The Ireland Forgeries

The Ireland forgeries were documents, alleged to be the writings of Shakespeare, put forth by a youth of nineteen years,--W. H. Ireland (1777-1835). His chief forgery was "Miscellaneous Papers and Instruments, under the hand and seal of William Shakespeare, including the tragedy of King Lear, and a small fragment of Hamlet, from the original."

For a time he imposed upon the public,--he went so far as to write a new play, entitled "Vortigern and Rowena," and to palm it off as Shakespeare's. It was actually played at Drury Lane Theatre in 1796, but the fraud was at length detected, and ultimately acknowledged.

Only in recent years has it been observed that the pronoun its occurs but two or three times in the acknowledged works of Shakespeare. Had this fact been known in the last century, the false pretences of Ireland would have been at once exposed, for the word its is of frequent occurrence in his forgeries.