Some supposed Shakespeare forgeries; an examination into the authenticity of certain documents affecting the dates of composition of several of the plays

I

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Uniform with " Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries."
Foolscap 4*0, Bound in Leatherette. Price Ss. 6d. net.

SHAKESPEARE

AS A

GROOM OF THE CHAMBER

ILLUSTRATED

THIS volume clears up doubts, which have hitherto attached to some incidents
in the poet's life, and is based on documents discovered by the author in the
Record Office, and on various unpublished manuscripts in that and other
collections.

It explains what were Shakespeare's duties when in waiting ; describes
his Court dress ; tells of his mess allowances, his pay and perquisites ; and
discusses his attitude towards Court ceremony and service.

It is illustrated with plates from contemporary pictures and facsimiles of
documents.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

The Times. — " With the aid of illustrations, and a contemporary record, Mr. Law gives
a vivid picture of the splendours of that festive visit. A very interesting book, which adds
to our exact knowledge of Shakespeare's life and times, and settles more than one disputed
point."

The Morning Post. — "Anything certain about Shakespeare is a cause of gratitude.
Mr. Law writes very agreeably all round his brief text and actual discovery."

The Guardian. — " A small but excellent piece of work."

The Daily Chronicle. — ** Mr. Law's delightful little book is an inquiry into the facts
concerning the appointment of Shakespeare as a Court Official. His handling of the subject
is done with consummate skill and critical insight, the result being that we have now a far
more satisfactory account of the whole business than ever we had before. Not till now has
the case been stated so clearly, the evidence brought forward so adroitly, the verdict pro
nounced so decisively as in Mr. Law's delightful book."

The Morning Leader. — " Mr. Law in his deeply interesting picture of the ceremony is
careful to point out that this ' waiting and attending ' was an honourable, not a menial,
office .... The whole of the little book, apart from the new facts, gives just that agreeably
lerned picture which we should expect from the admirable historian of Hampton Court."

A

Notes and Queries. — "This well-printed book puts in a clear and interesting light two
associations of Shakespeare with the Court of James I. ... The details Mr. Law supplies
concerning the magnificent entertainment given to the Spanish representative are of high
interest. We thank Mr. Law for an admirable piece of work. All such well- 'documented '
details are of great value to the student."

The Era. — " The Author's scholarly reflections as to the manner in which Shakespeare
probably occupied himself during the fulfilment of his appointment, make excellent reading,
and the half-dozen engravings — reproductions of celebrated pictures, chiefly of Somerset
House and facsimiles of public records — add to the value of a work that should prove
acceptable to the Shakespearean student."

Country Life. — " Altogether Mr. Law has done a service to Shakespearean students in
clearing up these little points."

THE

HISTORY OF HAMPTON COURT PALACE

In 3 Volumes, 4/0, Profusely Illustrated. Price icj. 6d. each.

I. Tudor Times. (3rd Edition.)
II. Stuart Times. (2nd Edition.)
III. Orange and Guelph Times.

The Times. — " A succession of vivid pictures of courtly life in England under the rule
of the magnificent Tudors."

The Literary World.— " A story which reads like the stately portions of ' Kenilworth.' "
Spectator. — "Tastefully got up, pleasantly written, and liberally illustrated."
St. James's Gazette. — " Mr. Law's pages seem to glow with purple and gold."
The World. — "A work of great historic and artistic interest and importance."
Manchester Guardian. — " A delightful book."

The Graphic. — "The story is so interesting that one can almost imagine oneself in the
sixteenth century."

The Queen. — "The work is altogether one of absorbing interest."

The Magazine of Art. — " Vastly more interesting than most good novels."

The Bookseller.— " A really delightful history."

The Academy. — " It is seldom one comes across so satisfactory a combination of research
and recital."

Pall Mall Gazette.—" The book is a model of all that a book of the sort should be."

Morning Post.—" He makes the very walls to speak and the stones to cry out. . . . He
marshals his incidents, and arranges his figures with consummate skill. . . . Mr. Law's book
occupies a position of unique importance."

LONDON : G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.

SOME SUPPOSED

SHAKESPEARE FORGERIES

A 2

SOME SUPPOSED

SHAKESPEARE FORGERIES

An Examination into the Authenticity of certain

Documents affecting the Dates of

Composition of Several

of the Plays

BY ERNEST LAW, B.A. F.S.A,

BARRISTER AT LAW

Author of "Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber,"

" The History of Hampton Court,"

"Holbein's and VandycVs Pictures at Windsor Castle,"

etc., etc.

WITH FACSIMILES OF DOCUMENTS Q

^

V

LONDON : G. BELL AND SONS, LIMITED
1911

PR

u-

PREFACE

THE strange story of the Books of Revels at Court, which
the writer has endeavoured to make plain in the following
pages, has seemed to him to require telling in rather full
detail — for several reasons.

In the first place, apart from the bearing they have on
the interesting problem of the sequence and dates of Shake
speare's plays and their first presentations at Court, there
has surely never been known, among all the falsities and
delusions, which have so repeatedly misled searchers into
the life and works of our great dramatist, a more remark
able perplexity in its way than this.

That documents, at one time accepted as genuine, should
afterwards be held to be forged, has not — unfortunately —
been such a rare occurrence in the history of Shakespearean
criticism, as to seem so very surprising ; nor is it so that
documents, at one time believed to be forged, should after
wards be shown to be genuine — though, naturally enough,

viii Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

this has not very often happened. But that the same
documents should have each of these contradictory decisions
successively pronounced on them, and that each such decision
should afterwards be reversed, is certainly rather unusual.

Further than this : that curious and very precious docu
ments, after having lain in obscurity for two centuries,
should be discovered, only immediately to be buried and
disappear again for forty years ; that they should then
be once more disinterred and re-discovered, to disappear
again, for a third time, for another thirty years ; that
they should afterwards re-appear yet once more — under
circumstances suggesting larceny, forgery and fraud — forth
with to be universally pronounced to be other than what
they really are ; and that only now they should, after more
than a century of mystery and uncertainty, at last be un-
mistakeably revealed in their true nature, must surely be
unprecedented in the whole annals of our literature.

In any case, a story of such strange vicissitudes befalling
Shakespearean documents would seem to warrant a com
plete exposition of how it all came about.

Moreover, there are other reasons, of a present and
practical sort, which seem to make it worth while to do

Preface ix

more than merely record the bare results of the writer's
investigations.

For, besides the interest attaching to anything connected
with the plays of Shakespeare, the story in itself affords us
some very necessary and useful warnings. It may serve
to show us how a literary fiction, originating in the slen
derest basis, may acquire by degrees universal credence,
owing to haphazard and unscientific methods of research.
It may also serve as a caution — sometimes necessary
enough even in these days — against the danger of accepting
the uncorroborated " ipse dixits " of " experts in hand
writing," however experienced and however honourable,
unless their assertions can be subjected to rigid testings
and checks.

Reverting now to the documents themselves, from
whose vicissitudes these morals may be drawn, it is
satisfactory to know that they now repose — let us hope for
ever — in the permanent security of the Public Record
Office, once more in the possession of the Crown. Had
the American millionaires been about in the late 'sixties,
when their then possessor was wanting to turn them into
cash, there can be little doubt that those " snappers up " of

x Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

such " unconsidered trifles " as these, would not have missed
acquiring the priceless papers, which our own Audit Office
and Record Office between them had at one time altogether
forgotten, and narrowly escaped letting slip for ever.

The whole circumstances are, in truth, most instruc
tive for us at the present time. For it is notorious —
though this seems to make but little difference — that the
resources at the disposal of the custodians of our national
archives, not only in Chancery Lane but also at Somerset
House and elsewhere, are entirely inadequate to cope with
the masses of material in their charge. Historical docu
ments of all sorts, of the very highest curiosity and interest
— many besides of great practical utility to-day in the study
of the sciences and the technical and fine arts — are inacces
sible and practically useless for want of the means and the
staff necessary to arrange, catalogue and calendar them
properly.

To cite one instance only : the archives of the Lord
Chamberlain's Office, of no inconsiderable value as mate
rial for the history of the court, the drama and social life,
though transferred to the Record Office in 1866 and 1874,
are still to this day uncatalogued — a single manuscript hand-

Preface xi

list being all the assistance the historian gets when making
researches among them.

Is a like fate, one wonders, in store for the masses of
interesting papers, dating from the time of Henry VIII. to
that of Victoria, which were removed from H.M/s Office
of Works in 1907 ? Are they, too, to be left unindexed
and uncalendared for an indefinite period ?

A strange thing it is, indeed, that the State, whose
powers and activities are being so constantly and too suc
cessfully, perhaps, invoked to undertake functions, which
might just as well — to say the least — be discharged
by private enterprise, should remain so neglectful of the
nation's treasures — its own province — as to suffer them
to lie unfruitful and even deteriorating, while thrusting
its energies into regions where it often does more harm
than good.

But this is a wide topic : and, on the present occasion,
it is only with records bearing on the wonderful history of
our English drama that we are concerned — above all, with
those relating to that crown of its wonder, the creations of
our all-world poet. When one thinks of the millions
profusely showered on the Education Department, and as

xii Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

profusely wasted by it — for " art " schools, for instance, with
their pitiful results — and of the hundreds of thousands of
pounds squandered on trumpery and useless things, what
is to be said of the indifference with which many of our
most precious archaeological treasures are left lying huddled
away in bundles, unsorted and uncatalogued, in confusion
and in shreds ?

If it could be seriously contended that the country
cannot afford to do this thing — to have its own archives
properly taken care of — then it would be better that the
necessary funds should be raised by disposing, say, of some
of the duplicate copies of rare and valuable prints, stowed
away in the presses of the Print Room ; or of a few of the
superfluous Turners at Millbank.

Or, why not get rid of the records themselves altogether,
by selling them for some temptingly large price, say, to the
Public Library of Berlin ; or to some Museum or Univer
sity in the United States, which would cherish such a
possession, and speedily open the treasures they enshrine
to the world at large ?

