Hear about William Henry Ireland's fake manuscripts of William Shakespeare including a letter written to his wife
A look at a letter supposedly written by William Shakespeare to his wife, Anne Hathaway; it was, in fact, faked by William-Henry Ireland.
Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.“If for a day joy masters me / Think not my wounds are healed.”
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Odysseus convinces Penelope that he is her husband by knowing a particular and secret detail of the construction of their bed.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.“Tell me, Muse…”Media Editors: Meg Matthias , Lee Goldstein
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.William Shakespeare explained in five questions.
-
Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)An overview of the first critical edition of the works of William Shakespeare, edited by Nicholas Rowe and published in 1709.
-
Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Why A Midsummer Night's Dream is this teacher's favourite Shakespeare play to teach.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn more about William Shakespeare and the use of audition sides in acting.
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] HEATHER WOLFE: Hi, I'm Heather Wolfe, Folger Curator of Manuscripts. And I've always been fascinated by the fact that William Henry Ireland was able to temporarily convince the literary world that he had made the most important literary discovery ever. William Henry Ireland was a really bad forger of Shakespeare manuscripts with a too good to be true story of how he came to own them. Nevertheless, he managed to capitalize upon his deceptions after he was found to be a fraud.
Case in point is this fake letter from William Shakespeare to his wife Anne Hathaway. Written in a terrible imitation of an English secretary hand and carelessly burned around the edges to appear ye olde, this copy was actually written out by William Henry Ireland after the forgeries were discovered. It appears here next to a printed reproduction of his original forgery in an album that he put together for a curious collector over a decade after the original forgeries were made. Many other versions of this forgery survive, including a handful at the Folger, which Ireland created both to sell and to give to supporters.
This is the only one at the Folger with a lock of hair, however. We're not sure where the hair in our copy came from. But one could assume it came straight from the head of William Henry Ireland himself. While many people initially believed that the documents were authentic, the handwriting and spelling were so unconvincing, as was their literary merit, that it soon became apparent that the entire archive had been concocted. This letter is a prime example of William Henry Ireland's flowery style leading to his own unraveling.
Case in point is this fake letter from William Shakespeare to his wife Anne Hathaway. Written in a terrible imitation of an English secretary hand and carelessly burned around the edges to appear ye olde, this copy was actually written out by William Henry Ireland after the forgeries were discovered. It appears here next to a printed reproduction of his original forgery in an album that he put together for a curious collector over a decade after the original forgeries were made. Many other versions of this forgery survive, including a handful at the Folger, which Ireland created both to sell and to give to supporters.
This is the only one at the Folger with a lock of hair, however. We're not sure where the hair in our copy came from. But one could assume it came straight from the head of William Henry Ireland himself. While many people initially believed that the documents were authentic, the handwriting and spelling were so unconvincing, as was their literary merit, that it soon became apparent that the entire archive had been concocted. This letter is a prime example of William Henry Ireland's flowery style leading to his own unraveling.