization.  We covered Lee Israel’s career as a literary forger during season one of The Secret Sits, but one also thinks of the Hitler Diaries from the 1960’s or when Clifford Irving forged the papers of Howard Hughes.  We listen to these stories and the boldness is took to get away with these crimes and somehow, we find ourselves admiring their veracity.  

So today I am going to present to you, some of the most outrageous and captivating forgeries in human civilization, The Shakespeare forgeries of William Henry Ireland and John Payne Collier.  Both of these men produced documents which, they claimed, had originally been penned by the Bard himself, William Shakespeare.   Now, just to be clear, William Henry Ireland and John Payne Collier are certainly not the only people to attempt forgeries of one of the greatest poets ever known, but they were two of the most successful at their attempts.  Forgeries of Shakespeare’s works date all the way back to the 1630’s and to make their attempted forgeries seem even more credible, these people would also conjure up stories about William Shakespeare’s life, that were simply not true, but to make their counterfeit work true, they had to convince you that the documents they possessed, somehow fit into the author’s real life.

I personally am a big fan of Shakespeare, while in college I took a lot of Shakespeare classes for my major in Theatre.  During my collegiate career I also performed in many Shakespearean Plays, my favorite role was Laertes from Hamlet.  In Hamlet, Laertes is the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia. In the final scene, he mortally stabs Hamlet with a poison-tipped sword to avenge the deaths of his father and sister, for which he blamed Hamlet. The Laertes character is thought to be originated by Shakespeare, himself.

As I sit writing this episode, I am cruising abord the beautifully appointed MSC Divina cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.  I am sitting on my private balcony on the 12th floor, the water is the deepest ocean blue and pure white caps form as the ship glides through the water, the only sounds are the gentle splashing sounds of the waves as they slip away from the sides of the ship, and a woman who sounds like she smokes three packs a day, talking on a balcony a few cabins down.  But either way, as I am sitting here writing you this episode I can somehow imagen myself abord a wooden clad ship, sailing through the waters in the times of William Shakespeare.  

So first, lets talk a little about William Shakespeare, don’t worry this will not be like English Lit class in high school, I taught intro to Shakespeare in a community college!

Now, here is the briefest summation of who William Shakespeare was, that you will every hear.  Shakespeare lived from 1564-1616, he died at the ripe old age of 52.  He was an English playwright, poet and actor.  He is generally regarded at the greatest writer in the English language and he is also considered the world greatest dramatist, in any language.  Shakespeare is often referred to as England’s national poet, he is the Bard of Avon, or just simply the Bard.  But what is a Bard, you ask?  Well, a Bard is simply someone who is a masterful poet, so Bard is, in essence a synonym for a poet. Shakespeare’s total works include 38 plays, 154 sonnets and 3 narrative poems.  Shakespeare’s plays have been translated into every single language still used by humans today and he is the most performed dramatist in the world.  All of Shakespeare’s works are in public domain, so theatres can do whatever they would like with his works, no holds barred.  Shakespeare married a woman named Anne Hathaway, we will talk more about this later.

And now that we are all on the same page about the dramatist we are talking about, let us now speak on the men who would attempt their fate at profiting off of this literary juggernaut.  The first of these men was William Henry Ireland, he had the same first name as Shakespeare, not that, that helped.  William Henry Ireland was somewhat of an inconsequential adolescent, he constantly attempted to please his father, who was a man with a well-built reputation around town.

We are now in the year 1795, everything smells a little like dirt and despair, and maybe a little rosewater if you are lucky.  Young Mr. Ireland is now 19-years-old and still just as worthless as he had been his entire childhood.  In the early spring, Samuel Ireland, who was William’s father, and a collector and antiquities dealer, took his son on a trip to visit Stratford-upon-Avon, which we know was Shakespeare’s hometown.  Samuel Ireland is dressed in the typical fashion of the late 18th century, including his man wig, everyone was wearing them.  William wore his hair long; the style invoked the romantic poets of the time.  William was slim and clearly subservient to his father, he was a shy young lad who was nothing to write home about in the looks department, if you get my drift.  He was easily overlooked by anyone on the street.  The middle-aged man and his son were being guided through the small hamlet by John Jordan, a local town historian who was considered an expert on all things Shakespearean in Stratford.

