The Ireland Shakespeare Relics

Samuel Ireland was an avid collector, the type of man who boasted and tried to make himself look important. His son, William Henry, just wanted to make his dad proud of him.  

Sources: 
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare, by Doug Stewart
Shakespeare and Others by S. Schoenbaum
'The Poet's Hand,' Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Henry-Ireland
https://www.npr.org/2010/06/19/127931669/william-henry-irelands-great-shakespearean-hoax

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts. Folks.
It's a hug though no one I haven't seen when
USA have a watch to see you there last watch.

(00:20):
Welcome to Hoax, a new podcast, or is it? It is?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Every episode we sort through the lies we wish were
true and truths that sound like lies.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
This is not just another scam and scandal podcast. Oh no.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
These are stories of pranks and griffs throughout history, so
big and bold they make us question why we believe.
I'm the ghost of Danishchwartz and I'm the evil twin
of Lizzie Logan. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
How's it going, Lizzie?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
It's going great. I'm really excited. Anticipation has been building
all week for your hoax.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
I've been very excited researching this one. I'm kind of
like talking to everyone in my life about it, but
not you, because I want you to be surprised.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I've just been getting teases of just been getting tech
of like this is gonna be good.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Okay, Well I'll jump in and ask you, Yes, what
do you know if I tell you about the Ireland
Shakespeare hoax? What does that mean to you? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
I know of a few different Shakespeare hoaxes. Okay, so
I don't know which one is the Ireland one.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, what what give me some Shakespeare hoaxes?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
So well, there's like theories that Shakespeare was somebody else
yeah yeah, yeah, or that he was a group of people.
And then I think my mom maybe sent me an
article that I didn't read. But I did read the
headline of some kid, young guy who said that he
found quote unquote found another play or two by Shakespeare

(01:46):
that I guess he had actually just written. And then
it took a while for it to get debunked.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Oh here's that, mom. This is for you. This is
for Lizzie's mom. She and I have actually been texting. Well, great,
she would like to hear from you. Okay, So I
actually don't want to start with the Sun. But it's
not a spoiler alert. This is a podcast called hoax.
It is a hoax, yes, but I want to start

(02:10):
with this boy's dad. We're going to talk about a
man named Samuel Ireland. Okay, that's his last name. Are
we in Ireland? No? No, we're in England.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, so I'm all the way off.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
It is confusing. Their last name is Ireland. Okay, this
is a man named Samuel Ireland. We're in the seventeen hundreds, okay,
So Samuel Ireland is like he's like many older men
that I feel like people just encounter in our lives.
He when he was growing up, he kind of wanted
to be an architect. He failed out of that. He
wanted to be a He tried to work as a weaver,

(02:45):
but that was a very competitive industry in London at
the time, and so he you know, flipped out of
that and he sort of landed in a job where
he made etchings and wrote sort of semi successful, mostly
unsuccessful travel books and sold collectibles mostly. But I think
what's important is that this man's personality. He's a commoner.

(03:07):
And again we're in like the eighteenth century England, so
status matters a lot. He's a commoner, his ancestors are
nobody important, but he sort of has delusions of his
own importance. He likes having things connected to famous people
and events.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Sure, and I wonder maybe I'm just jumping way ahead,
but in terms of he makes etchings of more famous
works and then makes copies of them, is this perhaps
going to be give him an idea to make someone
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
I don't know, but we'll just say he's a collector
and he loves being the smartest person in the room.
He loves impressing his friends with like he had a
piece of Charles the Second Cloak, he had a leather
jacket that was worn by Oliver Cromwell. And so even
though he collected all these things and like would sell them,

(04:01):
which is like not a very gentlemanly thing to do,
he purported to sort of be a gentleman with his
like locked cabinet of rare and important artifacts.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
The important thing to know about Samuel Ireland is that
he's really pretentious, always needs to be the smartish person
in the room, thinks he has incredible taste as like
a curator, and he's very arrogant, So your average ivy
league guy. Yeah, although he's self educated and like has
a complex about it and has a complex about the
fact that he's not a noble okay, But he lives

(04:34):
in a very fashionable area of London, the Strand. He
has three kids, two girls and a son. And there's
no Missus Ireland, but there is a live in housekeeper
known as Missus Freeman, which like wouldn't be incredibly not
atypical for the time. Women are dying in childbirth all
the time, and sometimes there are just gaps in the

(04:56):
historical record. But the thing is Missus Freeman wasn't also
her real name. Her real name was Anna Maria de
Berg Coppinger, and she sort of had her own scandalous life.
She was a former mistress of the Earl of Sandwich,
and she had a pretty large payout, like in a
large income about like seven hundred thousand pounds today, like

(05:17):
what that would be, and that's money that you're like,
what is her relationship with the Samuel Ireland? And probably
most historians think that these three kids were hers with him,
but they were born out of wedlock, and so they
just sort of had this sort of front that the

(05:37):
that she was that housekeeper even though she was probably
in a relationship with Samuel Ireland, Okay, and.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
They wouldn't just get married because then the Earl would
stop giving her money.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, we also don't know if that money even came
from the Earl, like possible it was a payout. People
have different theories. We don't know. She was just sort
of a scandalous lady. It's possible that the older daughters
were from a different relationlationship and they weren't Samuel's. And
again it's possible that he wasn't the father of any

(06:06):
of the kids, and it's possible that she wasn't the mother.
This is just sort of one historical situation where you're like,
something was happening.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Sure, listener, feel free to fill in the blanks with
whatever you think is most interesting.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
The youngest son, the only son, is named William Henry
William Henry, Ireland, and she is awful to him. She's
not very nice to him. So if you're like, if
she's his mom, they do not have a good relationship.
And she's also always hinting to the son that his
dad is not his real dad.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
That's so rude.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's like, really rude. And this boy has this poor
lonely boy has a real complex. The son's name is
William Henry. The dad weirdly will call him Samuel, after
a older son, Samuel, who died in infancy, which sounds
weird but wasn't entirely uncommon at the time. He still

(06:59):
is like a weird thing because it's also his name. Yeah,
but no one else to my knowledge ever called him Samuel.
So we're calling him William Henry. Okay, that was his name. Okay,
But there's like a lot of it's a complicated father
son dynamic. And the thing about Samuel the dad is
that it was he was a very literate man. He
like loved the fact that they grew up in a

(07:19):
very literary household. And every night after dinner he would
read to them Shakespeare plays and he would read out
loud books to them. That was like the way you
entertained yourself before HbF.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
That honestly sounds really nice.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah. And there's one book that recently came out called
Love and Madness by a man named Herbert Croft, that
the dad will read that William Henry absolutely.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Recent to the time about a recent book.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
No, no, no, recent to the times. And it actually
the book Love and Madness is about a recent case
that had happened at the time, like a true crime scandal.
It's a fictionalized version of a true crime story at
the time of the Earl of Sandwich's latest mistress murder,
which to the housekeeper must have been awful.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Or she's like, glad it wasn't me.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Glad but that book will be important later. So just
remember that when William Henry was growing up, he was
familiar with that book. Okay. The other thing that Samuel
loves is that William Shakespeare, I mean at the time,
but also now Billy Shakes, Willy Shakes, there's almost no
historical record of his life. The pieces and history of

(08:30):
Shakespeare's life are so rare and scattered. That's why people
have all these conspiracy theories about like it was one guy,
it was a woman, it was no guys, because there's
just very little that exists.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
It's why you can write Shakespeare in Love and no
one can be like that didn't happen for all we know,
for all we know, for all we know, Gwyneth Paltrow
was there. I like to think she was, even if
it was supposed to be Winona Writer, was it? So
that's this is like the lore is that it was
supposed to be Winona Writer, which when you think about it,
kind of like on paper, makes more sense. She's a

(09:02):
little bit more androgynous and like a wafy yes, more
like a petite person you would write like Twelfth Night around, yeah,
except rather than Romeo and Juliet and The story goes
that they were best friends and Gwyneth was over at
her house and saw the script for Shakespeare in Love,
like on We're known as Desk, and was like, hello,