Such expedients, however, are not, of course, seriously
to be thought of. Yet, how much do we allow, even as it

Preface xiii

is, other nations to do for us, of these islands, which we
ought to take pride in doing for ourselves !

How is it that we have so often to seek in the books of
Germans and Frenchmen, of Dutchmen and Danes — not to
mention those, of course, of our kinsmen beyond the seas —
for some of the most illuminating studies on the various
branches of these subjects ? How is it, too, that, if some
private British scholar, who may have devoted immense
time and pains to Shakespearean research — such as Mrs.
Stopes, or Mr. W. J. Lawrence in that exceedingly valu
able essay of his, " Music in the Elizabethan Theatre "
— wishes to place the results of some of his investigations
at the disposal of the world of letters, he has, as often
as not, to do so by the courtesy of German scholars through
the medium of the " Jahrbuch " of the " Deutsche Shake-
speare-Gesellschaft " — for the reason, that the British pub
lisher " won't touch it," because he doesn't "see enough
money in it ? "

How comes it that it is as one of the twenty-nine volumes
of the " Materialien zur Kunde des alteren Englischen
Dramas " — that magnificent series of reprints of old English
plays and documents elucidating our early drama, edited

xiv Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

by Dr. W. Bang, Professor of English in the University
of Lou vain, and published in that town, out of their com
paratively small resources, aided, indeed, with a subsidy,
for this special purpose, from the Belgian Government,
but, getting nothing at all out of plutocratic England — how
comes it that it is as one of this series that a Frenchman,
an enthusiastic lover of our literature, and the author of a
most delightful study of the life and works of John Lyly,
M. Feuillerat, Professor of English in the University of
Rennes, has to bring out his splendid work — written in
admirable English, too — on the early history of our Office
of the Revels ?

Ask for M. Feuillerat 's book in the great public libraries
in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland — you will get it
readily. Ask for it in the Library of the University of
London, in the Library of the Guildhall, in the Library of
the Society of Antiquaries — it is not there, nobody knows
it, nobody wants it, but you can have the latest tract by a
" Baconian."

How comes it, that it is to no English scholar but to
Dr. Wallace, commissioned by the governing body of his
University in Nebraska, to make researches in our Record

Preface xv

Office in London, that we are indebted for the most remark
able of recent discoveries on the personal life of Shake
speare ? How comes it, indeed, that nearly 90 per cent,
of those who hold permits for historical research are
foreigners or colonials from beyond the sea.

In fact, the whole thing is, from any point of view, little
less than discreditable to us as a nation, apart from the
practical inferences to be drawn from the story of the
particular documents recounted in the following pages.

As to this it may confidently be asserted that had the
Record Office Department in 1859, when it took over the
custody of the Audit Office archives, or even at any
reasonable time after, been provided by the Treasury with
the necessary resources for arranging and calendaring them,
and rendering them easily and quickly accessible to all
students, it would never have been possible for the prepos
terous fiction about the Books of Revels, to have deluded
for forty-two years all the scholars and readers of Shake
speare in four continents. If the authorities concerned
would only now draw the moral, the following pages may
not have been written in vain.

FACSIMILES OF DOCUMENTS.

ON the opposite page and the following one are printed facsimiles of
writings purporting to give a contemporary List of Plays, including seven
of Shakespeare's, presented at Court before King James at Whitehall
in the winter of 1604-5. They are written on pages 3 and 4 of a
document inscribed thus: —

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SOME SUPPOSED

SHAKESPEARE FORGERIES

EARLY forty-three years ago — on the 29th of
April, 1868— a letter was received by Sir
Frederick Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts in
the British Museum, offering for sale to the
Trustees two very interesting documents of the time of
James I. — the Account- Books of the Revels Office for the
years 1604-5 an<^ 1611-12. The writer of the letter, who
was well-known to the Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts,
Mr. Bond, stated that he had found these papers some
thirty years before, when a Clerk in the Audit Office,
" under the vaults of Somerset House — far under the
Quadrangle in a dry and lofty cellar, known by the name of
the ' Charcoal Repository.' Had I been a rich man," pro
ceeded the writer, " I would have presented these highly
interesting Papers to the Nation." But as he was not so,
he added in a postscript, that he would "be content with
any sum that the Trustees of the British Museum may see

B

1 8 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

fit to give me for these papers." Four days later in
acknowledging a letter, which he had received from Mr.
Bond asking him to name a price for what he offered, he
said, " I have written to Collier about the Revels Accounts
I sent you ; and he will write to you."

The " Collier " referred to was the notorious John Payne
Collier, who, in the earlier half of the nineteenth century
had been renowned and honoured throughout the world of
letters, as a learned scholar and critic of our old English
Drama ; but who had then recently — in the late fifties —
been exposed before all Europe and America, after a very
searching and convincing enquiry, as the undoubted fabri
cator of a series of the most astonishing Shakespearean
forgeries that have ever been known. That one, who had
been the subject of so painful a revelation, still fresh in the
public mind, should have been asked to put a value on
ancient documents, the source of which appeared to be by
no means free from suspicion, seemed a somewhat strange
thing ; even though he prudently stood aloof, and did not
respond to the request. The would-be seller, however, in
default of any communication from Collier, wrote to Mr.
Bond two days after saying : "I do not think that I am
asking too much of the Trustees of the British Museum,
when I ask Sixty Guineas for them."

There the correspondence, which the present writer has
been permitted, for the purposes of this investigation, to
see, abruptly came to an end.

"Sixty Guineas for Them" 19

For, in the meanwhile, enquiries had been made about
these documents ; when it had at once become evident
that they were National Records, formerly preserved in the
Audit Office, but, for some unexplained reason, not trans
ferred, as they ought to have been in 1859, with other
similar historical papers, to the Public Record Office.

The two account books were, accordingly, impounded
by Sir Frederick Madden, and having been formerly identi
fied by the Deputy Keeper of the Records, Mr. (afterwards
Sir) Thomas Duffus Hardy, were handed over on the 26th
of May, 1868, by Mr. Bond, on behalf of the Trustees of
the British Museum, to the Record Office. There they
were placed among the old "Audit Office Declared
Accounts — Various — " where they still remain.

Of these bare facts, which had, of course, been much
talked about privately in literary circles, an outline was
made known to the public in the " Athenaeum " of June 20
following, with the announcement that the question, " how
these documents came to be in private hands was then
forming the subject of an enquiry." Nothing further, how
ever, was ever published by that newspaper on the subject.

But it soon became generally known, to the amazement
of the literary world — and especially of Shakespearean
scholars — that Peter Cunningham, who had been long
favourably known as a literary antiquary and the compiler
of several excellent works of history and biography, was the
man who had been in unlawful possession of the documents

B 2

20 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

in question, and had endeavoured to palm them off on the
British Museum as his own.

Cunningham, it should be added for the information of
the present generation, was a son of Allan Cunningham,
" Honest Allan," the famous writer of songs, a brother of
Colonel Joseph Davey Cunningham, the author of " The
History of the Sikhs/' a work still widely read as the
standard one on the subject, and a brother also of Admiral
Cunningham. Out of regard for his father's memory Sir
Robert Peel had nominated Peter in 1834, then a young
man of 1 8, to a clerkship in the Audit Office, where he had
acquitted himself so well as to have risen to be Chief Clerk.
It was while in that department that he had devoted his
leisure to writing the " Life of Inigo Jones," practically the
only biography we have of the architect ; a " Life of Nell
Gwynne " also, which has remained a popular book to this
day ; an edition of Horace Walpole's " Letters," reissued
quite lately; and a " Handbook for London," which has
been the basis of all subsequent works on the subject. He
was also an occasional writer in the periodical literature of
his time. But he was best known, perhaps, among students
of Shakespeare, at any rate, for his researches and writings
relating to the dramatist ; for he had been one of the most
frequent contributors to the publications of "The Shake
speare Society,'' of which he had been one of the founders,
and in which he had held the responsible post of Treasurer
throughout the period of its existence.

Peter Cunningham and the Shakespeare Society 21

The facts of the disclosure were also the more strange
and distressing in that Cunningham was the very person,
who, some twenty-six years before — in 1842, when he was
a young man of twenty-six and had been in the Audit
Office eight years — had announced to the world his dis
covery at Somerset House of these particular documents ;
and had himself edited them, with a valuable Introduction,
with other similar papers of earlier dates, in one of the
most interesting as well as one of the best known of the
volumes issued by " The Shakespeare Society " — " Ex
tracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court." In this
he had explained how he came to find them. He had
started, he said, " on a search for old papers, rummaging
in dry repositories, damp cellars and still damper vaults,
for books of accounts, for warrants and for receipts. . . .
My last discovery was my most interesting, and, alighting
as I now did upon two official books of the Revels— one of
Tylney's and one of Buc's — which had escaped both Mus-
grave and Malone, I at last found something about Shake
speare, something that was new, and something that was
definitive."

But the whole affair was still more astonishing from the
strange ingenuousness — if it were not the most impudent
and reckless effrontery — with which Cunningham had
written to Sir Frederick Madden, apparently entirely for
getful of everything that had gone before, telling him how
he had come by the books, deliberately pointing out to

22 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

him, in effect, how he could have had no sort of right or
title to any property in them. Yet, according to the
" Athenaeum," " the gentleman who offered them for sale
appears to have thought his right of property in them
perfect."

The real state of the case, however, was that Cunning
ham, for many years past — as was pretty well known to
the officials of the Record Office and the British Museum,
among whom he had many acquaintances, as well as among
literary men and editors — had given way hopelessly to
drinking, and had seriously impaired his mental powers
thereby ; to which cause, possibly, was in part due his
early retirement — at the age of 42 — from the Civil Service,
when the re-organisation of his department would have
afforded his superiors an easy opportunity of passing him
gracefully into private life.

