A Step Too Far....

A Shakespearean Farce…

Many people who commit fraud, deception and even crime invariably go one step too far and end up being found out. I suppose it is because they find that with practice, it all seems too easy and they decide to ‘go for one last big job’. Probably over-confidence also plays a large part.

And so it was back in the eighteenth century in London. William Henry Ireland was born there in 1777, the son of Samuel Ireland. The father was an accomplished self-taught artist who specialised in illustrated travel books. He was also what would be known nowadays as a ‘Shakespearean Anorak’. He was absolutely mad about the man, his works and anything whatsoever to do with him. He actually read the Bard’s works nightly to his family.

In 1795 when William was eighteen, he accompanied his father to Stratford-upon-Avon where the elder was painting some Views of the local River Avon. Whilst there, William observed his father buying a ‘purse and chair’ that had belonged to Shakespeare. This later proved to be false with Samuel being conned out of his money. However, his passion for anything to do with his hero never waned.

William soon began to take an avid interest in the same subject and became a collector of books and antiquities. He was also working for a lawyer who specialised in property transfers. He had access to numerous ancient mortgage deeds and other documents. Many were centuries old. As he was formulating a plan in his mind at this early stage, he began to ‘steal’ blank pages from the documents and other portions of the deeds that were blank. He then began experimenting in an attempt to produce sixteenth century ink. He began to practice and produced several ‘ancient’ documents, which he showed to his father. Samuel was duped and deemed them genuine.

The stage was set for his first major attempt at ‘forgery’. He was fully aware that his father had an earnest desire, bordering on the insane, to own a document, any document, signed by Shakespeare.

In December 1794, William informed his father that a wealthy acquaintance of his was in possession of a large quantity of old documents. Among them, he claimed, was a deed bearing the signature of William Shakespeare. He told his father that his friend would present it to him as a gift provided that he remains totally anonymous. William gave the ‘document’ to his father whose dream had at last come true. He even had it authenticated by experts as the genuine article.

Now this is where William began to step over the mark. He had in fact made his father totally content. He had fooled the experts. So why go further? It was not in fact greed. Maybe it was the fact that he had fooled the experts. Who knows? - except that he did in fact continue.

He next produced a promissory note (a type of cheque/bearer bond) signed by Shakespeare and later a long letter in the hand of Shakespeare. He claimed that they came from his anonymous friend’s chest of documents. He then produced a ‘Confession of Faith’ written entirely by Shakespeare declaring him to be a loyal Protestant. William then began to boast of even greater treasures to follow.

Personally I think he was now quite mad in a strange sense of the word. His father was totally satisfied with what he had but William was not. He next produced several pages of ‘original’ Shakespeare manuscript for Hamlet. Next came love letters to Anne Hathaway and above all a letter to Shakespeare from Queen Elizabeth First. This was followed by the entire manuscript of King Lear. So-called experts who examined them deemed all were authentic.

This was when the bold William should have stopped. But he didn’t. He went for the ‘one last big job’. He produced a manuscript for a previously unknown Shakespearean plan entitled Vortigern and Rowena.

The Irish playwright, Richard Sheridan secured the rights and planned to produce the plan at his Drury Lane Theatre. The news was beginning to cause a stir among Shakespearean fanatics. In the meantime, Samuel published ‘Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare’. This caused an even greater stir. Questions were beginning to be asked about their authenticity.

The play was now in production and all those concerned considered it to be of poor quality, probably by a young Shakespeare. The actors made their thoughts known that they did not believe it to be the Bard’s work in any shape or form. Things were beginning to fall apart.

The play opened on 2nd April 1796 to a packed house. The production began to collapse and ended in disaster. It closed after its only performance.

The world was falling around the two Irelands. Some believed that Samuel was responsible and when he published an admission that he was the sole author of them all, the matter seemed to be over. He died in 1800 having no contact with his son.

Five years later, William wrote ‘The Confessions of William Henry Ireland’ in which he tried to clear his father’s name and put the affair to rest. It did not. Wherever he went in England he was recognised for what he was – a forger. He left and moved to France where he lived for about ten years. He returned to England in 1832 where he lived a quite and peaceful life until his death in 1835.

Had the bold William stopped after forging the first two or three items, no one would have been the wiser, as his father would have been the happiest man in all England. Instead, he had to go completely overboard and attempt the impossible. I honestly believe that there is a type of madness that comes to people in his situation.

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