(09:22):
then I steal your oscar and called the producers or whatever.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
I mean, I love that movie.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
We know who's great in that movie. Let's say it
on three one D three Ben Affleck. He's really funny.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Uh okay. So we don't know a lot about Shakespeare, indeed,
except the exact plot of Shakespeare in Love, which happened caonomically.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
One thing that we do know, and they did know
at the time, is they have a deed that he
bought like a house, just as like an investment property,
and that's one of the signatures we have of his cool.
And Samuel was so excited because one of the sub
letters of that pro not even at the time Shakespeare
owned it to his knowledge, was a guy with the

(10:05):
last name Ireland, and so he likes to pretend, I
mean it's possible. I mean, maybe it's true, but there's
no like genealogy. But he was like, yeah, my ancestor
lived in the house that Shakespeare owned, and so it
gave him like a cool link to that.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, I would totally if that were me. Yeah, I
would say that.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
There's no proof of it, and there's no Again, there's
no proof that he was related to that, but there's
no proof he wasn't exactly, And you know what I'm
going to say, Chances are he probably was. How many
Irelands are there.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Well too, at least because one of them is in
the UK and one of them's not.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, too northern and regular. Yeah, yeah, I've seen dairy girls.
So William Henry the Son is a mediocre student. His
dad acts like he hates him. Everyone kind of thinks
he's adult. He gets kicked out of his first school,
kind of drops out of his next school, studies in
France for a while and has a really good time.

(11:00):
So basically, this is a kid that no one thinks
it is going to amount to anything. And he comes
back to London and he gets a job as a
clerk to a lawyer and they call it the lawyer
that he was working for, and I just love this phrase.
Was a conveyancer in chancery, which is basically a legal
office for deeds. Okay, And when I say he got
a job, this is like intent that implies he was

(11:20):
getting paid. They actually were paying the lawyer. It's like
an internship, okay, because there's no law school at this time.
He past apprenticing. You're apprenticing. You just work there for free,
but actually you pay a little bit of money to
learn the trade for a few years. So that's what
he's doing. And he's in a lonely office. The lawyer
that they hired, I guess to train him, gives zero

(11:42):
shits about him. He's alone in this lonely office all day.
There were two other people working in this office, one
old guy who dies and one young guy who leaves.
And so he's just clerking surrounded by old legal deeds.
Everyone thinks he's dumb. His dad hates him, he doesn't
have a mom. Slash, the possible maternal figure in his
life treat him like absolute garbage.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Poor William Henry.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
So this is William Henry's life when he is a teenager.
His dad, Samuel, is writing a travel book. Basically the
dad became semi successful doing little drawings and going to
places around England and writing about it. And he goes
to see Stratford upon Avon. Sure, Stratford upon Avon is

(12:26):
famously Shakespeare's birthplace.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Indeed, and I know that, and that's one of the
five things I know about Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
A little bit more context for who Shakespeare is at
this time and his reputation. This is like what like
one hundred years after he died. It's like one hundred
and change a two hundred. It's almost exactly two hundred
years after he was born. Okay, because what's happening is
when Shakespeare died, he was not that famous. He was

(12:54):
relatively successful in his life, but was among a handful
of really successful playwrights. Died pretty anonymously, and for the
next one hundred one hundred and fifty years or so,
no one really cared about him, which is also why
we just don't have a paper trail of him one
because no one was saving paper at that time. Paper
was so expensive that if you had paper lying around,

(13:16):
you would use it in book bindings, which is now
like a fun fact. Every few days, you'll like see
a New York Times article that's like, oh, this famous
document we found. They're usually finding them because they were
used as book bindings and other books.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Your algorithm is so different from mine, and you're like, oh, yeah,
I totally see that once or twice a week. Yeah,
I'm not watching Taylor Swift and Cat video.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
But also that so Shakespeare just like wasn't that important.
No one like thought his stuff was worth preserving because
he was kind of in nobody. And that sort of
changes in the seventeen hundreds, mostly because of this one
actor named David Garrick. Okay, and David Garrick was an
incredible Shakespearean actor who was sort of the first naturalistic

(13:56):
Shakespeare actor, and so the theater was becoming a big thing.
This the main actor was celebrating Shakespeare. David Garrick throws
the biennial like the two hundred year anniversary of Shakespeare's
birth in Stratford upon Avon, And when he did that,
people in Stratford there were some who had not heard
of Shakespeare fascinating. So that's sort of what where it

(14:19):
was like people were going people who like cared, but
he wasn't like a no national thing. But that was
slowly changing by the late seventeen hundreds and so people
are getting back into Shakespeare. But I think the other
important thing that people should know about Shakespeare at this time,
who was his plays were super super popular but Georgie

(14:39):
and England was not precious about them. They changed their
play his plays a lot. If you went to see
a performance of King Lear in the late seventeen hundreds,
you might see a version with a happy ending, because
that's what a Georgian audience wanted to see. Sure, and
the theater people were just selling tickets. So Samuel Ireland
comes to Stratford pon Avon and he's sort of determined that.

(15:01):
He's like, I want to find a little Shakespeare tidbit, okay,
I want to get Recently, a few years before this,
they had discovered that gatehouse deed with Shakespeare's signature on it.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Oh gotcha. So he's like, maybe there's another one lying
around here.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Exactly. They only discovered that in seventeen sixty eight, and
so they're like, well, surely there are more things Shakespeare signed.
He's like, I'm going to go find it. He goes
to Stratford pon Avon. Shakespeare's last residence was a place
called New Place, and it was demolished by a guy,
Sir John Clopton, and so he was like, oh, maybe

(15:36):
Sir John Clopton's house they had like taken stuff from
Shakespeare's and there's a crate of Shakespeare's stuff. And so
Samuel Ireland goes to Clopton House and he's like, I'm
here to see if you have any shakespeare stuff lying around,
and the current owners of Clopton House go, oh my god,
I can't believe you just came, because it was literally

(15:59):
two weeks weeks ago. I think I was making a
bonfire and there were all these old papers and I
just assumed no one wanted them, and I just threw
them in the fire. Honey, isn't that right? And like
the husband comes down, he's like, yeah, it was two
weeks ago. We used them to clean the chimney and
we use them in the bird cages. We just didn't know.
And the thing is they were messing with him.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, well what I thought was gonna happen was they
were gonna be like, yeah, we happen to have his
old you know, like teacup, do you want to pay
Tom dollar for it?

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah? I mean that also does happen. He goes to
and Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife, and Hathaway's her childhood home and
they're like that chair right there Shakespeare sat on when
he was wooing Anne Hathaway, do you want to buy it?
And yes he did. Sure. But at this house, at
Cloppden House, when they were like, we burned it all,
we didn't know anyone wanted it. The son William Henry

(16:52):
is there and like he kind of realizes they're messing
with his dad, and I think he's embarrassed for his
dad a little bit. Yeah, but the dad totally believes it,
and it's like, you don't know what you've done, and
they're like, whoops.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, it's like when your parents post misinformation. He likes
deep fakes, and you don't want to be the one
to tell them, but you also want someone to tell them.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yes, And also imagine like your dad is like the
person most in the world you want to please and
to live up to, and you're like, is my dad embarrassing?
And the dad at this moment, William Henry realizes that
all that his dad wants is a Shakespeare signature, and
the dad even says, I would give up half of
my collection of books over rare books for one Shakespeare's signature,

(17:38):
as would I. So William Henry gets an idea and
he thinks, well, I work all day at a legal
office surrounded by old books and old deeds constantly. Some
of these deeds are from the fifteen hundreds when Shakespeare
was around. Some of the paper is old. Maybe I

(17:58):
can just see what happens, But he doesn't start with
the Shakespeare for Jery.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Hey, you gotta work your way up to it.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
The year is seventeen ninety four and he finds in
like a little used bookstore, an old book, a two
hundred year old prayer book, and it's not in great condition,
but it's still old, and it's like preface with a
dedication to Queen Elizabeth. First. It's it's interesting to find
a two hundred year old book, but it's not like
incredibly valuable or important. But William Henry is like, maybe

(18:29):
I can, you know, see what I can do, And
so he gets some old paper from his office and
he writes a fake preface, like a fake letter from
the author to Queen Elizabeth the First, as if this
author was giving her this copy specifically to be like, oh,
and I'm sending you this copy of my book. Specifically,

(18:51):
he just watered down ink to make it look faded,
to make it look faded, and because he had spent
so long in his job copy out things using what's
known as secretary hand, he kind of knows how to
do old timey writing. So he writes an old timey
letter from this author to Queen Elizabeth, and before he

(19:12):
goes to give it to his dad, he goes to
a bookbinder in town. And this bookbinder, if you're like
a lawyer, you would bring like all your deeds there
to get them like bound into a big leather volume.
And he goes to this bookbinder who knows him, and
he's like, do you think this will fool my dad?
I did this as a prank. And the bookbinder looks
at it and is like, I don't know. I'm convinced.