During their scenic tour of Shakespeare’s birth place they visited the site of the bard’s birth and the location of Shakespeare’s opulent house, he had built this house with a career’s worth of earnings working as England’s most celebrated dramatist.  The house, named New Place, had been deconstructed over 35 years ago, all that remained of a storied man’s history was a stone wall and remnants of a beautiful garden. After visiting these historical treasures, they proceeded to the shop of one Mr. Sharp.  Now, Mr. Sharp’s deal was that he carved knick-knacks out of Mulberry wood cut from a tree that once took up residence in the garden of one Mr. Shakespeare, in fact to make the wood even more valuable, Shakespeare supposedly even planted the Mulberry tree himself, he just got right in there, down in the dirt and buried some trees with the same hands that wrote Twelfth Knight.  So now the wood triples in price.

Samuel Ireland, picked up one of the cups, first grown from the hands of Shakespeare himself and then carved by the hands of Mr. Sharp, fitting name for a whittler, hey?  And he spun the wooden cup around in his hands as if it was the challis from Indiana Jones and the last Crusade. Samuel purchased the cup and took precious care with his new treasure.  After getting their jollies at Mr. Sharpe’s, the group headed to their final destination, a small farm cottage belonging to life-long Stratford-upon-Avon residents, Mr. and Mrs. Williams.  Mr. Williams had come to posses quite a few artifacts from the New Place home when it still stood 40 years ago.  This probably gave Samuel Ireland more than goose bumps.

Mr. Williams introduced himself to the man and his tragic looking son and he told them, “Just last week I got rid of a great quantity of old papers.  They were in the attic, and I wanted the space to raise some young partridges.  So, I burned the papers, right there in this fireplace, didn’t, I, Mistress Williams?”

“That you did, Master Williams” his wife dutifully replied.

“And a great many of them had Shakespeare’s name on them, didn’t they, Mistress?” the man croaked

“That they did, Master Williams.” Said the old woman.

At this, Samuel Ireland, as dramatic as ever, crumpled into the nearest chair, “Good God, man, if I had only been here a week ago! This is disastrous!”

And just so you know, this has not turned into a play, but you have to hear the context of this conversation so just hold on, we are getting there.

In response to Samuel’s dramatics, Mr. Williams said, “Well, couldn’t be helped, needed the space, don’t you know.”

Samuel Ireland lifted his head, like Hugh Grant in a romcom and said, “Could you show me the garret?”  Garret means attic for all our American listeners.

“If you like.” Stated the old man, and Samuel Ireland with his young hideous son in tow followed the old farmer up a ladder to the attic.  As Samuel peered into the area which use to contain a literary giant’s writings, now contained a dozen partridges scurrying around pecking at the floor for food.

After this disappointing end to their tour, Samuel left Stratford with his dreadful son, “I would give half of my precious library for a single example of the great Bard’s writing, what a tragedy has occurred!” Samuel said to his obnoxious son.

After Samuel and William Henry had left the small farm cottage, old Mr. and Mrs. Williams along with tour guide John Jordan began to cackle, almost doubled over with laughter and Mr. Williams said, “Never ceases to amaze me, John, how these lovers of Shakespeare swallow whole the burnt papers story.”  Watch out for the frauds people, they are everywhere.

A few weeks after this trip, the revolting William Henry, came home to his father, whom he could never please and said he had obtained something rather special for him.  He then produced a receipt, written out and signed by William Shakespeare himself, the receipt was for the repayment of a loan.  Samuel almost let go all over his living room and he grabbed the paper, the paper was very old, the ink had faded from black to brown over the passing of time, what would you expect from a document 200 years old?

Samuel asked his horrid son, “Where on Earth did you obtain this, my lad?”

“I chanced to meet a young gentleman who told me that he had a cache of documents from the Elizabethan era, and he invited me to peruse them.”  William told his father.

Samuel asked, “And who is this young gentleman, what is his name?”

But the foul boy responded with, “Ah, Father, that I cannot tell you.  He wished to remain anonymous.”  OKAY red flag number one.

