Samuel Ireland wanted William Shakespeare’s signature. His son gave him considerably more than that.
He gave him letters, legal documents, poetry, profession of faith, a love letter to Anne Hathaway, manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays. And eventually, because apparently there comes a point in every successful forgery when restraint becomes terribly inconvenient, William Henry Ireland gave his father an entirely new Shakespeare play.
There was just one problem.
His son, William Henry, had written the lot.
The interesting thing about the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries and the thing that keeps them up there amongst the most fascinating literary deceptions in British history, is not simply their sheer scale, but the reason they appear to have begun. William was just a young man who wanted to please his dad. Samuel Ireland was an engraver, antiquarian, author and enthusiastic collector with a particular passion for Shakespeare. His son later recalled hearing Samuel declare that he would sacrifice a substantial part of his library merely to possess Shakespeare’s signature.
Young William Henry was working for a solicitor at the time and solicitors’ offices contain old documents. Lots of them, including, crucially, old parchment.
Sometime towards the end of 1794, William obtained an old deed, removed a piece of blank parchment from it and began experimenting. He needed handwriting and ink that looked old. He needed an appropriate document and he needed Shakespeare. What emerged was a mortgage deed supposedly bearing the playwright’s signature. William took the document he had created home and showed his Dad. Samuel was delighted. The document was shown to Sir Frederic Eden, who was expert in old seals, and it passed inspection. William had succeeded and that really should have been the end of it.
It was not even remotely the end of it.
William had explained his remarkable discovery by inventing a conveniently anonymous gentleman from whose collection the document supposedly came. This mysterious source, generally referred to as “Mr H.”, was unwilling to have his identity revealed. This was extremely useful because it meant nobody could visit or question Mr H. And whenever another extraordinary Shakespeare document was required, William could just add it to the apparently inexhaustible collection of Mr H.
So Shakespeare kept turning up. There was a promissory note, receipts and legal papers and correspondence. There was a letter supposedly written by Queen Elizabeth I to Shakespeare. There was Shakespeare’s “Profession of Faith”, a conveniently pious document that revealed the playwright’s religious beliefs. There were verses addressed to Anne Hathaway and a supposed love token. There was even a lock of Shakespeare’s hair. William did not simply forge handwriting, he manufactured a Shakespeare for his father’s generation.
And people came to see him.
Samuel displayed the discoveries at his home in Norfolk Street, where distinguished visitors inspected the papers. The collection attracted writers, antiquarians and other prominent figures, some of whom were prepared to attest to their authenticity. Samuel became increasingly convinced that his son had stumbled upon one of the greatest literary discoveries imaginable.
William therefore faced a peculiar problem. Every time he gave his father Shakespeare, his father wanted more. So William just gave him more. And more…
The British Library still holds extensive material relating to the affair, including specimens of William’s forgeries and Samuel’s correspondence concerning their discovery and publication. Another surviving collection, presented by William himself decades later as examples of his “Shaksperian fabrications”, includes forged signatures, a promissory note, letters, Anne Hathaway verses and specimens connected with ‘Vortigern’. ([British Library Archives][2]) The sheer quantity is astonishing. William even created what purported to be Shakespeare’s personal library catalogue. By then, he wasn’t merely filling gaps in Shakespeare’s surviving documentary record – he was constructing an alternative archive. And inevitably, somebody wanted to publish it.
In 1796, Samuel Ireland issued ‘Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakspeare’, presenting the extraordinary discoveries to the wider world. This widened the pool of people looking at them, which was unfortunate. Because William Henry Ireland was audacious. He was inventive and industrious. But he was not William Shakespeare.
Problems began appearing everywhere. The handwriting wasn’t right. The signatures weren’t right. The language wasn’t right and the historical details weren’t right. Most magnificently of all, William’s attempts at supposedly Elizabethan spelling produced words belonging not so much to Shakespeare’s period as to no identifiable period whatsoever. But William had already gone considerably further than forged paperwork. He had discovered a lost Shakespeare play.
Obviously. Because why wouldn’t you?
The play was called Vortigern and Rowena and this transformed an antiquarian controversy into a theatrical sensation.
A previously unknown Shakespeare play was an extraordinary prospect, and arrangements were made for Vortigern to be performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The surviving British Library correspondence concerning the production includes letters involving theatre manager Richard Brinsley Sheridan, actor John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons – this was not some little amateur performance arranged by Samuel Ireland and his friends. The supposed Shakespeare was heading for one of London’s great stages. ([British Library Archives][3])
Unfortunately for William, one of the foremost Shakespeare scholars in Britain, Edward Malone, had heard about the ‘New Play’ and had been examining the evidence. And he was not impressed.