(19:33):
And one of the bookbinder's assistants looks at it and
he's like, no, no, that ink just looks faded. And
he mixes up uses some like marbling dye and mixes
up some ink and gives it to him and is like,
use this and hold it over a fire and that'll
look old.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
That is classic. I'm doing a report on the Middle Ages.
Let me singe the edges and dye the paper with
tea bags, and my teacher will add like half a
point a point.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Because I made it look old times exactly what this is.
He pays this anonymous assistant bookbinder a shilling for the
vial of new ink, and I'm like, that guy, I
want to know his story because he was he had
that in his pocket.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Immediately he was like, oh, you need you need fake old.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Ink you're doing. He rewrites the letter, holds it over
the fire like the guy tells him to to make
the ink look old, and gives it to his shows
it to his dad and it is like, hey, I
found this letter tucked in this old book. Doesn't it
look authentic? And the dad's like, yeah, looks to me.
And from that he's like, great, got my dad hook
line and sinker again. He's trying to like figure out

(20:40):
what the line is. You got to test the waters exactly.
And in another like used curio shop, he finds a
small bust of Oliver Cromwell, who's a different person than
Thomas Cromwell. William Henry sees this bust and he's like,
I think this is good, but it's done by a nobody.
So my dad, who's so pretentious, won't think it's special

(21:02):
or important. So he Forges a letter basically saying that
Cromwell himself had given the bust as a gift to
the judge who had presided over Charles the First's execution.
So like these two guys who like hated the king
they were, but in real life they were enemies and
they hated each other. Obviously William Henry did not know that.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Also, just going back to the version of history that
William Henry is proposing, Yeah, is that like if you like,
I'd be like, Dana, thank you so much for cutting
off that guy's head. Here's a tiny version of my
head for you to keep.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
I would think that that was crazy. If I don't
know someone, I work with someone and I'm going to
beep out the celebrities name. He worked for a celebrities
production company. Please bep out this name. And a gift
that this person gave to him was a tiny bust
of his head and he's brought it to the office.

(22:03):
It's incredible, So it happens. Yeah, literally, a tiny bust
of that.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
That's sort of the old times version of like giving
a signed headshot to like your dry planner, except it's
bigger and no one wants it.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Uh, And the dad is like, this seems authentic and
thinks that this sculpture is really important and invites over
all of his art friends and they all think it's authentic,
and they decide that this little sculpture that William Henry
knows for a fact was done by a nobody. They decide, oh,
it was definitely sculpted by this guy Abraham Simon, who
was like the famous sculptor of the day. And William

(22:39):
Henry is like, these snobs.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
They're adding so they're adding more levels to the hoax
than even he intended exactly, and they're adding cannon and they're.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Adding cannon, and so to him, he's like, not only
can I pull this off, but everyone is a snob
and a fake and they believe what they want to believe.
So now he's going to uh up the ante. He
first lays the groundwork, saying telling his dad that he

(23:11):
made friends with this gentleman who needed some legal chores done.
That's like step one. And then a few days later
he's like, oh my god, this gentleman invited me to
his London home. And then the next little tidbit of
information is like, oh he knows I like rare old objects.
He says, he has this old trunk lying around and
sometime I can go through it and see what's in it.

(23:33):
And the dad's like, that's interesting. So he's laid the foundation.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
William Henry sounds like a smart and kind of funny guy,
and I don't understand why I didn't have any friends
and everybody hated it.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
So he tells his dad, I made friends with this gentleman.
Mister h is the only way he'll ever refer to him,
because he wants to remain anonymous. But he has this
old oak trunk and you can go Not only can
he go through it, he can keep anything he finds.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
This would be my dream as a child who was
like into weird old stuff. Yeah, but it's fake.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Meanwhile, his dad's copy of a seventeen ninety Shakespeare book.
You know how sometimes books like important like a consortium
of Shakespeare stuff would have like a scan of an
important letter or whatever. Sure it had a print of
the recently discovered deed that had Shakespeare's signature, like in
the book that was printed. And so he's like, great,
I have Shakespeare's signature. So he steals the book and

(24:28):
practices Shakespeare's signature over and over and over again. And
basically what he does is using old paper from his
office and using this vial of ink that he got
from the bookbinder. He almost word for word, but like
like copies homework, but you change it just enough so
no one knows you copied the homework. The wording of
the old deed that he found from that was authentic

(24:52):
and makes it a new deed that, oh we don't know.
Shakespeare had a new deed that was like a transaction
between Shakespeare and his friend and fellow actor John Hemming
and this guy Michael Fraser and his wife. Shakespeare and
Fraser quote unquote sign this deed, okay, And he signs
Shakespeare copying Shakespeare's signature, and Fraser he uses his left

(25:14):
hand and that's how he's like, I'll forge the signature.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Is so what does he say that they? Does it
matter what the deed?

Speaker 1 (25:21):
No, it's just like as a transfer of property. But
he's keeping it really vague.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
I bought some you know, lumber from me, Yeah, for whatever, okay.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
And I think it's kind of his mo is to
keep these transactions vague because you don't want anyone to
be able to call you out on the specifics. Yeah,
but the one hard part of this old forgery is
these deeds had seals like wax seals, and you can't
like make a new old wax seal. So he basically

(25:51):
just steals an old wax seal from an old legal
document from the time. And since he can't, you can't
stick it. It's not sticky anymore, so he just uses
new wax that then he made a little darker and
look old with soot, which is real book report stuff.
So he just sticks an old seal onto the document
with some like new wax with a little sudden Again.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
He's a creative problem solver, Yeah, and I want to
be his friend.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
And so he had laid the foundation for where he
says tells his dad, I was going through that mysterious.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
He's done world building. He's created a narrative.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
And he presents it to his dad and says, I
found an old Shakespeare signature. And the thing that kind
of breaks my heart is his dad is not as
excited as he wants to be. His dad looks at
it and he's like, looks authentic. And even though the
dad had like been like, if I find a Shakespeare signature,
half of my rare books anyone could have, And he
just tells his son like, in exchange for this, you

(26:47):
can have any one of my rare books. And the
Sun is supposed to supposed to get half. But the
Sun even demures and he's like, no, I'm okay actually,
and the Dad's like, no, no, I insist, and he
like gives him one of his rare books, was the
Do you.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Think the dad was sad that he hadn't found it himself?

