Collection of autograph manuscript forgeries of William Shakespeare documents by William Henry Ireland. Contents include forgeries of Shakespeare signatures, receipts, promissory notes, letters, and poetry, as well as the forged signatures of contemporaries of Shakespeare, including Queen Elizabeth and John Heminges. Also included are samples of the writing of Ireland's parents and several printed items and illustrations. All manuscript items are mounted in album pages containing identification and commentary by William Henry Ireland. The volume opens with a preface by Joseph Haslewood discussing the history of the Ireland forgeries and of this collection of exemplars.
Description:
Binding: contemporary full calf; compartmented spine., Bound with: Miscellaneous papers and legal instruments under the hand and seal of William Shakespeare (London: Cooper & Graham, 1796)., Ex libris Joseph Haslewood. Purchased from Bernard Quaritch, Ltd. (Bonhams Stuart B. Schimmel forgery collection sale, London, 23 May 2012, lot 45) on the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Fund, 2012., Spine tag: Pseudo-Shakespeare. MSS &c., and William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), literary forger, produced documents purportedly in the hand of William Shakepeare beginning in 1794. His forgeries included the play Vortigern, which was produced in 1796, but the forgeries were quickly identified as such, first by Joseph Ritson and later by Edmond Malone. Ireland published his Confessions in 1805, and produced collections of manuscript copies of his Shakespearian "productions."
Subject (Name):
Haslewood, Joseph, 1769-1833, Haslewood, Joseph, 1769-1833--Bookplate, and Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Forgeries
Subject (Topic):
Forgery of manuscripts--Great Britain and Literary forgeries and mystifications
Manuscript on 3 vellum scrolls of laws and statutes of the Byzantine empire. Said to be of the 5th, 9th, and 11th centuries, but actually written in the 19th century
Description:
In Greek., Script: Written partly in gold. Each has a religious painting at the top., All very badly rubbed and in places illegible., and The first two are mounted on cloth; the third has fringe of red yarn on top.
Subject (Geographic):
Connecticut, New Haven., and Byzantine Empire.
Subject (Topic):
Literary forgeries and mystifications and Manuscripts, Medieval
Manuscript on 2 vellum scrolls of Tyrtaeus, Elegies, with figure-poems of Dosiadas, Simmias, Besantinus, and Theocritus (attrubuted author), and hymns of Mesomedes and Arion. Said to be third century, but actually 19th-century forgery
Description:
In Greek., Script: Written in Greek capital script in boustrophedon, that is from right to left and from left to right alternatively, a method of writing that was no longer practiced in the third century when these scrolls were purported to have been written., and Preserved in a small wooden cylinder.
Subject (Geographic):
Connecticut and New Haven.
Subject (Name):
Tyrtaeus.
Subject (Topic):
Greek poetry, Literary forgeries and mystifications, and Manuscripts, Medieval