But Samuel tried to work around how random this was, he wanted so badly to possess something, anything that had been scribed by the one and only William Shakespeare.  So, he asked his repulsive son, “And how came it that he gave you this precious document?”

William Henry said, “He has taken a liking to me, he bade me accept it as a gift.  And Father, I saw other papers in his trunk.  A cursory inspection tells me that there are more papers with the name of Shakespeare upon them.”

Samuel was now in the throes of giddiness and he told his son, “By all means, you must examine them.  I must see them.  Can you describe them?”  William told his father that he could not describe the papers, but he would return to the young gentleman’s home in a day or two.

Samuel Ireland, who did not trust his hopeless son any father than he could throw him, had to verify the document that William had presented to him.  He conferred with fellow antiquarians, that means people who study antiques, who agreed with him that he definitely had in his possession, a very old piece of paper.  But wait, that’s not all, they also said that the writing and signature resembled some few known examples of Shakespeare’s signatures.  

Ok, back to teacher mode, there are only six surviving, and authenticated, signatures written by William Shakespeare himself, all 6 of these signatures are contained in 4 legal documents; first, a deposition in the Bellott vs Mountjoy case, which is dated May 11th, 1612, secondly, paperwork for the purchase of a property in Blackfriars, London dated March 10th 1613, the third is a signature on the mortgage of this same property dated March 11th, 1613 and finally Shakespeare’s last will and testament, this document contains 3 of the 6 signatures, one on each page, and this document is dated March 25th, 1616.  The interesting thing about all six of these signatures is that William Shakespeare, himself, spelled his name differently on each document and none of the signatures are how Shakespeare’s name is spelled today.  Now back to our story.

Each week after this, the unaccomplished youth brought home a new document ascribed to William Shakespeare.  The first few documents were simple, every day items like the receipt, followed by more unremarkable legal papers of varying degrees of interest.  But then, after buttering the old man up with boring, but assertedly authentic, Shakespeare documents, William brought a gift to his father that made the man’s toes curl, what was this item you ask? An authentic love letter from William Shakespeare to his wife, Anne Hathaway, no not Anne Hathaway from the Movie Musical Les Miserable, for our American listeners, remember the Shakespeare recap at the beginning of the episode.  

Just like the other boring documents, William Henry had produced, this one too had old paper and brown and faded ink.  As an added gift with purchase, this letter also came with a locket of hair, from the most famous poet in the world, William Shakespeare. 

If the man had not been so out of sorts at the shear magnitude of this letter, he may have noticed that the scribe of this letter neglected to use any punctuation in the entire letter, and that some of the pages contained small singes on the side, making the paper brown.  Perhaps if the antiquarian had paid more attention to the details of the letters, he would have reconsidered the paper’s authenticity. 

By this point Samuel’s house looked like the room of an obsessed teenage girl who has built a shire to their teenage crush, like the creepy guy in The Bodyguard who is obsessed with Whitney Houston, but Samuel’s shrine was to Shakespeare.  Literary experts and celebrants flocked to the house to see the newly found documents.  It was so unexpected that Samuel’s dolt of a son would discover such a treasure trove of historical documents.  At this point Samuel began to reexamine his perception of his dullard of a son, maybe he wasn’t rubbish. 

With each new document, excitement grew.  And then, William Henry came to his father and told him that he had the most exiting news, the young gentlemen who could not be named, had in his procession a full-length painting of Shakespeare, and that the young gentleman, who we could refer to as George Glass, would soon give William Henry the painting, he would then pass this very authentic painting on to his father, Samuel.

The young gentleman, our George Glass, is now being referred to as “Mr. H”, the reclusive Mr. H, who’s name sounds like a bad bond villain, still wanted to remain anonymous, so William Henry told his father that he would continue to hide the man’s true identity.  

By this point Samuel Ireland was acting like Emperor Palpatine and his want for more and more Shakespeariana became voracious.  

Samuel asked his son about the portrait and he asked for more and more content from the great poet.  William Henry then gave his insatiable father a will, dated 1611, at this point I was going to explain the political dynamics during the 1600s, around wills according to different religious groups, but I bored myself just trying to write something, anyway, to Samuel Ireland, this clearly showed that William Shakes had been a true god-fearing Protestant and not a closeted Catholic, as many in the public had decreed after his death.  This confirmed the moral nature of Samuel’s literary idol and the array of visitors to Samuel Ireland’s home in London continued to increase. 