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Maybe? And I think it's just like the personality of
one of those guys, like he's just he's just a bummer.
He brings but the dad wants to authenticate this, and
he brings over an expert on wax seals, and this
old wax seal expert looks at it and goes like, yep,
this seal is from the fifteen hundreds, which it was,
even though it was stuck on with new wax, which

(27:24):
this guy should have known. But this old seal expert
also looks at it and goes, WHOA, do you know
what this seal is? No? And they're like no, And
William Henry's like, I didn't even see anything. I didn't
even notice it's a thing. The seal expert goes, it's
a thing called a quintaine, which is basically the dummy
that knights would practice jousting against, Like if you're a

(27:47):
thing of like Game of Thrones or whatever, someone's like
practicing a sword against like a dummy. But that's like
what you would what you would practice lancing against. How
is that a seal? Well, like in the in the
that's the design of the seal. Oh, that's like the
picture of the picture of it. You know, you choose
whatever your little thing is, and someone chose that. And
this old seal expert goes because it's Shakespeare is so

(28:10):
he's playing three dimensional trucks. It's what you would shake
a spear at. So it's definitely his seal, and so
they get really really excited.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Listen more allure. This is like this is Swifties reading
into everything Taylor wears and being like, it's a pun
with seven layers eighty seven.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
That's how smart Shakespeare is, seven layers. The dad is like, shake,
he would shake a spear at it, obviously, obviously. And
the dad is like, you've got to go back to
this trunk because if there was one Shakespeare deed in
there there's more and the sun I kind of think
would have been done with one, but gets caught up
in it. I think it feels good that his dad

(28:53):
is excited. His dad's also pressuring him to find more,
and I think it is both fun to trick people
and also someone who had been called stupid and worthless
his whole life. It's partly like I'm creating a document
that you think the greatest playwright in all of history wrote,
Get Touched, but also like I'm getting one over on you,
so I'm not that stupid after all. Oh yeah, So

(29:16):
he decides that the anonymous mister h who of course
wants to remain anonymous because all of this is beneath him,
says he can go back to the trunk, and this
time William Henry decides that he's going to write as Shakespeare.
I yagatta. So it's the ultimate test. So it was

(29:38):
a legal deed just with Shakespeare's signature. But now he's
decided he's going to write things as Shakespeare. And here's
the part that I think is very very interesting. He's
going to write as Shakespeare and sort of create a
fan fiction version of Shakespeare, that's who he wants him
to be. So in the seventeen nineties, I think people

(29:58):
love and worship Shakespeare at point. Theatrical people are like
Shakespeare is the Bard, He's our god, like England's homegrown god.
But there are still things about Shakespeare's life that people
found a little unsavory. The ghost in Hamlet, Shakespeare Hamlet's
dad says something about like being in purgatory, an illusion

(30:18):
that people are like, oh no, was Shakespeare's secretly Catholic,
which in the seventeen nineties would have been like horrific.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
And also there's as you know from Shakespeare in Love,
Shakespeare was married to a woman named Anne Hathaway, but
just left her in Stratford, pon Avon and sort of
lived a bachelor's life in London.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
He's making out with Gwyneth Paltrow and.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
In George and England. Like the sort of disrespect that
Shakespeare treated his wife with was kind of unseemly. People
just didn't like that about him. You don't want to
believe that about Shakespeare. It sucks when like an author
that you love has beliefs or things about their life
that don't line up with like a perfect version of
how you want them to be. But that has never happened.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
That has not either been since it has not happened
to any others. We've never had to can.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
We've never had to deal with that where you like
love someone's work but them.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
We've never separated the art from the artist, and we
never will.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
And we never will. But in George and England, they
were kind of dealing with gotcha. And he takes it
upon himself that two of the things that he forges
as Shakespeare. One is a declaration of his Protestant faith,
no very handy, and the other is a love poem
to his wife, Anne Hathaway. And one thing that I
want to say, I'm going to send you an excerpt

(31:35):
from this fake love poem. I have a feeling it's
going to be bad.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Poetry is hard.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
One thing that I think is very, very funny, and
that people do start making fun of once these forgeries
come out, is that he writes old timey Shakespeare like
a childwood in that he's adding ease to every word
and double continents like he's doing like fake old timey,
oldly shoppy. And to be clear, that is not how

(32:02):
people in The Old Times wrote he's doing such an
exaggerated version of it that spoiler alert when this is
revealed as a hoax. It just took someone reading it
to be like that is actually not etymologically consistent. But
would you like to read the poem that Shakespeare wrote
Shakespeare quotes wrote to his wife Ben Hathaway.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yes, and I'm going to read it in like normal words. Yeah,
So just know that there's extra letters in here, but
I'm givving them. Is there in heaven ought more rare
than thou, sweet nymph of avon Fair?

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Is there on earth a.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Man more true than Willie Shakespeare is to you? It's
like sweet, it's a whole poem. It's literally, roses are red,
violets are blue. There's no one else on earth more
true than me to you, Like it's it's cute. It's
not Shakespeare. You know, when people are saying that writing
is good but not Shakespeare, and they go, well, it's

(32:55):
not Shakespeare. This literally it's not Shakespeare or Shakespeare. It's
not Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
And he's also filling in other pieces of Shakespeare's biography
that like people didn't know at the time, Like people
always kind of wonder how Shakespeare had the money he had,
and he dedicated one of his poems to the Earl
of Southampton, and so William Henry decides that the best
way to just fill that little gap in is write

(33:21):
a thank you letter from Shakespeare to the Earl of Southampton,
being like, thank you for the money. He doesn't give
a specific number because he knows that, you know, if
the evidence that he actually did give him that money
came out, that it could be disproven. And then he
also writes a thank you for the thank you from
the Earl to Shakespeare, which is addressed Dear William, which

(33:43):
is very casual for an earl writing to a commoner,
but you know, Shakespeare earned a thank you. One thing.
A book about all of this, which is very good,
is called The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare. And one
quote from that book that I think is very funny
is they said, Shakespeare into circle, we're turning out to
be more than anyone imagined. Yeah. Well, if if.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Your entire idea of stuff from history is thank you
notes and thank you gifts, yeah, everyone's got real good manners.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
I guess he's also writing the Earl's note just with
his left hand. And again the earl had good handwriting.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Right, And also you're now forging things from a person
who presumably we have more stuff from them.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, there are samples of his handwriting. William Henry didn't
know about that and didn't have access to them, but
he he was an earl. We have handwriting from him.
It was good. It wasn't your like left handed strue.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Like William Henry is not like a dumb guy. He's
doing this excellent so far hoax, Like a commoner who
lived two hundred years ago, like might have left some
stuff behind. We don't know what he looked like, or
you know, et cetera, et cetera. But like an earl
presumably has like living descendants who would be like, you know,
that doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
But it's like one of those things that people assume
because Shakespeare had dedicated a poem to this earl that
the earl had given him some money. And this is
just confirming like the speculation that historians at the time understood.
But the handwriting is a mess. He also writes a
letter from Queen Elizabeth thanking quote good Master to ours

(35:21):
e William for some verses and requesting a command performance.
It's kind of insane that the Queen herself, not like
one of her scribes, would be writing this letter. And
it's also kind of insane because this letter was dated
in fifteen eighty eight, which was before Shakespeare started writing
his own place, So she was just writing to an

(35:42):
actor that she liked.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
I mean, at this point, I'm starting to think this
whole episode is the basis of Shakespeare. Does Tom Starpard
know about this? Is this what gave him the idea?

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, So he just keeps going. There's so much forgery happening.
He buys a bunch of antique paper. He's keeping a
supply of that special ink to all locked under the
window seat in the lawyer's office. His kind of brilliant idea,
Like he's so clumsy at times, but he's also really smart,
Like he decides that the things should be tied with
antique thread, like what because they're going to carbon date it.

(36:16):
In seventeen ninety but he and his dad had gone
to a speech at the House of Lords and there
was like an old tapestry on the wall and he
just like pulled an old thread from the tapestry to
use it. And he's trying to keep up the pace
of all these forgeries. So what he does to kind
of like fill in when his dad is like impatient
for something else is he's like, oh, this book used

(36:37):
to be Shakespeare's and like write some marginalia in. And
sometimes he's like, I found the original long hand transcript
of the plays, and so he just then copies the
plays long hand. So what's happening now is these forgeries
are a hit. People are so excited that they found
this treasure trove of Shakespearean things.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Can I ask, like, what's the like is this being
written about.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
In the paper?

Speaker 2 (37:03):
This is are people coming and looking at it in
like a little display likes the what's the goss? What's
the news?

