Passages Selected by Distinguished Personages, on the great literary trial of Vortigern and Rowena! A comi-tragedy

“WHETHER IT BE - OR BE NOT FROM THE IMMORTAL PEN OF SHAKESPEARE?" 

[IRELAND, William Henry]; Sir Henry & Lady DUDLEY 

Passages Selected by Distinguished Personages, on the great literary trial of Vortigern and Rowena! A comi-tragedy. 

London: Printed for J. Ridgway, [1796-1798]

12mos., 4 vols in 2; Vol I bound in full contemporary tree calf, Vol II in later appropriately mottled calf; each lined and elaborately decorated in gilt to spines, with devices in compartments and contrasting black leather labels in to second compartment, titled in gilt; edges of boards further decorated with gilt borders; pp. [vii], vi-viii, [i], 2-104, [ii]; [vii], ii, [i], 2-128; Vol I with some worm holes, showing through to boarding at lower edge of rear board; lightly bumped and pushed to corners with some bumping and splits along the spine; hinges with some small associate holes, but holding firm; aside from some light corner creases and a couple of very small brown marks, an excellent, clean copy; Vol II with some offsetting and browning affecting endleaves and prelims; the text block margins to each sometime neatly cropped, not affecting any text including the headings; a lovely, clean set of this fascinating work. Provenance: Armorial bookplate and shelf sticker of the Earl of Granard (Fax mentis incendium gloriae) to the front paste-down of Vol I. 

A mixed edition set: Vol I the third edition, Vol II the second edition, Vol III the fourth edition, Vol IV the second edition. 

William Henry Ireland (1775-1835) is a name which has become synonymous with Shakespeare and forgeries. Ireland’s father, Samuel, was himself a great collector of Shakespearian ‘relics’, and thus the young William grew up surrounded by knowledge of the public’s fascination in the great British playwright, and in particular material said to have been written in the hand of the bard himself. While apprenticed to a lawyer, Ireland began to try his own hand at forged signatures, using old papers and eventually presenting them to his father who, delighted with the discoveries, refused to ask too many questions. Heartened by this response, Ireland continued his work, branching out from signatures to entire letters supposedly written in the hand of Shakespeare to various patrons including the Earl of Southampton, Queen Elizabeth, and even Anne Hathaway (including a lock of his hair). He then undertook some of his more daring work - entire original manuscripts for Hamlet and King Lear. Claiming that all of the material came from the same anonymous guarantor, his ‘findings’ were authenticated by leading experts of the day, and he even published his own treatise on the documents, entitled Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare, in 1795. Scholars from far and wide came to view and study the papers, which Ireland kept in a sealed chest under his bed, and the discoveries began to gather fame. 

The following year, Ireland became more and more outlandish. He released Vortigern and Rowena alongside a series of ‘letters’ from Shakespeare to his publisher, explaining why the play had never been produced, and a deed showing that the play had been left to a distant relative who had saved Shakespeare from drowning. The rights to the play were subsequently obtained by Sheridan, who planned to stage the first performance at  Drury Lane Theatre in London, with half of the £300 revenue to be given to the Ireland family. It was then that doubts began to creep in. On opening night Philip Kemble, the manager of Drury Lane, and who was playing the title role, famously repeated the lines “and when this solemn mockery is o'er", and the actors were eventually booed off stage. 

This satirical pamphlet was published very shortly after the fiasco. Attributed to Sir Henry Dudley (who was himself a playwright and a friend to the actor David Garrick) and his wife, it pokes fun at some of the leading public figures of the day, through a series of passages purporting to be from Ireland’s play, and originally appeared in the ‘Morning Herald’, for which Dudley was a regular contributor, earning himself a reputation as the "most notorious editor in London." So convincing were these passages, that Ireland, furious, had to come out and denounce them as false. 

Perhaps most interesting in this example is present in the second volume, where a previous owner has added notes in pencil next to almost all of the entries, thus exposing the previously semi-anonymised names. These include (and are not limited to) The Duke of York, Lady Jane Paget, The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Right Honorable William Pitt.