To the decay of his mental powers, caused by his in
temperate habits, may, at any rate, be put down his other
wise inexplicable conduct in his attempted sale of the Revels
papers — the small- fact that his letter of April 1868 was
dated 1867 being an indication of this — though it does not
help us either to fix the time when he removed them into
his own keeping, or to find out in what circumstances he
had done so. But these are after all but trivial details,
as to which we are never likely to know anything
more ; and they are but the first among the many
mysteries in which an affair, simple enough in itself,

A Civil Servant's "Souvenir" 23

has been throughout, as we shall see, rather curiously
involved.

The most charitable supposition that can be framed in
favour of Cunningham is to assume that, when he was
transcribing the Books of Revels for printing, he was
allowed by his chief to take them home for that purpose,
and that he kept them there, after his volume of " Extracts "
was published, forgotten by himself as well as everybody
else, until he came across them again after his retirement,
and that he then half thought he was entitled to keep
them, as the original finder. Another supposition, equally
likely, or perhaps equally unlikely, is that when he was
arranging the records of his department for transfer from
Somerset House to the new Public Record Office in Chan
cery Lane, he carried off these books as a sort of " per
quisite" — " souvenir" ''the wise it call" now-a-days — on
quitting his old office, his drink-poisoned brain being unable
to appreciate either the legal offence, the moral obliquity,
or the personal dishonour of so doing.

That the documents were not missed and searched for
is perhaps not surprising, for the archives of the Audit
Office, while still at Somerset House, were in no way
accessible to the general public, and consequently without
the invaluable protection which publicity always affords ;
and when they were sent to the Record Office they were
simply passed over en bloc, unsorted and unindexed.

This is the best apology that can be made for Peter

24 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

Cunningham. As for himself he never, it would seem,
vouchsafed either to the public, or the authorities of the
British Museum, any explanation ; though in response to
an invitation from the Master of the Rolls, Lord Romilly,
to explain how he came to be in possession of these public
documents, he answered boldly : " They belong to me. . . .
To the Commissioners of Audit, they passed from the
Auditors of the Imprest. But for me they would have
been destroyed, through sheer ignorance, or sold for waste
paper'.'

Such an excuse, however, cannot be held to avail him
much ; for the only documents which he abstracted out of
the dozen published by him (none of them being either
destroyed or sold) were those which, owing to the list of
plays prefixed to them, and especially, of course, to the
occurrence therein of Shakespeare's name, were of consider
able pecuniary value. Moreover, whatever palliation there
may have been for his conduct, it was soon afterwards
found that he had undoubtedly disposed of, privately and
for money, a year or two after, if not before, his retirement,
of another of these Revels Account-Books — presumably
taken possession of by him at the same time as the two
others — namely, that of Sir George Buc, Tylney's successor
as Master of the Revels, for the year 1636-7, an account
which had also formed part of his volume of " Extracts "
in 1842, and which contained references to plays of Shake
speare's performed at court before Charles I. What price

Suspicious Dealings with Documents 25

he got for it, and whether in selling it he gave any expla
nation of how he had come by it, or where he had got it
from, we do not know. The buyer was a bookseller in Fleet
Street, of the name of Waller, who, when he heard of the
talk about Cunningham and the other books, came forward
and gave it up to the Master of the Rolls, when it was
replaced in the bundle with the rest of the series.

In spite, however, of the decidedly incriminating look
of these transactions, nothing further appears to have been
done in the matter. No proceedings were ever taken
against him, the state of his health probably rendering any
such step inexpedient, even had it been likely that it would
have been successful ; and had there not, moreover, been a
general desire, in all the circumstances, to let him down as
easily as possible, and to find in his condition of mental
and physical prostration an explanation, if not an excuse,
for his strange aberration of conduct. Nor does any regular
formal enquiry ever seem to have been held, and certainly
nothing was ever placed on record against him. Only the
bare fact was noted in the thirtieth Report of the Deputy
Keeper of the Records, that the two books had been re
ceived from the Trustees of the British Museum.

Here the matter might have rested, and indeed, so far
as Cunningham's dealings with the documents were con
cerned, it did, and everyone would have been content to
let the whole thing drop ; while certainly it need never
have been raked up again now, nearly forty-three years

26 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

after its occurrence, when all concerned in it have long
since passed away, had it not been that another aspect of
the affair, of much greater general interest and importance,
had come into prominence

For the sensation caused by the discovery of Cunning
ham's attempted sale of the purloined papers was small as
compared with that aroused by the announcement that they
had fallen under a grave suspicion of having been tampered
with — the experts, according to " The Athenaeum," having
arrived at the conclusion that "the whole body of Shake
spearean illustrations has been added to the original " ; and
according to the " Daily News," " pronounced by the most
competent judges to be modern imitations — one of them a
clumsy bare-faced performance" — that is to say, that the
two well-known lists of plays in which were included many
of Shakespeare's greatest works, with the dates of their being
acted before King James at Whitehall, were entirely forged.

Coming, as this did, on the top of the then still recent
exposure of Collier's far-reaching forgeries, it naturally pro
duced a most disturbing effect on all lovers of Shakespeare,
causing among scholars nothing less than dismay. For
ever since the publication of the Revel's " Extracts" in
1842 the list therein printed (now found to correspond,
word for word and letter for letter with the " forged " manu
script) had been taken, almost universally, as decisive of the
vexed questions of the dates of composition and production
of " Measure for Measure," " Othello," " A Winter's Tale "

"Forged Documents and Dates of Plays. 27

and " The Tempest," and then suddenly the whole basis
whereon had been so carefully reared a vast edifice of
commentary and learning was declared to be absolutely
unsound !

This was at once seen to have a particularly important
bearing on the question of the date of " Othello," around
which a sharp controversy had long raged — for something
like a hundred years — and which, though it had to a certain
extent abated on the publication of Cunningham's 1604-5
list, was now about to break out again, as keenly as ever.

On the one side, in the ' fifties and ' sixties of the nine
teenth century, the chief living combatant — in succession
to those defunct Shakespearean warriors of the eighteenth
century, Warburton, Chalmers and Steevens — had been
Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, Vice-Chancellor of the Uni
versity of New York, and the editor of an excellent edition
of Shakespeare's plays, published in that city in 1844-6.
He, in spite of the positive, though unsupported, statement
of M alone, as printed in the famous posthumous edition of
1821, known as the " Third Variorum" Edition, or
" Boswell's Malone," in favour of the year 1604, as the date
of production of the great tragedy, would not relinquish
the later date 1 6 1 1 , first promulgated by Warburton a
century before, and subsequently adopted by Chalmers — a
date, indeed, which Malone himself had originally supported.
Verplanck's opinion was mainly founded on " aesthetic"
ground, being, as he said, convinced, by some obscure psycho-

28 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

logical process, which he did not explain, that Shakespeare
in 1604 was neither old enough nor experienced enough to
depict the workings of bitter passions as portrayed in the
play " Othello," as we now have it from the first quarto of
1622 and the first folio of 1623. Only most reluctantly
would he even admit that " the Moor of Venis," acted
before King James in 1604, might have been an outline by
Shakespeare " sufficient for dramatic effect, containing all
the incidents and characters, but wanting some of the
heightened poetry and intense passion of the drama, as we
read it." He had doubtless formed his opinion before 1842,
and was unable to fit it or bend it to the new fact then
revealed.

Very much the same attitude, and on very similar
grounds, had been taken up by Richard Grant White,
another very competent American scholar, whose first
edition of the plays in ten volumes, in many ways a very
admirable one, had been brought out at Boston, U.S.A.,
in 1857-60. For Grant White, while accepting therein
the undoubted genuineness of Cunningham's item relating
to the performance of the " Moor of Venis" in 1604,
had suggested that the play so entitled may have been
by another playwright, afterwards entirely re-written by
Shakespeare and produced in 1 6 1 1 , so tightly does the
theorist — especially your a priori intuitionist — clasp his
own imaginings in despite of the most positive, almost
physical, proofs.

Commentators and Chronology 29

On the other side was, among many others, Charles
Knight, who in the second edition of his " Pictorial Shake
speare, published in 1842-4, had frankly and unreservedly
accepted the obvious consequences of Cunningham's dis
covery, with its strong corroboration of Malone's final,
though unsubstantiated decision, and had placed the play
as indubitably belonging to the second year of. James I.'s
reign. H alii well- Phillips, a Shakespearean scholar of un
rivalled antiquarian learning, at any rate, if not of very
special critical acumen, equally readily, and without any
qualification, adopted the earlier date in his magnificent
folio edition of the plays, published in sixteen volumes
between 1853 and 1865 — "Othello" appearing in 1865.

Dyce, likewise, one of the most trustworthy and discern
ing of the commentators of that epoch, took the same line,
both in his first edition brought out in 1857, as well as in
his second, which followed in 1864-7. The triumph of the
1 6o4"daters seemed, indeed, to be final, and the rout of the
1 6 1 1 -daters complete : their obstinate adherence to a
chronology fatally discredited by the new evidence only
serving, in the opinion of the other side, to expose their
innate perversity to a deriding world. Moreover, the 1604-
daters, following up their advantage, showed that the
chronology of the supporters of 1 6 1 1 had no better sub
stance to rest on than a laboriously-woven tissue of wrong
inference and false conjecture. For " how," asked they
in effect, "can anyone with the smallest pretensions to

30 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

sound criticism maintain any longer that the words of
Othello to Desdemona in the fourth scene of the third act :

" The hearts of old gave hands :
But our new Herald ly is hands, not hearts.

was a reference to the institution by King James of the
order of Baronets in May, 1611, instead of an echo of a
passage in one of the Essays of Sir William Cornwallis,
the younger, published in 1601 :

"They had wont to give their hands and their hearts
together ; but we think it a finer grace to look asquint, our
hands looking one way, and our hearts another."