One notable patron of the London house was James Boswell, a renowned biographer of the scholar Samuel Johnson.  Boswell viewed the papers and examined them with a scholar’s eye, he then knelt in reverence and in that moment declared that he could now die a happy man.  Boswell, then signed, in testament, along with many others, to the authenticity of these miraculous discoveries.  James Boswell, then went to his eternal rest, the happiest scholarly man, because he had witnessed these new Shakespeare artifacts just before his death.

This was still not the end to this treasure trove of never before discovered papers, oh no, why stop now, this is like Mary Poppin’s bag, stuff just keeps coming out when you need it.  Next William Henry produced a hand-written manuscript, in Shakespeare’s own pen of King Lear.  One of the greatest dramatic works in history.  Samuel read through the script and noticed that many of the lewder scenes from the play had not been in this, the original manuscript.  Samuel knew that his man crush, Willie Shakes would not have written such crewed scenes and they must have been added later by the actors and stage managers.  For those that worshipped Shakespeare, like Samuel Ireland, Shakespeare was of very high morals and he was exceptionally pure of heart.

Even with this new discovery, Samuel pressed his remarkable son to produce the full-length portrait, he needed to be able to look Shaky W in the eye while holding his original papers.  In response to this request, Willian Henry gave his father another manuscript, but this manuscript was not one of the 38 plays attributed to the Bard, it was titled Vortigern.  And William Henry told his father that this was not the end, there was another unknown manuscript of a play titled Henry VII.  There seemed to be no end to the discoveries.  

As so many new findings were taking place, several authorities began to question some of the paper’s authenticity.  The great Edmond Malone, was the foremost Shakespeare scholar of the day and he had his doubts.  Even as questions were raised, Samuel Ireland pressed on and moved forward with his passion over these Shakespeare papers.  He maintained that they were all papers touched by the Bard himself.  Samuel was so convinced that all of his artifacts were real that he persuaded, John Kemble, to mount a production of, Vortigern, at the Covent Garden theatre, not a shabby place by any means.  Samuel thought, now the public will see the genius of Shakespeare on stage once again and be humbled by his greatness.

As rehearsals came to and end and the troupe was set to perform the premier performance of Vortigern, Edmond Malone published a carefully scripted paper in rejection of the authenticity of the Ireland papers.  Malone wrote that they were simply forgeries.  Dates and people were incorrect in some of the legal documents, Malone stated.  Some of the language used in the papers simply did not exist in Shakespeare’s time, along with some of the odd spellings that had appeared in some of the documents.  One letter, ostensibly sent from Queen Elizabeth, not our Queen Elizabeth who just passed, she was not that old, this was Queen Elizabeth the first, anyway the letter contained misspellings and language that no queen would use to one who was not of noble birth.  Also, in Malone’s diatribe on how the papers where not authentic, he described how some of the letters sent to Shakespeare where not in the penmanship of their supposed authors.  This was a devastating critique of the newly found Shakespearean  collection.

Despite the brutal review from Malone, the performance of Vortigern, was performed anyway.  The audience sat in anticipation, how exciting it was to be the first audience to see an unproduced Shakespearean play.  Kemble along with his troupe of actors delivered stellar performances, for what the material provided.  But as the play began, the audience could instantly tell that this was scripted by an utterly amateur dramatist.  The play’s language was nonsensical and the story was abysmal at best, laughter rang up from the audience as they recognized that, in no way was this some lost Shakespearian play, it was simply utter rubbish.

After the Malone review and the rotten performance of Vortigern, Samuel Ireland had nothing left to do, but dig his heels into the sand and stand his ground.  Samuel was just going to keep on keeping on.  Remember, Samuel had held quite a high reputation around town even before the newly found Shakespeare papers.  So, in response to the town’s criticism, Samuel wrote a letter in his defense and in this letter, he stood by all of his new Shakespearian papers, he said that he had obtained them through his son, William Henry, by way of Mr. H.  Samuel went on to attack the actors in the play, particularly Kemble, he said they had ruined the production with their over acting.  Despite this letter in Samuel’s defense, the people of the town now saw Samuel Ireland as either a charlatan or a fool.