Speaker 1 (37:11):
That is exactly what's happening. Yes, and yes, it's like
February seventeen ninety five, that's when reporters starts showing up,
like an editor for a newspaper shows up. He says
that that love letter that you said wasn't Shakespeare. He
said quote that it had the utmost delicacy of passion
and poetical spirit. So many people want to come to
the Ireland House to see all these artifacts that Samuel

(37:32):
eventually has to like restrict visiting hours and eventually makes
people buy a ticket.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
It's like when you know, the face of Jesus shows
up in a.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
In a grilled cheese sandwich or whatever.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
So we both recently watched that episode of Gally.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, there are people who are making
fun of this immediately. It's not it's one of those
situations where people love to both people from the past
were so dumb. No, there were absolutely people back then
who immediately knew it was a forgery and were making
fun of it. There was like a newspaper thing that
someone wrote saying that a magic trunk was also providing

(38:08):
a recent discovery of Shakespeare's favorite recipe for goodly plumb cudding,
which is like a funny joke.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
As we've established, it is the point of view of
this podcast that people in the past were very dumb,
and people now are also very dumb.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, people in the past were as dumb and gullible
as people today. Yes, some are, some aren't, but really
prominent people do show up and declare them authentic. One
of them is Boswell, James Boswell, who's a famous biographer.
He's the famous biographer one of those Samuel Johnson. But
it's like he's a guy, and who's Samuel Johnson?

Speaker 2 (38:46):
He had a famous biography, ran Ja, Well, what did
he do to warrant a biography?

Speaker 1 (38:52):
He was like a big traveler. I don't know, I've
never read it.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Well, okay, I don't feel so bad not knowing who
this famous traveler was. He was a writer.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
He just wrote a bunch of stuff in the seventeen hundreds.
But the poet laureate at the time, Henry James Pie
he shows up, and Samuel, the pompous dad who's so
proud that he has all these Shakespearean things, makes everyone
who shows up sign a certificate of belief because people
in the press were being like, this is a forgery,
but all these people can't be wrong. And he also

(39:26):
decides a little later that he wants to publish all
of these articles and things in a book. And he
also basically makes people anyone who wants to come see
them in person has to like pre order, oh sure,
which is kind of also a great way to do it. Meanwhile,
the forgeries keep going, he keeps churning them out.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
At what point are they just like, bring the whole
trunk here, like the idea that like they keep finding
one a week. Yeah, it is a little unbelievable to me.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Really unbelievable. Part to me that's so funny is that
sometimes the fines are so convenient it's hilarious. Like one
of the things that he found is this drawing of
Shakespeare that I'm gonna text you and I want you
to describe it. It is what William Henry claimed was
a self portrait that Shakespeare had done. It's like good

(40:24):
in a way that a nineteen year old did it.
There's like some shading.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
I can't deal with this. It looks like it was
done with markers, which obviously it was not. It just
it looks like a doodle. It looks like a doodle,
and it looks like someone wrote William Shakespeare with their
left hand. Yeah, around it and doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
And what I also love about this drawing is that
Shakespeare's pointing at himself like, yep, it's me, and this
is to Samue.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
And this is ws behind him because again.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
His name is William. His name is William Shakespeare. And
to Samuel Ireland's credit, when he sees this one, he goes, Nope,
Shakespeare didn't do this one. Maybe it was like fan art.
I don't know, he goes like Shakespeare's godly hand did
not draw this. No, And I think William Henry was
a little insulted by that, because then.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
There was a note that was like, dear Diary, when
I die, I'm gonna leave all my stuff in a trunk,
including my self portrait, which is not bad.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Basically it's a oh this letter showed up and it
was like Shakespeare writing a letter to an actor friend
being like, I mean closing a self portrait, nothing serious,
just say quote whimsical conceit just dashed it off. I
know it's not much.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
I okay. And again like mister H, the fictional mister H, yeah,
just happens to have not only stuff that Shakespeare would
have had, like in his possession, but that his friends
would have had. Yeah, it doesn't mean sent them through
the mails and the like it's falling apart.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Occasionally recover it cover that by being like, and I'm
copying down the letter here for my record. Were but
also it gets even more convenient that mister H just
has it not always in the trunk, because remember how
I said that they had discovered that deed to that's
the real Shakespeare say yes, like you know, ten ten

(42:14):
fifteen years earlier. At this point, the guy who found
that was a family friend. He like lived nearby, a.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Family friend of the Shakespeare Irelands.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
I was a family friend of the Ireland. His name
was Albany Wallace. And he goes, oh, this is crazy.
I found a real signature from John Hemming, who was
a friend of Shakespeare and who, if you recall William Henry,
had been forging letters to and from And he goes, well,
this is weird. The signature man, right, yeah, this is

(42:44):
really weird. The signature of this John Hemming does not
look at all like the signature of that John Hemming.
And William Henry's like, give me a minute, and he
goes to quote unquote mister H to say, mister H,
the signatures didn't match. And according to William Henry, mister
H just chuckled and said ha and goes to his

(43:05):
desk and pulls out a different signature and goes, well
do these match that That one is a signature of
tall John Hemming. The other one was a signature of
short John Hemming. Because you see, there were two John
Hemming's were actors working in this time. Everyone knew that
one was at the Globe, one was at the Curtain theater,

(43:25):
ha ha ha, and everyone was satisfied. I guess, yeah, totally.
If you're thinking that these forgeries have gone a little far, yeah,
The one to me where I'm like, people had to
have realized this isn't real was another like will oh,
like a will and Testament that Shakespeare wrote because someone

(43:47):
pointed out some like Visitor to the House was like, well,
if Shakespeare has any living descendants, wouldn't all this stuff
belong to them? And William Henry was like, oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Did Shakespeare have living descendants?

Speaker 1 (43:59):
We know? So he did have kids. He had two
daughters and a son. The son died, the son died,
there's a whole book. And his daughters did have kids,
but it ended right there. So he had grandchildren, but
no further Okay, but you're like, he lived in London
having sex with Gwyneth paltrowtz possibly had a child out
of wedlock. Sure, it's also possible we could discover that

(44:19):
one of his grandchildren had a kid that we didn't
know about. You know. It's like it was open enough
that there could be the discovery that he did have
more descendants. We have not learned that. But someone was like, well,
wouldn't if we do, they would get the rights to
all this stuff, wouldn't they? And William Henry's like interesting? Interesting,
And he writes a new deed that Shakespeare wrote a

(44:42):
will and testament, because remember, if, by the way, all my.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Stiff should go to mister h Well.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Remember how there was an Ireland ancestor who lived in
the house that Shakespeare own was just a tenant. There's
no evidence he even met Shakespeare. He just happened to
live in a house that Shakespeare owned. This new will
describes a scenario in which Shakespeare had fallen into the
Thames and his good friend, also named William Henry, Ireland,

(45:13):
pulled him out of the Thames and saved his life,
and as a reward for that, he makes the generous
bequest to his good friend, Master William Henry, Ireland, again,
an obscure London haberdasher be there we have no evidence
ever met Shakespeare, bequeathed him ownership to five of his
plays and a gift of ten pounds. And it specifies

(45:36):
that theatrical rights would go to Ireland's son and so
on forever.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
This is like a bad Doctor who episode written by
someone who has never been to England and is like
what happens in the past, Shakespeare, what do you do?
Fell in the towns the Thames?