If any purblind commentator still attempted to maintain
so preposterous a supposition— " a ridiculous idea," accord
ing to Dyce — how could he get over the fact that it was
not until May 28th, 1612, that King James by a second
patent, granted the baronets as a peculiar heraldic distinc
tion, that "bloudie hand, O'Neel's badge" . ... "the
arms of Ulster, that is, in a field argent, a hand geules,"
to which Shakespeare was supposed to allude ; and that
the row that took place in the House of Commons over
the establishment by the Royal prerogative of this new
order of nobility, which would have given point to the
dramatist's supposed satirical allusion, did not take place
until May, 1614 ?

These were pertinent questions, pressed home with
great persistence. If to meet such cogent objections the

The Date of " Othello " 31

161 i-daters proposed to shift the year of production to 1614,
then how could they explain that, according to "Vertue's
Manuscript"* (which had belonged at one time to Pepys
and afterwards to Dr. Rawlinson, who lent it to Vertue), the
4 'Moore of Venice " was acted at court in 1613 ? Harassed
and perplexed enough by these various difficulties, they
had been still further worried by a discovery made by
Sir Frederick Madden of a manuscipt in the British Museum,
giving an account, by an eye-witness, of a visit paid to the
" Globe " theatre by Prince Lewis Frederick, Prince of
Wirtemberg, in April 1610 to see "1'Histoire du More de
Venise ? " The only retort they could make — and rather a
feeble, unconvincing bleat it seemed to be — was to aske^i in
return : " How do you know that this ' More de Venise'
of April 1610 and the ' Moor of Venis ' of All Hallows' Day
1604 was not altogether a different play from Shakespeare's
' Othello ' ? " One small crumb of comfort, however, had
been theirs, when the reference put forward by Collier,
from the Egerton manuscripts, of a performance of " Othello "
before Queen Elizabeth at Harefield in 1602, was shown
conclusively to be a forgery.

And now, all of a sudden, the tables were completely
turned ; and a subdued chuckle went round all the adherents
of the later date for the tragedy, when Cunningham's

* There can really be no doubt that the "Vertue Manuscript," cited by
Malone in this connection, so long, and even still, a perplexity to critics, is the
Rawlinson MS. A. 232, printed in the " New Shakespeare Society's" Transac
tions^ 1875-6, part ii. p. 419.

32 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

reference to a performance of the play at court in 1604 was
also pronounced to be part of an undoubted forgery. From
across the Atlantic something like a cry of triumph was
heard, when the news reached New York. Verplanck, who
was then eighty-two, and who died two years later, seems
to have been silent. But Grant White, who had already
distinguished himself by having originally maintained the
genuineness of Collier's forged emendations to the notorious
" Perkins Folio," without seeing them, on internal evidence
and his own intuition alone, showed no hesitation in at once
making up his mind in the Cunningham business.

He wrote an article in the November number of a
periodical called " The Galaxy/' now extinct, but merged in
the " Atlantic Monthly," in which, in a characteristic vein of
self-assurance, he told " the whole story," as he had learnt
it, so he declared, "from authentic sources." His account,
which may be read in full in a copy of the magazine in the
Library of the British Museum, or in a more accessible
form, though abridged, in Dr. Furness's " New Variorum "
edition of " Othello," is found, when tested, to be demon-
strably inaccurate and exaggerated in almost every par
ticular. Among other small inaccuracies, indicative of his
general carelessness, he stated that Cunningham, " an oldish
man broken down by hard drinking," had appeared at the
British Museum, and " presented for sale an old manuscript
volume . . . which his friend, Mr. Collier, said was worth
sixty guineas " ; whereas it is clear from the correspondence

"A Forgery, a Gross Forgery" 33

cited above, that he did not go to the Museum himself at
all, but sent the documents by post or hand, and that he
did not quote Collier as an authority for their value. " So
interesting a volume, " proceeded Grant White, " at once
attracted the attention of the experts of the Audit Office ;
and they at once discovered that, although the book [it is
a mere packet or pamphlet of three folio sheets, making six
leaves and twelve pages] was genuine, that part of it, which
was of greater interest than all the rest, the leaves [there
was only one leaf] containing the record of the performance
of Shakespeare's plays, was a forgery, a gross forgery, from
beginning to end."

To found a further argument for the theory of forgery,
Grant White went on to say that "the important entries
are made upon two leaves lying loose in the volume," and
that these " were never bound into the volume " : whereas
it is not "two leaves," but only one leaf — pages 3 and 4 of
the packet — which contains the impugned list. This leaf
is, moreover, in no sense " lying loose " or detached ; but
forms, as the first half of the second sheet, with the corre
sponding other half of that sheet at the end — composing
pages 9 and 10 — an integral part of the packet. Nor is
there any question either of " a volume " or of " binding " :
the " volume," as he calls it, consisting, as already explained,
merely of three folio sheets, in no sense ever " bound," but
merely held together by a slight thread. It is further to
be noted that on page 9 is to be found the undoubted

c

34 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

signature of Edmund Tylney himself, the Master and the
accounting officer of the Revels — a fact not mentioned by
Grant White, nor ever by anyone else, but of considerable
significance.

Truly remarkable carelessness ; truly most unpardonable
ignorance of the exact facts of the case, on the part of one
seeking, on the strength of them, to overthrow evidence
conflicting with his own theories, and bringing (as we shall
see in a moment) a serious charge of forgery against a
fellow author.

Still further to strengthen his argument against the
authenticity of this play-list of 1604-5, ne declared that
only in the single instance of this account-book, out of
thirteen similar ones, " is the name of a play, mask or inter
lude given " — a statement absolutely opposed to the facts.
For the Revels Book of 1611-12 has prefixed to the
account for that year just such a similar list of plays — in
cluding " The Tempest " and " A Winter's Tale "—which,
though its authenticity was likewise then doubted by some,
was considered by many, including Grant White himself,
to be genuine — and with good reason, as we shall see later
on. Moreover, apart from that one, there is yet another
similar list of plays — including several of Shakespeare's —
prefixed to the account of Sir George Buc in the Revels
Book of 1636-7, the genuineness of which list even the most
sceptical have never thought of disputing.

So much for Grant White's method of presenting the

"// only required a Glance of the Experts" 35

case. But he was not alone. For the " British Quarterly
Review " (stimulated, probably, by his complaint that, after
the pronouncement in the " Athenaeum" of June 1868,
" the subject appeared to have been dropped for ever " in
England, " not a word having been uttered upon the sub
ject since in any quarter ") proceeded to publish an article,
in January 1869, on " Literary Forgeries" in general, and
Shakespeare Forgeries in particular, in which several para
graphs were devoted to the impugned writings in the Revels
Books. In it the reviewer asserted that "it only required
a glance of the experts to discover that the list of Shake
speare's plays performed before the Court in the years
alluded to had been appended to the old documents by
a modern hand. The trifling and uninteresting items of
expenditure are genuine, but the book containing these
appears to have also contained some blank pages, into
which the forger had crammed the whole of the writings
referring to Shakespeare."

Here, again, we have not the attestations of those who
had themselves critically and professionally examined the
documents, but only a hearsay opinion of an anonymous
writer, who, like Grant White, indulged in that arguing at
large, without verification of the evidence, which has too
often done duty in Shakespearean discussions for positive
facts : pretty nearly every single sentence in the article
being contrary to the simplest and most easily verifiable
facts of the case.

c 2

36 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

For instance, the reviewer in writing of the document
as "a book containing some blank pages," by this mis
leading suggestion begged the whole question. For the
pages he referred to — 3 and 4 — were not, of course, " blank "
at the time he wrote, and the very point of the whole
matter was whether they ever had been " blank " since 1605
— the year when " the trifling and uninteresting items of ex
penditure," admitted by all to be palpably authentic, were
first written into this account-book. Again, the reviewer
wrote misleadingly when he stated that "the forger" had
" crammed the whole of the writings relating to Shake
speare " into these two pages (assumed to have been
" blank " until the " forger " got to work on them) ; whereas
none of the entries are in any sense "crammed," but are
plainly written in large script, with ample spaces between
the lines ; while everyone of them has relation to the period
covered by the account that follows.

It does not seem to have occurred to any of those giving
vent to all these confident strictures that the differences in
the writing could easily have been accounted for, on the
obvious supposition that the two pages had been reserved
on purpose by the Clerk of the Revels, in order that the list
of plays might be afterwards inserted, possibly by another
hand. The fact, noticed by only one — not Grant White —
of the denouncers of the play-lists — though its significance
was unappreciated even by him —that in a previous account-
book there was in the margin, in an obviously contem-

Unwarranted Assertions 37

porary hand, this note, " The names of the playes shold be
expressed," should have afforded the clue.

Nevertheless, it was on such assertions as these, so
slightly warranted, so false even, made by Grant White,
on the authority, according to him, of responsible persons,
which, being diffused throughout the world, caused the
" forgeries "to be taken by everyone as proved beyond a
doubt.

Yet, curiously enough, there is nowhere on record any
statement, made by any official concerned, of greater posi-
tiveness than the letter from Mr. Bond, the Assistant
Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum, to the
Master of the Rolls, when sending on the documents, in
which letter he stated that he "saw reasons for doubting the
genuineness of one, at least, of these papers, from the pecu
liar character of the writing and the spelling " — meaning,
of course, that portion of it which we have been discussing.
This opinion of his has been attached as a caveat to the
documents ever since ; but, beyond this nothing more : the
Record Office Staff having carefully abstained from com
mitting themselves, at least on paper or in public, to any
thing more definite.

Such a commendable cautiousness does not, however,
appear to have been unofficially maintained. For Grant
White went on to say — and what he said was never
Challenged or contradicted — that it was " Mr. Duffus Hardy,
of the Rolls Court, than whom there is no better authority

38 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

in England, not excepting Sir Frederick Madden himself,"
who had pronounced the play-list of 1604-5 to be a " forgery,
a gross forgery, from beginning to end." That Duffus
Hardy did tell everyone who asked him about it that he
felt sure that that list, at any rate — and, perhaps, the one of
161 1-12 also — was a forgery, there can be little doubt ; and
that such a mere private expression of his opinion would
have carried great weight with Shakespearean scholars,
admits of still less doubt.

