Ireland Shakespeare Forgeries - First Documents

First Documents

From a chance acquaintance met at a book-binder’s the young man learned of a technique for simulating the appearance of ancient writing by using a special ink and then heating the paper. After a trial run creating a couple of relatively insignificant documents, he set out to devise something with Shakespeare’s signature. His work at a legal firm gave him access to Elizabethan and Jacobean parchment deeds, so in December 1794 he cut a piece of parchment from one of them, used his special ink to write with and heated it over a candle. The result was a mortgage deed between Shakespeare and his fellow-actor John Heminges on one side, and Michael Fraser and his wife on the other. The text and signature he copied from the facsimile of the genuine 1612 mortgage deed printed in Malone’s edition of Shakespeare. Ripping a seal from another early deed, young Ireland attached it to this concoction and presented the result to his father on 16 December. Samuel Ireland accepted it as authentic, and the next day took it to the Heralds’ Office, which approved it as genuine.

Asked where he had turned up this deed, William Henry replied that he had found it in an old trunk belonging to a chance acquaintance who did not wish to have his name revealed. Mr. H., as he called him, had freely given him this deed. The young discoverer suggested that there might well be more documents where this had come from, and quickly followed this up with a promissory note from Shakespeare to Heminges—the only such note (had it been genuine) ever discovered from the period.