Speaker 1 (45:53):
And then you know what a coincidence that he also
one of the plays that he bequeathed to this William
Henry was king Lear, which had not been written. You know,
I got a pitch is old.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
He's got some daughters.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
And this is one of those situations where then people
fill in the blanks because there are some verses that
Shakespeare had dedicated to a w h and people are
that it was William Henry, his good friend. He rescued
it from the Thames. Again, there are people at the
time who do realize this is insane, Like there's a joke.
Someone writes that there's a letter is going to appear
any day now announcing that Samuel Ireland was Shakespeare's grandson. Also,

(46:30):
again there's so many mistakes that later are so obvious. Again,
king Lear had not been written by the time this
deed is bequeathing it. And also people in the fifteen
hundreds did not have middle names. So the fact that
he called him William Henry, it's like that didn't make sense.
But the people who are suspicious all are suspicious of

(46:50):
Samuel the Dad because he's the prominent collector, gotcha. And
also not only would his son not be doing this,
but like his son is famously adult.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Oh, the the classic. It's more likely that Shakespeare left
all this stuff behind than a slightly stupid person could.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Pull off a lie. Exactly, A dumb nobody couldn't pull
off a lie, which is exactly.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
What they said about Shakespeare. A dumb nobody couldn't have
written these plays.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yeah. The one time that William Henry did almost get caught,
he writes a letter from Shakespeare saying that he received
fifty pounds from the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, for
a performance from Shakespeare's Troop. He dated this receipt fifteen ninety,
and he goes to give it to his dad, you know,
just one of the many weekly Yeah, Shakespeare.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Coming from the giant trunk of artifacts.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
But Samuel Ireland looks at this and goes, well, this
is weird because the Earl of Leicester famously died after
leading troops after the Spanish Armada, which happened in fifteen
eighty eight, So why would Shakespeare have been getting money
from him two years after he died? And the Sun
panics and Samuel. This is why I think also people

(48:02):
to this day kind of think Samuel was complicit in
this forgery, even though I don't know. Take take for
this what you will. The Dad is like, no, no,
there must have been a mistake somewhere. Someone probably copied
out this receipt. Maybe this one was written by someone else.
Maybe Shakespeare got the date wrong or was mixed up.
And the Sun is like, should we burn this because

(48:25):
it's not it doesn't really make sense, And the Dad
is like, no, no, it has Shakespeare's signature on it.
We don't want to burn it. He just rips off
the date and keeps it among the collection.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Well, that's not how you're supposed to do historical preservation.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
No. It's one of those things where I think Samuel
wanted to believe this so badly, and I think he
genuinely did in the heart of his hearts, that he
was willing to sort of dodge around anything that wasn't
that was evidence. To the contrary, the really sad part

(48:58):
of all of this, the one that really breaks my
is because obviously, at a certain point, Samuel Ireland is
writing to this mysterious mister H to be like, hey,
can I get a look at you, chunk? Also, can
I meet you? Like? Can I publish these? Like we
need to talk dude?

Speaker 2 (49:12):
See okay, But this is also where I get to like,
there's a certain amount of disbelieving you can do about
the life of Shakespeare or someone you're never gonna meet. Yeah,
you're also fooling yourself about what your son is up
to in a way that's really easy to check. Yeah,
and you're not checking.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
He's not checking. But mister H, of course is writing back.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Well, no one could ever. I mean, you know, you
couldn't write a letter from someone who didn't write the letter.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, you couldn't know. That would mean you're a forger.
But the really sad part is that like mister H
and Samuel the Dad start having this correspondence, and like
mister H will be writing these things. It's like, Hey,
I hear you've been looking askant at your son wearing
his hair long. I assure you that's the fashion these days.
Boys are wearing their hair long and unpowdered, and quote,

(49:56):
you cannot be an enemy to the manner in which
our Willie wore his hair. And then he also is
writing these things, being like, your son is such a
good poet, like he showed me some of his poems,
and this is the letter that quote mister H wrote
to the dad. He goes, He tells me he is
in general looked upon as a young man that scarcely
knows how to write a good letter. I have now

(50:18):
before me part of a play written by your son,
which for style and greatness of thought is equal to
anyone of Shakespeare's. And so he's just writing these things
to his dad to be like your son is quite brilliant,
I might say. And the dad is like, uh, I
never thought that, but thank you. Isn't that sad? It is?

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Yeah, but also like delusional, delusional.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
But at this point William Henry, who is nineteen, you know,
he's a teenager, still decides it's like all going to
his head. He's fooling all these people. Yes, like some
people are making fun of it, but like his dad
fully believes it, and all these prominent people believe it.
I think he kind of starts to belie even himself
and announces to his dad, I found new plays that Shakespeare.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
See. This is the money. This is the money you
find because ask people what they know about Shakespeare. They're
not talking letters, deeds or even sonnets playing.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
And so he says that a new play he wrote
Shakespeare wrote is called Vortigan and Rowena, and it's about
a fifth century English warlord turned king. And you know,
to his credit, he basically Shakespeare pulled all of his
history plays from this. You know, Holland said chronicles. So
that's where William Henry got this story. And it's like
King Lear meets Macbeth, Like he's not reinventing the wheel,

(51:40):
but he does write this play.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Is it similar to the true crime book that you
mentioned earlier?

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Well, so this is the thing that I think is
important about the book. Okay, a little easter egg. It's
not really an easter egg. It's more just like a
thing that I think helps you understand why William Henry
was doing this. In that book, the True Crime Book,
there was like a long digression about another like true

(52:07):
quote unquote crime thing that had happened recently at that time,
which was a boy named Thomas Chatterley. And Thomas Chatterley
was the seventeen year old boy who claimed that he
found all these poems from like an old monk, like
a fifth century monk or whatever, and maybe not fifth century,
but some old monk. And people were all excited about
these poems. But then when they found out that he

(52:29):
was a nobody, they didn't want to publish them. And
of course he had written the poems, he was just
claiming they were written by an old monk. And then
when he tried to set and everyone loved the poems
when they thought they were by an old bunk. And
then when he tried to set off on his own
to make it as a writer, he failed and he
killed himself. He committed suicide. And it's a sad thing

(52:49):
that happened. Thomas Chatterley was a real person. He died
at seventeen, and he sort of it became like a
mythic figure to the Romantics, like to Keats and Shell,
like Thomas Chatterley like. He was killed by the snobbery
of the literary establishment, and the idea was that people
only cared about his writing because he pretended it was

(53:11):
old and written by someone else.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
I mean, this is like a very real phenomenon. Famous
authors have like tried putting their work out there without
their name on it. Yeah, and it never goes anywhere.
And then suddenly when it's oh, when we know that
it's a by so and so, suddenly it has all
this literary merit and it can get published in New
Yorker and.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yeah, exactly. And so I think that William Henry, I
was gonna say, to his credit, I don't think it's
to his credit, began like fancying himself a poet because
he had written these love poems from Shakespeare to Anne
Hathaway that experts are like, it's by Shakespeare, and he's like,
maybe I'm a really good poet. And I think what
he thought is that this play would go on. Eventually

(53:53):
it would be outed as a forgery, but that it
would be so good that people would still be excited
and would still like want him to be a poet,
and that he was just sort of launching his own
career because forgery at that time was kind of a
thing that was happening. People were aware of Thomas Chatterley
as this tragic figure, and so I think that's how

(54:14):
he thought of himself, and so he writes Vordigan and
Rowena a whole play. And to make it really hard
on himself, he's giving pages to his dad as he goes,
so he can't even like go back and read pages.
That seems like a tactical error, tactical err But he
was impatient. His dad was impatient. And it's a long play.

(54:35):
If this was by Shakespeare would have been one of
Shakespeare's longest plays.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Has anyone ever done it?

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Well? Funny? You still ask y they do it? Oh? Okay?
The drury Lane Theater like one of the main theaters
in London. There's a bidding war to the two main
theaters are like, we want to do the lost Shakespeare
play and they bid on it, and the drury Lane
Theater is like, we want to do it and put
it on and they buy it and they get it,

(55:01):
and uh, Sheridan, the guy who like manages and runs
the house, is like, oh, it's not very good, and
so they basically hire a ghostwriter to like make it
a little better.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Fair enough, you know, far be it from me to
critique the greatest writer who ever lived. But I saw
Pygmalion not Pygmalion. What am I thinking of Cymbeline? Yeah,
it's a Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
And as I said, as we said at a Couples,
as we said before about King Lear, like people were
doing rewrites to Shakespeare back then, like it wasn't considered crazy.
So even the people who did believe that this was
by Shakespeare was like, it was an early work and
it's not great. So let's, you know, file the edges.
The main actor, the main Shakespearean actor of the theater

(55:47):
is named John Philip Kemble, and he has kind of
thought this was a scam the whole time, and he
is not excited to be doing this play. He thinks
it's all bullshit. Uh, he did have integrity. He doesn't
think the play is very good, but they signed this contract.
They're putting it on. Meanwhile, William Henry is getting excited
and he decides that he's going to write another play,

(56:08):
oh dear, And he's writing plays that like plausibly could
have like there are lost Shakespeare plays and so he's
writing plays that plausibly Shakespeare could have written. And he
writes Henry the second quote unquote by.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Shakespeare, or isn't it loves labors found is like the one,
Oh is it because isn't it?