For two of them, at any rate, and those two the most
considered critics of that day — Dyce and Halliwell-Phillips
— it was at once decisive ; their rejection extending, more*
over, equally decisively to the later list of 1611-12, which
purports to furnish the dates of the performance at court
of " The Winter's Tale " and " The Tempest." Yet, as is
clearly indicated by Mr. Bond's letter, there never was
among the experts anything like the same general convic
tion that this later list also was a forgery, as there was
about the earlier one. According to Grant White — and he
is the only authority we have — Duffus Hardy and the
other officials of the Record Office were clear that it was.
But, on the other hand, many competent persons, including,
it would seem, several of the British Museum men, were
equally strongly inclined to believe it to be genuine — an
opinion shared, to a great extent, by Grant White himself,
as he tells us. At any rate, there was not the same un
animity and positiveness about it, as in the case of the

No Enquiry and No Scrutiny 39

other ; and for the good reason that pretty nearly every
one of the points, which occasioned suspicion in that, was
absent in this.

Yet, extraordinary as it may appear, everything goes to
show that no enquiry, formal or informal, took place, nor
scarcely any discussion ; that no technical scrutiny of the
suspected writings was made, nor any testing of them
microscopically or chemically — such as so conclusively laid
bare Collier's artfully contrived fabric of fraud. The truth
seems to be that, owing to Cunningham's former association
in editorial matters with that past-master in the forging
craft, the documents he sent to the Museum were no sooner
seen than suspected, and no sooner suspected than con
demned. Everything, especially the phrases used by the
" Athenaeum," " The British Quarterly," Grant White and
others, point to this — ' ' at once seen to be forgeries " ;
" clumsy bare-faced forgeries " ; " the experts at once dis
covered " ; " a palpable forgery" ; " a glance was sufficient" ;
— demonstrating that the verdict was pronounced off-hand.

Nevertheless, Duffus Hardy and the rest scrupulously
abstained from formulating any accusation against Cunning
ham of being himself the real delinquent — in which they
showed wisdom as well as justice. For, as Dr. Furness
remarked, when exhaustively discussing the case as it stood
in 1886, in his notes to "Othello": " It is one thing to
prove a document a forgery, but it is another, and very
different thing, to say who is the forger." No such caution

4O Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

or scruple, however, seems to have troubled Grant White ;
for on no better basis, apparently, than the hearsay of
London literary tattlers, he ended his article in the " Galaxy "
by exclaiming : " And now who is the forger ? The conclu
sion that Peter Cunningham is the man seems unavoidable."
This confident assertion, so recklessly and cruelly made,
has never been challenged to this day ; and, since its re-
publication by Dr. Furness in 1886, has been generally
accepted as an incontrovertible fact, and the very last word
on the subject. Yet, had any fair amount of consideration
been given to it, strong reasons could not but have made
themselves at once apparent to confute this charge so
lightly fathered upon the poor, dying, discredited ex-Audit
Office clerk. For it might have been asked : how and
when could Peter Cunningham have concocted the fraud
attributed to him ? What would have been his object, what
could have been his motive ? If he did perpetrate it, he
must have done it some little time previous to the publica
tion of his " Extracts " in 1842 — say about the year 1840-1
— when he was a young clerk of twenty-five only, with not
much literary training, with but slight previous experience
in deciphering old records, and but scant familiarity with
seventeenth-century manuscripts and their phraseology ; for
a purpose moreover unexplained, if not inexplicable, and
in any case out of all proportion to the labour entailed and
the risks involved. No one, indeed, who has not en
deavoured to thread the mazes of the Accounts of the

" Peter Cunningham is the Man " 41

" Treasurer of the Chamber," and the " Master of the
Revels," of the Register of the Stationers' Company, and
Henslowe's " Diary " (Greg's edition, not Collier's), can
have any idea of the colossal task that any one would set
himself to, who, equipped with the fragmentary, haphazard,
and often apparently contradictory information afforded by
those records, should attempt, with such material, to piece
together a list like that in Tylney's account-book — besides
the immense care and enormous pains, and almost encyclo
paedic familiarity with the personal and dramatic records
of the time needed for its concoction, so that it should
square with all the then-known and most of the since-
discovered tiny items, as this does. Even Collier, in his
palmiest forging days, could not have attempted it, without
bringing into play that apparatus of preliminary tracings,
experimental pencillings, half-obliterated letters, and doc
tored inks and pigments, which eventually led to his detec
tion.

Some of the experts and critics must have felt the force
of these various considerations : for one or two of them
hinted pretty broadly that Peter Cunningham was probably
only the tool, jackal or dupe of John Payne Collier ;
and that behind the pitiful figure of the broken down
drunkard lurked the sinister and ubiquitous hand of the
arch-fabricator — the disgraced scholar, the teacherous friend,
who, abusing the trust reposed in him and all the unex
ampled opportunities and privileges accorded him, had

42 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

prostituted his learning, his knowledge and his skill, in the
vile and mischievous work of poisoning the springs of
research into the life and works of our supreme poet:
the man, who in his notorious " Perkins Folio " alone, had
perpetrated no less than 30,000 frauds, and who, with a
moral aberration scarcely explicable except as some ab
normal type of insanity, had left the foul trail of his forging
fingers on every document confided to his care.

Grant White, however, in fastening, as he did, with so
little justification, the charge of forgery against Cunningham,
was charitable enough to find something extenuating in his
condition: " The poor creature's brain had become so
muddled by years of continual drunkenness, and his memory
so far gone, that he did not remember what he had done,
and did not know what he was doing. . . . He is now
insane or idiotic, fit only for a lunatic asylum."

As for Cunningham himself, whether he ever knew of
the accusation against him, we cannot tell. Perhaps, he
never heard anything about it at all ; for in England his
name was not directly connected — publicly, that is to say —
with the supposed forgery during his life-time. At any rate,
he made no sign ; and his silence, perhaps, increased the
certainty of those who thought him clearly guilty. Even if
he was told about it, the state of his mind doubtless pre
vented his understanding it : for he was gradually passing
into complete vacancy, and slowly sinking into his grave.
Six months after the appearance of Grant White's

The Stigma of a Deliberate Fraud 43

article in the " Galaxy " he died, at St. Albans, on May
1 8th, 1869.

And so it has been that Peter Cunningham's name has
borne not only the stigma of his discreditable, if not criminal
— though partly, perhaps, to be palliated and explained —
dealings with the Revels Books ; but also with a fraud long
and deliberately prepared, when in the enjoyment of his
sober senses, and the full capacity of his mind ; carefully
thought out and worked up ; and designed to mislead,
deceive and to cheat.

If this more serious charge was unmerited, then, surely,
he is entitled to have his memory cleared of the imputation.
He is entitled to this as much as, and in many ways more
than, if he were still alive. For a libel is not less a libel,
but, rather is it more so, when it strikes at the honour of
one — though only a poor, needy scholar — who is no longer
present and able to defend himself. Before these pages
conclude, the writer believes that he will be able to do this
for him ; and, to the satisfaction of all fair-minded and
reasonable men, to vindicate his name from the brand with
which it would otherwise be falsely, most unjustly, and
ineffaceably stamped for all time.

But, "litera scripta manet," and Grant White's printed
page, pointing at Cunningham as the forger, has hitherto
overborne all doubts and questionings. Besides, belief in his
guilt offered the simplest and most obvious solution of the
problem, and, with that great recommendation, naturally

44 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

appealed strongly to the world in general — especially sup
ported as it was by "the opinions of the experts."

As to the editors of Shakespeare : the two leading ones
in England at that time — Dyce and Halliwell- Phillips — just
as they had originally accepted Cunningham's play-list with
implicit faith, so now they both at once, in entire confidence,
as already indicated, received without questioning the ver
dict of the paleographers — doubtless, little suspecting on
what a perfunctory examination of the manuscripts it was
founded. Moreover, they both — if Grant White's state
ment to this effect is to be believed — confirmed it on their
own account by going to see the documents in the Record
Office for themselves. Dyce, however, though a sound
literary critic of the text of the plays, never made any
pretensions to expert knowledge of old writings ; and he
merely noted, in the subsequent issues of his fine scholarly
edition of the dramatist's works, that the play-lists were no
longer to be relied on. Halliwell- Phillips, on the other
hand, being a skilled reader of sixteenth and seventeenth
century writings, and having made more extensive researches
among old records than any other investigator into the life
and works of Shakespeare, declared his positive opinion that
the play-list of 1604-5 was " unquestionably a very modern
forgery," adding that " the character of the ink encourages
the suspicion that it could not have been perpetrated until
longafter. . . 1812." Thelist of 1611-12 he does not seem
to have examined, or troubled himself about at all ; though

Editors and the Manuscript Play -Lists 45

he afterwards elsewhere referred to it as being as plainly
fraudulent as the other. Little doubt that both these
critics, nevertheless, can have made no really independent
inspection of the documents at all, and must have been
mainly guided by what they were told by Duffus Hardy
and the others. We shall see later on how very unwise
this was of them, and how dangerous it always must be for
people to accept as conclusive the bare pronouncements —
however confident — of " an expert in hand-writing,'* however
honourable, and however distinguished, even in what may
be his own limited and specially chosen sphere, unless he will
deign to reveal the grounds for the faith that is in him, and
to explain by what process he has arrived at his conclusions.
Neither Halliwell- Phillips nor Dyce, however, ever went
so far as to allege that Cunningham was the forger : nor did
Dr. Furness at that time : though it was probably more his
citations from Grant White's article than anything else
which gave the belief in the accusation its wide currency.
As to the supposed fact of there being a forgery by some
body Dr. Furness, being at a distance, naturally and properly
enough could but take as incontrovertible the absolute
assertions of those on the spot — Halliwell- Phillips especially
— that the forged nature of the play-lists was "a settled
fact." How could he, in Pennsylvania, devoting the most
extraordinary and scrupulous care to the testing of the
very smallest fragment that has gone to the building up
of the most magnificent monument ever reared by a single

46 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

individual to our great poet — his " New Variorum "edition
— how could he be expected to know that a question touch
ing the authenticity of records so precious in the sight of
Shakespearean scholars on both sides of the Atlantic would
be investigated by those who had the care and custody of
them in London in so happy-go-lucky a way ? For this
misplaced confidence of his there was more than an ex
cuse, there was justification.