From the initial day when William Henry brought home that receipt in Shakespeare’s hand writing, until the production of the play at Covent Garden, was only a few months.  In these few months the Beatlemania like craze for these newly discovered Shakespearean papers was like the lift chain hill on a rollercoaster, and after the performance of, Vortigern, that coaster topped the hill and the enthusiasm for the new Shakespeare papers plummeted in a dramatic fashion.  Only of few of Samuel’s dearest friends continued to give him a wink and a nudge that the papers were authentic.  

The downward hill of this roller-coaster ride turned into a train wreck that people could not look away from.  Perhaps in order to get to the next uphill on the roller-coaster ride, William Henry began to produce even more documents, which went from the unusual to the bizarre.  One letter, written by ol’ Willie Shakes himself, described how he had been saved from drowning by a young man named William Henry Ireland, how convenient that the man who saved Shakespeare from drowning had the exact same name as our William Henry all these decades later.  But wait, there’s more; this letter was sent to a Mr. John Heminge, (could this be a reference to our bad Bond villain Mr. H? let’s see) In this letter, Shakespeare says to Mr. Heminge that his savior would be the future recipients of his play manuscripts.  So, it turns out that our William Henry Ireland was the legal heir to the Shakesperean documents after all, wow, that’s amazing.  Even the most gullible people in the town thought this story was as difficult to get down as aunt Thelma’s dry Sunday roast.  The only person to believe this cock and bull story was, well, you guessed it, Samuel Ireland, who would believe anything just to be certain that his precious collection was real.

As time had passed the imprudent, William Henry had told some people that he had forged the Shakespeare papers.  William Henry was working as a scrivener for a lawyer (that is a person who makes hand copies, before xerox was invented.)  At the law office he had access to old writing paper, dating back to the late 16th Century.  William Henry had procured the ink from a book restoration specialist.  After William Henry ran out of the paper from his office, he bought paper from a book dealer, who would allow him to cut blank pages from 16th Century books, he would hold the pages up to a flame to help further age them, this produced the scorched edges which were sometimes present on the new Shakespeare papers.  

William Henry, went to his father and confessed to making the forgeries, but Samuel still did not want to believe that it was true, he knew that his son was too dim-whited, unimaginative and slow to have pulled off such a scam.  Whom ever had written these papers had to have been brilliant and have we mentioned that William Henry was a dolt?  Samuel held his belief that only one as great as Shakespeare could have produced these works.

William Henry had found one thing he was good at in life, forging documents that had supposedly come from notable figures, but he did not do this simply of self-gratification, or to gain riches, no, William Henry set out on this new career as a master fake, only to gain the affection and acceptance from his fastidious father.  William Henry thought his father should praise him for his abilities to mimic someone as esteemed as the mighty Shakespeare but Samuel would here none of this, if he believed what his son said, that meant his precious papers were not real, and that was more important to him than his son’s truth.

Samuel Ireland would die just 5 years after this entire debacle, in the end, he held on to his belief that his beloved Shakespearean papers were real, but he had lost his once stellar reputation and he was completely shunned by the antiquarian and literary communities, they now believed that Samuel himself may have been the actual forger. 

William Henry lived on after his father’s passing and he wrote many different novels, dramatic works and articles, William believed that because he had passed off so many documents as those of the famous Bard himself, then that must mean he was, in effect, a second Shakespeare.  In 1821, William Henry published Confessions, in which he detailed his massive forgery scheme, giving all of the juicy details like a good true crime novel.  William Henry never did produce the full-length portrait of William Shakespeare he had been dangling in front of his father like a carrot on a stick, I guess William was not as good at painting as he was writing really bad literary works.

Now that we have unraveled the fraudulent efforts of mister William Henry, we are now going to all get in the hot tub time machine and move forward, 20 years after William Henry published his confession and we are going to talk about our second Shakespeare forger, John Payne Collier.  But that is coming your way next week, on The Secret Sits.  We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.