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Oh, there was loves Labor's Loss and loves Labor.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
It is supposed to be like somewhere out there one
day there was loves Labor's found.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Yeah, and it makes sense that there would be a
you know, Henry the second he wrote a bunch of histories,
and William Henry's like, shoot, this one's better. I should
have started with this one. But it's too late for that.
Because the Jury Lane is putting on Vordigan and Rowena
even though it's not very good. I think they even
know it's not very good, but they're like, look, it's
going to be a scandal either way. All press is

(56:54):
good press. They don't the Jury Lane theater does not
say on the advertising that this is by Shakespeare.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Well, that's error numbers one through No, it's smart.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
They know that they can't like legally say it's by Shakespeare,
so we don't know so many tickets. Then no, the opposite,
they sell out because it's a known scandal at the time,
Like the fact that this is a lost Shakespeare play
that they're putting on is known at the time, and
it sells out. It is the first time Jerry Lane.
The theater was remodeled with like more than three thousand

(57:26):
seats recently, and it was the first time it's sold out.
Because there are these factions, the people who believe and
if people don't believe, and it's like, come see for yourself.
Is it real? Is it not real? Kemball, the main
actor who's also a part owner of the theater, schedules
the premiere for April first, but this is my kind
of guy. But Samuel is so mad that he makes

(57:47):
them move it to April second. Sarah Siddons, who is
like the main Shakespearean actress. Maybe you've heard of her,
Sarah Sindon.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
No, but we are post men playing women. Yes, okay,
women are women. Women are playing women again. Shakespeare in
Love is a historical document and you can learn about
Elizabethan culture through it.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
You can at this point in the seventeen nineties, women
play women. The most famous, one of the most famous
actresses is Sarah Siddon. She drops out before opening night.
She's also Kimball's sister. They're like a brother's sister. And
she says she's ill, which maybe she is, but also
maybe just like didn't want to get involved with this.
But the other most famous Shakespearean lady, Dorothea Jordan, who

(58:31):
was the mistress of the King's son, one of the
king's many sons. Like she was like a really prominent lady,
like a really famous actress. She's in it, okay, And
the play is scheduled to go off. But before the
play happens there there was one fatal error that Samuel made.
Samuel had been inviting people into his house to look

(58:52):
at these old documents, and you know, in context with
him like standing over your shoulder and like by candlelight,
like you're like, oh, these look old. The paper looks old.
I guess it's real. He decides, as I alluded to earlier,
that he's going to publish all of these findings in
a book. And he does, and he publishes them Christmas Eve,

(59:14):
seventeen ninety five. It sells really well. But the problem
is now people.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Can sit at home and look at it and be
like this is fake.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Now that people look at it, they're like, this looks
dumb as well. And so remember the show was premiering
April first, the book publishes Christmas, okay, and like, so
that's the period where the actors like, this is bullshit,
because you're going to dinner with all these people, and
people are like, no, these this is fake, And so
I think the actors are embarrassed. And two days before

(59:42):
the play is scheduled to premiere, Malone, Edmund Malone, who's
the big like Shakespearean scholar of the era, drops what
they thought was going to be a pamphlet to like
as a little takedown, he drops a four hundred and
twenty four page hardcover book like he brought receipts like.
It has tons of footnotes of why this is faith.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
This is the they're not like us, This is what
they're not like us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
It is this era, absolutely relentless. What he gets wrong, though,
is he thinks that there's too much for a single
person to have done. And he also thinks that Samuel
and his dumb idiot son didn't do it. He thinks
they were duped by this mysterious mister h But he
goes through like the spelling, the timing, the grammar like
he's a Shakespearean expert and knows that these are faith.

(01:00:30):
But the book is so long and boring that it
reads it it's actually not quite the body blow you
would think it is. So that's just sort of a letter.
And it's also he's really condescending, Like people don't like
this guy, so there are still loyalists who are like,
he's just being a snob. So the play premieres with
these two rival factions who are just sort of at

(01:00:51):
each other's streat It's like it's a real Shakespeare, it's
a forgery. There should be a movie. Yeah, it's good. Right,
it's a rowdy crowd. It's mostly men, which I just
think is important for the context of why there's so
many like cat calls. The show is a disaster. People
are constantly interrupting, and also Kemball, the main actor who
wanted to schedule for April Fool's Day, sort of sabotages it.

(01:01:14):
He's the main actor, but he also is a part
owner of the theater. He cast it. He casts like
comic actors in small roles, even though it's a tragedy,
makes people laugh. And then sometime towards the end of
the play, there's a line where he goes and when
this solemn mockery is ended, and everyone cracks up, and
then he repeats the line like really hamming it up.

(01:01:35):
And then there are fights that are happening between the
factions in the audience, and after the show, there's so
much like chaos and heckling and cat calling that Kemball
is only able to restore calm when he says, we're
not going to do the show anymore. It was one
night only, not doing it anymore. So now that show's over,
William Henry I think kind of realizes like it's the

(01:01:56):
end of the line. Yeah, And he I think also
like wanted people to believe it was him and it
was real, But now that this book came out, he's like,
no one's going to really believe.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
This, right, because then you don't get you don't get
the credit for the discovery, and you also don't get
the credit for the hoax because everyone thinks he's just
too stupid.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
And also his dad is being like mocked in the newspapers.
There's another play that comes out, like making fun of
a pretentious collector who's like his dad.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
It's the type of thing I would do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Yeah, But he's like embarrassed, and so he confesses to
his sisters. He tells his sisters, I did all of these,
and the sisters go to the dad, and the Dad's like,
he's lying to you. He's trying to take the glory
of Shakespeare's words, like, not only is he lying, he's
being arrogant and deceitful that he would like even lie
and say he did these shakespeare things, like could you

(01:02:44):
imagine the arrogance of saying he wrote a thing that
Shakespeare wrote a horrible play that everybody hated. So finally
he just decides that he needs to confess everything. He
goes to that family friend, Albany Wallace, the one who
discovered your actual deed and the signature, and is like,
I'm just going to tell you everything, And eventually he's
able to convince him that he did fortune by like

(01:03:06):
showing him that he can ford Shakespeare's signature, and Wallace
basically tells him like keep your mouth, just like let
it die down. So by May seventeen ninety six, William
Henry is like basically having a nervous breakdown. He leaves
his clerkship. He says he's getting married to a rich
young woman, but when he gives the name, that woman
doesn't exist. And then he's like, oh, I meant this

(01:03:27):
other woman, but like that woman doesn't exist either. His
dad and Missus Freeman are getting sort of fed up
by his chaotic whatever, and they go to the country
and William Henry tries to confess to his dad in writing,
and his dad rejects, basically rejects the confession and is like,

(01:03:48):
not only do I not believe you, but if you
did this, keep your mouth shut, He goes your character.
If you insist on this will be blasted because basically
William Henry is saying, I want to confess, and he
wants to absolve his dad, but he also kind of
wants to make a profit, like he's just like broken lost.
At this point, he does get married right before he

(01:04:10):
turns twenty one, to this random woman named Alice Crudge,
which is classic random woman name at.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Is roll Doll levels of random woman name.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Basically, no one knew this woman. We only people were like, WHOA,
who's they like see him walking with her in the
park like a family friend. It was like, WHOA, who's this?
You got married? Like he's real, like shave his head,
blea chip blonde, going through a crisis, and he doesn't
really have any money. He hasn't talked to his dad
in months. He goes to Wallace, this like trusted family friend,