Thus stood the state of the case for some time. That
the play-lists were forged was a " settled fact " — chose
jugle — that they were the handiwork of Peter Cunningham
was an almost equally "settled fact" ; and still more was
it a " settled fact " that no one wanted to have that decision
controverted, or the discussion reopened, or anybody troubled
about it any more. Two or three weeks after Cunningham's
death a kindly notice of him appeared in the " Athenaeum,"
with an appreciative account of what he had accomplished
in his earlier days, but without any reference to the painful
matter of the Revels Books ; and with that every one con
cerned was well content that the whole affair should pass
into oblivion.

And so, in truth, for nearly nine years it slumbered ;
though, of course, during that period the i6n-daters of
" Othello " were in a state of high jubilation, preening
themselves on their superior perspicacity, which had led
them to resist the seemingly conclusive evidence for the
earlier date. On the other hand, those of the i6o4-daters

The Date of " Othello" once more 47

who were still determined to adhere to their original views
had to reconcile them as best they could with the altered
state of the evidence — which they did, mainly by relying on
Malone's final and positive decision — or by seeking for fresh
vindications of them.

These, as it happened, were not long forthcoming. For
about this period a band of new and pretty acute critics —
Spedding, Dowden, Ingram, Hertzberg, Fleay, Furnivall —
had come on the scene, and begun attacking the vexed
problems of the dates and sequences of Shakespeare's plays,
armed with the strange and unfamiliar weapons of metrical
tests — the whole apparatus criticus, in fact, of " the middle
pause," of "weak endings," and "light endings" and
" double endings," " the extra syllable," and " run-on-lines "
— analytical methods which, entirely unwarranted as they
were by precedent, exasperated the intuitionists — relying on
their own "unerring instincts,'* and confident in a special
"psychological inwardness" peculiar to themselves, suffi
cient for deciding all questions of dramatic chronology — to
the point of frenzy. Still more did these despised and
hated methods — so degrading to the users, so debasing to
the subtleties of Shakespeare's verse — infuriate them, when
it began to be everywhere more and more acknowledged
that whatever else they might do, or might not do, they
certainly acted as most powerful solvents of mere aesthetic,
thin-spun, personal theories.

One of the first plays subjected to the new criticism

48 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

happened to be " Othello," which, by a provokingly re
markable concensus of results, these terrible new-fangled
analysers, all, on metrical grounds, reassigned to the year
1604 or thereabouts.

In the meantime, while the Shakespearean world was
thus rent and agitated by the conflict between methods
ancient and modern — the controversy developing into a
general engagement, with much mutual flinging about of
such choice missives of literary polemics as "flat burglary,"
"long ears," "infinite self-conceit," "teaching your grand
mother to suck eggs," "sham stuff," and so on — an alto
gether unexpected and most surprising resuscitation of
the Revels Books sensation was preparing for it. For the
mystery of the famous forgery was far from being ended.
Indeed, it seemed only just beginning, when in 1880 Halli-
well-Phillips announced in a tiny booklet of 24 pages —
entitled " A Note on * Measure for Measure ' " of which only
two dozen copies were printed, signed and numbered for
distribution among his chosen friends — that he had found
among Malone's papers, in the Bodleian Library, a memo
randum, made prior to 1812, of Shakespeare's plays, with
the dates of their performances at Court in 1604-5, a^ ^ut
exactly tallying with Cunningham's notorious list. It almost
seemed as if some of the critics were conspiring to mystify
the world, so great was the perplexity of scholars and
readers of Shakespeare when the news of this startling
development spread among them.

A Perplexing Puzzle for the Experts 49

Here, indeed, was a bomb-shell for the i6n-daters ! to
have the discarded and discredited year 1604 suddenly
cropping up again ! and in a new, and more aggressive
form, too, than ever! Here, indeed, was a perplexing
puzzle for all the experts and all the editors, all the commen
tators and all the critics — aesthetic and mechanical, idealistic
and materialistic — alike ! How to explain the complete
anticipation of the contents of a " forged " document in an
obscure bit of paper, written fifty years before the forgery
was perpetrated, and twenty-five before the " forger " was
even born ?

The mystification was not lessened but rather increased
when Halliwell- Phillips in 1885, in the fifth edition of his
" Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare," gave full particulars
of what he had discovered, and discussed the whole question
in all its bearings. In view of what had gone before —
especially the confident announcements made about the
worthlessness of the information furnished by the play-lists
published by Cunningham — it was truly amazing to learn
that almost every item in one of those lists, and almost
every word of it, dates, and names of plays, and names of
companies alike — even to the eccentricities of spelling, such
as " Shaxberd " — was to be found on a sheet of paper, which
had formed part of Malone's notes and collections, got
together by him between 1791 and 1812 — the year of his
death — which, therefore, could not be assigned to a later
period than the first decade of the nineteenth century, and

D

50 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

which probably belonged to the last few years of the
eighteenth.

It was further shown by Halliwell-Phillips that the
piece of paper had been in the Bodleian since 1821, when
it came, with the rest of Malone's material for the new
edition of his book, as a gift to the Library, in a bag or
loose bundle with many other similar scraps, excerpts and
notes, which remained uncatalogued — unsorted even — and
inaccessible to readers, for some fifty years or more ; so
that with no probability could it ever have been seen by
Cunningham at all, and with no possibility by him or by
anyone else until long after 1842 — indeed until some thirty
years subsequent to that date. Halliwell-Phillips's eyes, in
fact, must have been the only ones to light upon that startling
scrap of writing since Malone's death — for it evidently
escaped the notice of his editor, Boswell — except Mr. H. S.
Harper's, one of the officials of the Bodleian, who explained
how he had, in recent years — apparently in the seventies —
sorted and arranged all such bits of memoranda and extracts,
and had them, under his own direction, bound up together
in a single volume (now Malone MS., No. 29).

The particular sheet of paper in question has been ex
amined by the writer, who can testify that its appearance
is correctly described, as well as its contents accurately
transcribed, in the Appendix to the second volume of the
" Outlines."

Now, as to the origin of what is written on it. It is

Malone s Mysterious Scrap of Paper 5 1

impossible to conceive of anyone, who has read the account
of the matter given by H alii well- Phillips, doubting for one
moment that his explanation of it is the true one : namely,
that it is a genuine transcript, slightly abridged, taken for
Malone — for it is not in his own handwriting — from some
early seventeenth century document, contemporary with
Shakespeare, to which he would have had access between
1 790 and 1812, when collecting material for his intended
new edition — the great work, which saw the light nine years
after his death (though, owing to the absence of his revising
hand, necessarily in a somewhat fragmentary and disjoined
form), generally known as the " Variorum " of 1821, or
11 Boswell's Malone."

That he had access to the Revels Accounts, then pre
served in the Audit Office, we know from his own note dis
tinctly stating so, and from the letter to him of Sir William
Musgrave, First Commissioner of the Board of Audit, on
7th of November, 1791, telling him that arrangements had
been made for his inspection of these documents at Somerset
House, whenever he wished to see them. The results of
his researches — voluminous extracts from the accounts of
the time of Queen Elizabeth — were printed by Boswell
among the "Prolegomena" of the "Variorum," vol. iii.
pp. 361-409, together with Musgrave's letter, Malone's
note— intended by him to be incorporated in his " History
of the Stage " — and a memorandum on the " State of the
Books of Accounts and Records of the Master of the

D 2

52 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

Revels, still remaining in the Office for Auditing the Public
Accounts in 1791."

Neither this list, however, nor the results of Malone's
researches, as published, contain any reference to any
Revels records of the time of James I. ; nor were any such
mentioned at all, either by Musgrave or Malone. Halli-
well- Phillips, it is true, stated in his survey of the whole
matter, that the " Records for 1604 and 1605 " were speci
fically mentioned by Musgrave as among those placed at the
disposal of Malone ; but this is not so. He probably mis
took for dates the consecutive numbers, 1604 a°d 1605,
attached to two manuscripts of Queen Elizabeth's time.
As a fact, Malone rather seems to imply that when he
went to the Audit Office in 1791 the Accounts for the year
in question, if in existence at all, were not then available.
This little inaccuracy of Halliwell-Phillips's, trifling as it is,
though important to his argument, is one of the very few to
be detected in all the vast extent and multiplicity of his
writings on Shakespeare.

Nevertheless, there can be but little doubt that the
records for 1604-5 — and probably those for 161 1-12 as well
— must have turned up at Somerset House very soon after
Malone's visit there ; and that his transcript list of plays
was derived therefrom — probably sent to him by someone
in the Office, and perhaps by Musgrave himself.

But, however that may be, the original document —
wherever and whatever it may have been — of Malone's still

M alone s "Indisputable Evidence" 53

existing transcript must certainly, in any case, have been
the "indisputable evidence" — whenever he may have
lighted on it—- by which, as he stated in 1800, in a note to a
passage in Dryden's " Ground of Criticism in Tragedy," he
knew that " Othello " was not as he had formerly supposed,
" one of our great dramatic poet's latest compositions " ; and
must likewise have been the authority on which he made
the declaration in his final revised notice of " Othello," in
his Essay on the " Chronological Order of Shakespeare's
Plays" : " We know that it was acted in 1604." This is,
indeed, an inference almost as irresistible in its force, and as
conclusive in its consequences, as anything of the sort in
such a case could very well be.

