supposedly in Shakespeare’s handwriting. Forger William-Henry Ireland
proudly published this version of his 1795 original (now lost) in 1832.
Forger and would-be Romantic poet
William-Henry Ireland in 1798,
when he was in his early twenties.
(National Portrait Gallery,London)
The forger’s father,ex-weaver and
Bardolater Samuel Ireland in 1776,
shortly after William-Henry was born.
(National Portrait Gallery,London)
Zealous collectors examine a broken chamber pot in a 1772 caricaturemocking the antiquarian fad. Collectors who vied to possess such relics,
observed one writer,“love all things (as Dutchmen doe Cheese) the
better for being mouldy and worm-eaten.”
The West End and the Strand in 1795. At lower left is Carlton House,home of the Prince of Wales. Left of center is St. Martin’s Lane,where William-Henry tore fly-leaves from 200-year-old books. Just above Covent Garden at center is the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden. Two blocks east is its rival theatre royal,the Drury Lane Theatre,where Vortigern was staged. On the Thames at right is palatial Somerset House,home of the Society of Antiquaries. Three blocks east is Norfolk Street,where the Irelands lived. Just across the Strand is New Inn,where William-Henry forged in secret. (Copyright David Hale/MAPCO)
New Inn,William-Henry’s monastic hideaway. The campuslike enclave was afive minutes’walk from the Irelands’home on Norfolk Street. The lawyer
employing the young apprentice was rarely around. The boy had plenty
of time,plenty of old paper,and no one watching him.
Facades on Wych Street dating from Shakespeare’slifetime,as seen from New Inn’s entrance in 1880.
Rising in the background is the spire of St Clement
Danes,whose “chimes at midnight”Falstaff and
Swallow heard. William-Henry scoured shops in the
neighborhood for old books and curios he could alter.
(Copyright the British Library)
“Is therre inne heavenne aught more rare/ Thanne thou sweete Nymphe of Avon fayre?”Literary London was delighted with these gushing stanzas that a young Will Shakespeare
supposedly composed for his pregnant fiancee,Anne Hathaway.
Accompanying the poem to Anne Hathaway was a loveletter with a lock of its author’s hair,as reproduced in this
engraving. The original lock was actually a keepsake from
one of William-Henry’s old girlfriends.
An aging,gullible James Boswell in the early1790s. After kissing a stack of forged papers,
he announced he could die contented.
(National Portrait Gallery,London)
Richard Brinsley Sheridan,playwright,impresario,gambler,debtor. The forged play’s premiere was
his enormous theater’s first sellout.
Dorothea Jordan,mistress of the future King
William IV,as the cross-dressing warrior queen
Hypolita in 1791. Her spirited performance in
Vortigern won applause. (National Portrait
Gallery,London)
John Philip Kemble,Drury Lane Theatre’s manager
and ponderous leading man. He played King Vortigern
against his better judgment.
Top:This receipt from “short”John Heminge was written and signed with the forger’s
left hand. Bottom:Heminge’s actual signature,tidy and fluent,surfaced a few months
later. The discrepancy almost toppled William-Henry’s increasingly intricate hoax.
Fierce,meticulous,dogged Edmond Malone,
the “generalissimo of the nonbelievers,”after
a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1778,
when Malone was in his late thirties.
Malone’s unscrupulous ex-mentor and rival
George Steevens,a sometime forger in his
own right,in a 1793 drawing. (National
Portrait Gallery,London)
Thomas Rowlandson,“An Audience Watching a Play at Drury Lane Theatre,”ca.
1785. Also talking,flirting,gawking,lounging. (Yale Center for British Art)
Lit by candles,a full house takes in the action at the expanded
Drury Lane Theatre in 1806. Note the boxes directly on stage.