(01:04:42):
and is like, look, can you mediate between me and
my dad. I'm going to publish a confession pamphlet because
I want to clear my dad's name, and also I
want to make a little money off the people will
buy this pamphlet. And so Wallace is like, okay, I'll
help you mediate, brings the dad in and shows him
pamphlet and like, the dad who's so mean to a

(01:05:03):
son is like, I don't even think you could have
written this. Who wrote this pamphlet for you? He publishes
his account. It sells well, even though some people don't
believe it. Some people just think it's all fiction, that
it was his dad who was the forger all along,
or that it was this mysterious mister h.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Is there anyone left who's like, no, it's Shakespeare. They're
just being weird about it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Yes, the dad, I mean, the dad is still like
it's still Shakespeare. But no, like other people not really no,
because he confess you could. I guess people who like
aren't paying attention to the news. Sure, I'm sure people
who like heard about it and then stopped caring about
it are like, oh, they found some Shakespeare stuff, and
I'm like, never looked into that again, really heartbreakingly. At

(01:05:45):
the end of his confession, he's like, and if I
attempt another play, I hope the public can put its
prejudices aside and like, you know, judge it with an
open heart. And it's like, Babe, at this point, people
aren't gonna take you seriously.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
You're not getting another job.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
You're not getting another job. But you know he's trying,
and he actually he makes a decent living as a
writer for the rest of his life, using a lot
of pseudonyms. Sure, he sort of writes Gothic novels, just
sort of like generic, forgettable Gothic novels, and some histories
and biographies another unproduced play. Eventually, to make money, he

(01:06:20):
starts selling like quote unquote authentic copies of the forgeries
because he was notorious for these forgeries. He had confessed,
and so people want, like, oh, can you write me
like the Shakespeare letter today out the way you wrote,
So he starts selling those to make money. Samuel his dad,
was utterly humiliated, tries to publish his own defense still

(01:06:43):
claims the papers are real, goes with the short and
tall John Hemmings defense. But at that point people have
stopped engaging. Yeah, it's like no one even writes back
to like be like no, no, they're they're fake, right,
No one engages the war. It's like a one sided
Twitter war at this point. And Samuel dies without ever
reconciling with his son, Oh Christ He and William Henry

(01:07:07):
had like kept writing to his dad like all these
sad things. He like wrote to his dad once really angrily,
demanding to know who his real parents were. Yeah, it's
it's really sad. The ending. In an unpublished memoir, William
Henry went a little atonement and like wrote like a
fictional version of like going to see his dad at
his bedside as he was dying, and like he counts

(01:07:29):
like and his dad had tears in his eyes of
happiness and said that like you were the only joy
in my life. But like there's no evidence that he
ever actually saw his dad again. It's like kind of
a really sad scene. The obituaries of Samuel are merciless.
All of his collectibles that he had amassed, like they

(01:07:49):
sell them after he died, but they are all kind
of worthless because no one he's like now famous as
a forger. Yeah, and so all of his collectibles are worthless,
basically the only one who the only collectibles he had
that sell kind of well are the original forgeries, and
they self were like what seventeen thousand dollars would be today.
After Missus Freeman, his like housekeeper slash wife wife died,

(01:08:15):
one of the daughters, Jane Ireland, had all of the
folios of all these forgeries burned, like the book, the
copies of the book that the dad published. She burns
all them because she's like, I'm just done with this.
William Henry's wife dies, he remarries to make more money.
He writes like a longer confession, and in that version

(01:08:35):
he ages himself down to seventeen, I think, because he
thinks it's a little more winning if he did it younger.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Yeah, it's more well a, it's more impressive and be
it's more like forgivable.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
Yeah. And so he he writes this confession. It's sort
of self aggrandizing. It's not very apologetic. He's like pretty
proud of himself. He's pretty proud that he like fooled
these people into thinking he was Shakespeare. Well, and so
he says he was seventeen, which was also the age
that Thomas Chatterton was when he committed suicide. The sort

(01:09:07):
of like a romantic figure, but he was nineteen. Throughout
all this he was older and again like working, he
had a job, he was like an adult. But yeah,
he he's sort of caught between like apologetic and he
knows it ended badly, but he's also kind of proud
and I think for the first time in his life
during all this he felt important.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
It's also like, I don't know how how apologetic he
really needs to be. If like it was a mostly
victimless crime that didn't last very long, you know, Like
like I don't if you do a hoax that ends
up that gets a bunch of people sick or something,
I'm like, you need to fucking apologize. But if you
do like a literary hoax that lasts don't know, two years,

(01:09:50):
a year and a half, a year and a half,
I'll take one apology. I don't need more than that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Yeah, I don't like it. Again, it's not like he
was like forging a deed to a house and he's like,
and now I live in the He like he didn't
really profit. I guess his dad did. They didn't. He
didn't make a ton of money. Yeah. He's just such
an interesting contradictory figure because like him writing these Shakespearean
artifacts is imbuing like a sense of importance to the

(01:10:16):
literary establishment, and so he like is worshipful of the
literary establishment but also really resentful of it because he's like,
they're all frauds and they're only thinking this poetry is
good because Shakespeare wrote it, but also it is good
because I wrote it. Maybe I'm another Shakespeare. And I
do think he as he was writing some of these plays,
was like, hey, Shakespeare was a glove maker's son. He

(01:10:37):
was a nobody, and he had the music. Maybe I
am another Shakespeare. And it's like he also was desperate
for his father's approval and like wanted his father to
love him so badly, but also was like making his
father look like a fool. It's a real like Oedipole
situation of like you want your dad to love you,
but you also want to one up him.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Well, it's also like, what does my dad love Shakespeare?
So what am I going to do? Be Shakespeare? Yeah,
I'm gonna sit in my room and pretend to be Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
So That's the story of William Henry Ireland, who wrote
and produced in an unseen Shakespeare play seen by one crowd,
one crowd, one time, the second one Henry the second,
which he thought was pretty good. The other theater was
going to put it on, but then once everyone was
like these are these are not real, they were like, nope,
we're not doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
See. I think like I would totally go to like
a night of scenes from forged plays.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
It's kind of interesting. They're not very good.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
Yeah, just just snippets. I don't want to watch the
whole two hour thing. You want like a taste a
few scenes.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Yeah. I admire his guts. He took it so much
further than I think any rational person would have.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Definitely not normal.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
I think my favorite fact is that Shakespeare himself was
rescued from the Thames by his ancestor and he bequeathed
all of his plays, some of his to him.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
That's some real fan fiction shit. That's like, let me
tell you about the time I met Harry Styles and
he told me I was pretty it is.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
He was writing the version of Shakespeare that people wanted
to believe in, which is I think why they believed
in this hook so much. We don't know a lot
about Shakespeare's life, but I do think people have an
idea of who Shakespeare is in their head, of who
you want Shakespeare to be, because when you love someone's work,
you want them to be a certain way. But we

(01:12:29):
don't know who Shakespeare was. Kind of the evidence is
that he was sort of a shitty person. He once
sued a neighbor over like a really small amount of money,
and he left his wife in his will his second
best bed. And that doesn't take away from if you
like his plays. But William henry knew that he was
playing into a version of Shakespeare that people wanted to

(01:12:50):
believe in, and England had cast Shakespeare as their hero,
and so it also felt very anticlimactic in the seventeen
nineties that they just didn't have any physical things of his. Yeah, Lizzie,
this episode was very, very long. But where can the
good people find you? We plug Yes, so.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
You can email us and pretend to be Shakespeare and
send us a poorly worded email.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
At Hoaxthpodcast at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
Indeed, and we'll you know, we're going to get our
Instagram up and running. We'll post some of the the
self portrait of Shakespeare that really delighted.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Me and made me laugh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
Check it out there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
You can follow me at Dana Schwartz with three z's
at the end, and our Instagram, which is linked in
the bio. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
Please hoax responsibly. Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Our hosts are Dana Schwortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive
producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer

(01:13:59):
Rima lk Ali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk.
Our theme music was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.