Further, it may be added that the authenticity of the
information supplied by M alone's scrap of paper — putting
for a moment Cunningham's list out of the argument — is
corroborated in a most remarkable manner, by a reference
to a performance of " Love's Labour's Lost," early in the
month of January 1605, before the Queen of James I., at
Lord Southampton's house in Holborn. The reference is
contained in a well-known letter of Sir Walter Cope's to
Cecil, then Viscount Cranborne, preserved at Hatfield, which
was not discovered until 1872, and which it is impossible
could have been known either to M alone or to Cunningham.
This and other similarly significant facts render the essential
genuineness of the information, on which both versions of
this play-list of 1604-5 are based, absolutely, beyond

54 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

question : and there are analogous reasons, almost equally
strong, for saying the same of that of 161 1 -12.

For, though of this later list there is no transcript among
Malone's papers — a thing sufficiently accounted for probably
by the comparative meagreness of the references in it to
Shakespeare — there is nevertheless every likelihood that the
substance of the information it contains —whether the exist
ing writing be genuine or not — was in his possession several
years before his death. For, in his review of " The Tempest,"
prepared for his projected new edition, and printed by
Boswell in the Essay on the " Chronological Order of Shake
speare's Plays" (" Variorum," vol. ii. p. 465), he plainly stated
that he had evidence " placing it beyond a doubt," not only
"that this play was founded on a recent event," but also,
"that it was produced in 1611." Further, in another
Essay, entitled " An Account of the Incidents of the
Tempest," privately printed by him in 1809, and afterwards
reprinted as a supplement in the " Variorum " (vol. xv.),
while elaborately discussing the whole problem of the
source, origin and date of the play, he declared positively
that he knew " The Tempest " " had a being and a name
in the autumn of 1611."

Halliwell-Phillips's cogent arguments, indeed, on these
several points and his deductions therefrom no critic has
ever yet disputed ; none, who expected to be taken seri
ously, could ever think of attempting to dispute.

Not so his final summary and conclusion on the whole

" The Puzzle is Inscrutable" 55

matter. " There appears," wrote he, "to be only one solu
tion that reconciles all the known facts of the case. It is
that the forger had met with and reproduced in a simulated
form trustworthy extracts from a genuine record that had
disappeared from that office." That there might be another
solution plainer and more obvious, and more reconciling
with all the facts, making them each fit easily and simply
into its place ; in fact, that the supposed forged writings
were, after all, genuine, does not, unfortunately, appear to
have occurred to him.

It is no wonder that Halliwell-Phillips's conclusion,
being what it was, did not altogether commend itself to
Dr. Furness. " The puzzle of these Revels Accounts,"
wrote that distinguished scholar in 1892, in an admirable
review of the whole hundred-years discussion on the date
of " The Tempest " — in that superb and wonderful work of
his, never to be superseded, never to be surpassed, for
which all lovers of Shakespeare, now in being and to be,
must ever owe him and his son an inexhaustible obligation
of gratitude ; and which may well still endure as an im
perishable shrine 4< to the memory of our beloved, the
author . . . and what he has left us" when "Time dis
solves his Stratford moniment " — " The puzzles of these
Revels Accounts," wrote he, " may some day be solved.
At present it is inscrutable. Halliwell- Phillips' treatment
of it in his * Outlines ' is unsatisfactory. He acknowledged
in private correspondence that the subject needed revision ;

56 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

but unfortunately the lassitude of his fatal illness was even
then upon him, and he was unable to accomplish the task."
Moreover, he was then living permanently at Hollingbury
Copse, near Brighton, which must greatly have militated
against his making the necessary investigations in London.
Had he regained his health and lived, we cannot but feel
sure that eager, ardent, passionate even, as he was in the
pursuit everywhere of truth and accuracy, as it affected the
smallest particular relating to the poet's life and works, he
would not have been satisfied with a solution so little con
clusive or satisfying ; but would eventually, by re-examining
the supposed forgeries for himself, have reached the true
answer to the conundrum.

But as it has happened the puzzle has remained in all
its perplexity for a quarter of a century ; and since his
death in 1889 no further light has been shed on it from
any quarter.

In fact, there are few things more curious in this busi
ness than the way in which the mystery was allowed to
remain a mystery, and the fresh crop of difficulties, raised
by the finding of Malone's transcript, was acquiesced in by
all those on the spot in England, leaving it to Dr. Furness
in America to point out insistently, in volume after volume,
how unsatisfactory it all was. To no one does it seem to
have occurred that if Peter Cunningham's guilt had appeared,
for the reasons given above, to many dubious enough
before, how much more so was it now, as long as these

The Immortal Name — Shaxberd 57

further obvious queries were without an answer : Why
should he have forged the lists at all, when, ex hypothesi,
he had the originals lying open before him ? Why, if he
did so, should he have gone out of his way to depart so
much from his model, as to make use of a style of letter
ing different to that employed in the undoubtedly authentic
portions of the documents — thus at once arousing suspicion ?
Why, again, should he have printed the play-lists from his
forged versions instead of from the originals ? Why, too,
should he have made away with the originals, instead of
trying to sell them, in preference to his fraudulent copies,
to the British Museum ?

Then there was the point about the spelling in Malone's
transcript. Nothing had contributed more to the immedi
ate condemnation of Cunningham's play-lists than the quaint
version of the name " Shaxberd," in which the knowing
ones had at once detected the mock-antique of the tyro in
seventeenth century forgery. And yet here it was, in the
Bodleian Library, so copied for M alone, a hundred years
before, from the original document, assumed to be at that
time still intact among the archives of the Audit Office.
And then there was Halliwell-Phillips, with his provokingly-
wide antiquarian lore, coming forward with several instances
from contemporary records at Stratford-on- Avon, exhibiting
almost exactly similar peculiarities in the spelling of the
immortal name— " Shaxpere," "Shaxber," " Shaxbeer "•
plain indications, by the way, of the original universal pro-

58 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

nunciation of the name, still preserved among the peasantry
of Warwickshire round about Stratford, and best represented
by the two French words, chaque espere — Shakespeare him
self always having used a spelling which shows that he re
tained these original native sounds to the end.

Nevertheless, as time went by, editors and critics dis
regarding all these many difficulties, and not unnaturally,
perhaps, impatient of uncertainty, when their readers were
clamouring for positiveness one way or the other, by degrees
became less reticent about the accusation of forgery, blurted
out twenty years before by Grant White against Cunning
ham, which, not being contradicted or disputed in the mean
while, gradually came to be generally believed in, and
plumply asserted by nearly all. The way was led by the
late Mr. Fleay, a Shakespearean scholar, who, when engaged
in literary discussion, invariably expressed his views in a
most violent and denunciatory style. In this case, without
apparently ever having seen the documents, he stigmatized
Cunningham's play-lists — and strangely enough especially
that of 161 i- 1 2 — as " the most glaringly impudent of all the
forgeries published by Collier and Cunningham " —an art
fully contrived " suggestio falsi," which so mixed the two
up together as to make it appear that Cunningham had
perpetrated other forgeries besides those in the Revels
Accounts, and that he was probably concerned with the
arch -fabricator in some of his many wide-spread frauds
(for which there was certainly not the slightest vestige of

" Glaringly Impudent— Inexpressibly Clumsy " 59

foundation) ; though, in order, apparently, to fix him with
the full discredit for this particular one, he declared it to be
" so inexpressibly clumsy that Collier could have had no
share in it. It took in Halliwell," he added, " but he knew
very little of stage history outside Shakespeare's career."

Fleay even went so far as to couple with Collier's name
that of Halliwell- Phillips also, against whom he seems to
have nourished a special grudge, denouncing " the pro
cedures of this triad of worthies " as " a tangled web of
deceit," and declaring that " nothing could be more blame
worthy than the support given " by Halliwell- Phillips to the
other two — though he never gave them any support at all !
The only thing he did, which could have afforded any
ostensible reason for Fleay 's preposterous suggestion that
he had supported Collier in his proceedings, and, perhaps,
had taken some part in them, was that he had been
cautiously slow at first in admitting their fraudulent nature.
The real reason of Fleay 's rancour, however, seems to have
been the encyclopaedic knowledge of the author of the
" Outlines " on questions, he himself had scarcely touched
the fringe of, which irritated him so excessively that, while
quick to avail himself of all his rival's discoveries and to
treat them as the common stock of information on the sub
ject, he never omitted disparaging his learning, or trying
to catch him out in a mistake.

After all his arguing in a circle and confusing the facts,
Fleay proceeded to demonstrate by intrinsic evidence, so he

6o Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

said, and certainly to his own complete satisfaction, the utter
worthlessness and concocted character of both play-lists ;
particularly that of 1611-12, which, of the two, as we have
already explained, more bears the impress of authenticity,
and has been less doubted than the other.

The apparent discrepancies which he made so much of
are, however, if tested, found to be, most of them, sus
ceptible of ready explanation : while, if the play-lists are
really genuine we need not, of course, trouble overmuch
about a lot of supposed inaccuracies, which, according to
Fleay, he found to be inconsistent with other information
collected by him.

Such were the parodies of proof and argument with
which Fleay sought to hold up Cunningham — and would, if
he could, have held up H alii well- Phillips also — to the whole
literary world as a forger. He had clearly mistaken his line
and calling : his style and tone being rather those of a party
politician on the stump, than of a student of Shakespeare,
seeking honestly and single-mindedly, as'he should, to arrive
at the truth.

Misled by such torrents of confident asseverations in
England, Dr. Furness, unfortunately departing from his
previous prudent reserve, referred to the play-lists as un
doubtedly " forged by Peter Cunningham," and to his
offering " his forgery for sale to the British Museum."