On 31 March 1796, Malone published An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Instruments, a devastating examination of the Ireland documents. And he pulled them apart. The vocabulary. The handwriting. The spelling. The chronology. And the historical errors. Little by little, the supposed Shakespeare archive began collapsing under detailed scrutiny. Two days later, on 2 April 1796, Vortigern opened at Drury Lane.
Imagine that audience. They weren’t arriving simply to see a newly discovered Shakespeare play, they were arriving in the middle of an argument over whether the newly discovered Shakespeare play was Shakespeare at all. The theatre was packed. And Vortigern did not save the Ireland papers. Quite the opposite, in fact. The performance descended into ridicule, particularly as the audience reacted to lines that sounded distinctly unlike Shakespeare. The play received that one performance and was not repeated. ([Shakespeare Birthplace Trust][1]) The great Shakespeare discovery was fell apart and William confessed. And then the story took one final extraordinary turn.
His father did not believe him.
Samuel Ireland had become so convinced of the authenticity of the papers that his own son’s admission that he had forged them was apparently insufficient to shake his belief. William subsequently published an account explaining how he had manufactured the documents, partly in an attempt to clear his father of accusations that Samuel himself had orchestrated the fraud. Samuel’s reputation nevertheless suffered enormously. He died in 1800, still associated with one of the most embarrassing literary scandals of the century.
William lived much longer and, unlike many historical forgers, he did not spend the rest of his life desperately insisting upon the authenticity of his creations. Instead, he wrote about them and preserved examples. In 1834 he even gave a collection of specimens of his Shakespeare fabrications to William Till. Those examples eventually entered the British Library, ([British Library Archives][4]) which creates the same wonderful paradox we encountered with Billy and Charley and their fake medieval antiquities. William Henry Ireland manufactured worthless historical documents. Those worthless historical documents became historically important. Today, libraries and collections preserve Ireland’s fake Shakespeare because the forgeries themselves have become genuine pieces of history.
But beneath all the theatrical catastrophe and wonderfully terrible pseudo-Elizabethan spelling lies something rather more human. William Henry Ireland wanted his father’s approval. His father desperately wanted Shakespeare so William gave him Shakespeare. And when that worked, he gave him some more. Then some more. Each successful deception made the next one easier to attempt and harder to stop. Samuel’s enthusiasm encouraged William. William’s discoveries strengthened Samuel’s belief. And together they created a feedback loop in which the thing one man desperately wanted to discover was continually supplied by the person who desperately wanted to please him until eventually William had to produce an entire lost play just to keep the machinery running. And that’s what makes the Ireland affair such a perfect hoax.
Samuel Ireland wasn’t fooled because he knew nothing about Shakespeare, he was fooled partly because Shakespeare mattered enormously to him. He wanted the documents to be genuine. Every new discovery seemed to confirm the last. And when contradictory evidence finally arrived, accepting it meant accepting something much bigger than the fact that a few documents were fake, tis magnificent discovery wasn’t a discovery. His reputation was damaged. And his son had been lying to him all along.
Perhaps that’s why even William’s confession couldn’t immediately undo what he’d created. There are lies we believe because we’re ignorant and there are lies we believe because the truth would cost us something we desperately don’t want to lose. William Henry Ireland learned that distinction remarkably young.
He started with a signature. He ended with Shakespeare.
And somewhere in between, he discovered that giving people what they want to believe can be considerably easier than taking it away again.
Notes and Sources:
The British Library catalogue confirms that its Ireland holdings include the forged papers, Samuel’s correspondence and the correspondence surrounding the Drury Lane production. ([British Library Archives][3]) The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has a particularly useful illustrated account of the fabrication process, while the Folger holds Ireland material and has several excellent pieces on the affair. ([Shakespeare Birthplace Trust][1])
[Shakespeare Birthplace Trust — The Shakespearian Forgeries of William Henry Ireland](https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/shakespearian-forgeries-william-henry-ireland/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
[British Library — Ireland forgery papers and correspondence](https://searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/032-002022004?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
[Folger Shakespeare Library — William Henry Ireland and the forgeries](https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/up-close-william-henry-ireland-caricature-shakespeare-forgeries/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[1]: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/shakespearian-forgeries-william-henry-ireland/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “The Shakespearian forgeries of William Henry Ireland”
[2]: https://searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/032-002022004?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Add MS 30346-30347 – British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue”
[3]: https://searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/032-002022007?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Add MS 30348 – British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue”
[4]: https://searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/032-002054273?utm