And so certainty in the matter grew and spread, until
it drew in even Dr. Furnivall. For that impulsive but

The Play -Lists Universally condemned 61

essentially fair-minded enquirer, though a scrupulously
careful verifier of documentary evidence, never made any
claim to be considered a skilled archivist, so that while he
took the precaution of seeing the impugned writings for
himself, he was evidently too much influenced by Sir Thomas
Duffus Hardy, who showed them to him. Like the rest
of the world, therefore, he was convinced by what he
was told — so much so that in a note to the recently pub
lished " Century " Shakespeare he coupled the play-lists
with Collier's fabrications as " rank forgeries," and in
another note spoke of Cunningham as "the utterer" of
them.

In fact, Mr. Sidney Lee — than whom there is no one,
who when discussing Shakespearean problems, is more
restrained and more cautious in what he gives currency to,
and more provided with warrant for everything he asserts —
has been almost the only recent writer on the topic who
has, with both fairness and prudence, abstained from fasten
ing the supposed forgeries on Cunningham — though, in
common with everyone else, he could not but accept the
universal condemnation passed on the play-lists by all those
best qualified to judge.

In the meanwhile, Dr. Furness could only exclaim from
across the Atlantic, at last almost in <}espair : " Time is the
only thing that will ever solve the mystery of these pages
of the Revels Books " — Time, which is, indeed, at last
about to do so.

62 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

For now the mysteries of the true date of " Othello,"
of Malone's enigmatical assertions about it, of the "forged
lists," and of the Bodleian transcript, enter upon yet another,
and what it is to be hoped may prove to be the last and
final phase. What has been the occasion of it is this : the
present writer, wanting to reconstruct the circumstances in
which were first produced several of Shakespeare's plays at
Whitehall, started, seeking to verify the ordinary state
ments current about their dates of composition, by examining
the original documents on which those statements purported
to be based. It is a golden rule in all literary, as in all
scientific research, always, if possible, to get to the fountain
head ; to test for one's self all the authorities one comes
across ; and above all, in the case of any manuscripts cited by
previous enquirers, to read the originals with one's own eyes.

This is especially incumbent on anyone trying to throw
light on matters of such first-rate importance as Shake
speare's life or works ; in connection with which to quote
documents at second hand seems almost like a false pre
tence, and a sort of treason against that care and rever
ence, which should inspire all research work relating to our
supreme poet. No doubt, invariably and scrupulously to
follow out this practice often involves a great deal of trouble
and a good deal of delay ; but, on the other hand, rarely —
not to say never — does it fail to yield something of value
to the searcher — some new aspect of the subject, or some
new light thrown on it, or the detection of some point,

Appearance of u The B cokes of Reuells" 63

whether slight or important, which had escaped former
investigators.

In pursuance of this principle, the writer visited the
Bodleian in order to inspect the Malone transcript : which
he found to tally exactly with Halliwell-Phillips's description
and printing of it in the appendix to vol. ii. of the " Out
lines." His next step was to go and see the " Revels
Accounts," in order to verify what had been published about
them, and especially to see the leaves with the lists of plays,
which he, in common with the rest of the world, supposed
would appear palpable and unquestionable forgeries — nour
ishing only a slight hope that he might pick up some crumb
of information, that might help towards the solving of the
baffling mystery of these play-lists. Accordingly, a few
months ago the famous " Reuells Booke An0 1 605 " and " The
Booke of the Reuells ending the last day of Octobar An0
Dom. 1612" were produced for his inspection by the courtesy
of Mr. Salisbury in his private room at the Record Office.

On a first look, it must be admitted that there did seem
so much difference in general appearance and particu
lar form between the handwriting of the first play-list and
Tylney's detailed account of expenses which follows it, that,
with the foregone assumption of its being, of course, a case
of forgery, it never would have entered one's head, in the
first instance, to suggest that the condemnation passed on it
forty-three years ago, and acquiesced in by every commen
tator and critic since, was not thoroughly deserved. The

64 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

two pages are, in fact, as will be seen from the facsimiles,
rather indifferently written, in a large, coarse, and not very
sure or uniform hand, unlike that of the skilled pen
manship of the rest of the document, which, on the
contrary, is a good specimen of caligraphy, neat, clear, uni
form and precise — doubtless the handwriting of William
Honyng(here is another " Mr.W.H." for the interpreters of
the sonnets !), the Clerk of the Revels. Though the bulk of
the writing is Gothic, or old English, the names of the plays,
the playwrights and the companies, it will be observed, are
in the Italian character — whereas, only three or four words
are so written in the rest of the document. The illiterateness
of the scribe is particularly evident in the spelling — in the
use, for instance, of the Jacobean vulgarism " aleven," * and
still more in that of " Shaxberd " — though this version of the
poet's name can be shown, as we have already seen, to be
not so unusual in spelling, as might be supposed.

But, when the impugned pages were subjected to a
closer scrutiny, what was the writer's surprise to find that,
point by point, in almost every particular, the published
and universally accepted descriptions of the document,
and the strictures upon it, showed wide divergences
from the real facts — divergences, moreover, not the less
significant, because they were, in almost every instance,
such as, if well founded, would have seriously tended to

* It is found in the First Folio — " Merchant of Venice," II. ii. 155 ; also in Wil
liam Alabaster's " Roxana " (1632) and Nathaniel Richards'" Messalina" (1640).

Descriptions Diverging from the Facts 65

strengthen the case against the authenticity of the lists.
As, however, most of these points have already been alluded
to pretty fully it will be unnecessary to recapitulate them
here.

Two of them, however, have not been touched on
before : first, that to the eye of one with merely a limited
experience in sixteenth century and early seventeenth cen
tury handwriting, and with no claim to be called an expert,
there would seem to be but little wrong with the form and
shape of the letters ; and, more striking still, to the ordinary
eye, at any rate, no apparent difference in the quality or
colour of the ink, nor in its effect on the paper, when com
pared with the rest of the account-book — the leaf, when
held up to the light, and carefully scrutinised, showing no
sign of the ink having " run," or of having been absorbed
into the substance of the paper, any more or any less in the
one case than in the other ; nor any indication of pre
paratory pencillings, nor any sign of any sort of tampering.

Thus far as regards the play-list of 1604-5. On pro
ceeding to examine that of 161 1-12, it was almost startling
to find nothing — either on a preliminary glance, or after a
detailed scrutiny — in the least supporting the theory of
forgery. In the first place, the handwriting differs very
little, if at all, from that in the rest of the account-book,
whether in size, form or style of lettering. The bulk of it is
in Gothic character, with an intermixture of Italian script,
as in the 1604-5 ^st> f°r ^e names of the players and

£

66 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

the plays only; but in no other respect is the writing
different from that on the other side of the leaf — page 4 — on
which begins Sir George Buc's account for the year ending
October 3ist, 1612. If, then, this list be a forgery, it is
certainly a vastly cleverer one, and a decidedly more plaus
ible one than the other ; especially as the names of the
playwrights do not occur in the margin like in the other —
" Shaxberd's " name not being found opposite " The
Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest," the only two plays
of his mentioned out of a whole dozen by various authors.
Then as to its ink. To the ordinary eye, even when
assisted with a magnifying glass, it appears, in every point
and particular, exactly like that on the other side of the leaf,
as well as in the whole of the rest of the document.

Yet it was precisely the peculiarity in the character of
the ink which was cited by Halliwell- Phillips as fatally
discrediting the writings, and proving them both to be of
a period long subsequent to the seventeenth century.

The modern " character of its ink " ! This, in fact, had
been just the decisive point, which had weighed more than
any of the confident asseverations of all the commentators
and all the experts. If the ink was plainly and unmistak
ably recent, then the lists were, of course, forgeries — " pal
pable, barefaced, senseless, impudent, wicked, rank, gross,"
and all the rest — through the whole gamut of vituperative
adjectives, applied by irritated editors to the documents
they supposed had deceived and misled them so long. But

The Suspicious Character of the Ink 67

if " the character of the ink "was, on the contrary, anything
but suspicious — in fact, in all ways and in all appearances
absolutely ancient and original, what then ?

The writer, on communicating his impressions to one
or two officials in the Record Office, found that his half-
formed scepticism was by no means so scouted by them as
he had anticipated — though responsibility naturally obliged
in them a more reserved attitude than was incumbent in
an outsider, in questioning a verdict, which, more or less
officially adopted, had remained so long unchallenged.

His next step was to invoke the aid of Dr. Wallace,
Associate Professor of English Language and Literature
in the University of Nebraska, the well-known scholar,
whose researches in the Record Office have resulted in
some of the most interesting discoveries about the personal
life of Shakespeare, which have been made known for a
very long time. Dr. Wallace, having with his wife searched
through hundreds of thousands of documents — nearly a
million between them— belonging to the years covered by
the latter half of the dramatist's life, has acquired an un
rivalled familiarity with manuscripts of this period, and the
methods of their writers. Examining with great care the
two lists of plays, Dr. Wallace unhesitatingly confirmed
the writer's view that each is in a handwriting of the time ;
that each is exactly what it purports to be, that they are
both absolutely genuine, and that there is not a scrap of
anything modern or forged about either of them.

E 2

68 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

The writer next applied to Sir George Warner, Keeper
of Manuscripts in the British Museum, who most obligingly
came and met him in the Literary Search- Room of the
Record Office, and, without bias either way, closely
examined the writings in question. Now, Sir George
Warner is known not only in England, but throughout
Europe and America for his extensive acquaintance with
ancient manuscripts. Moreover, as an expert, he is a
specialist, not only in old English documents, but particu
larly in seventeenth century ones, a specialist, too, in liter
ary frauds, and especially a specialist in Shakespearean
forgeries. For it is he who, in his article on the life of
John Payne Collier in " The Dictionary of National Bio
graphy," and in his admirable catalogue of the Dulwich
Manuscripts, has followed the forger over several of the
most extensive fields of his fabrications, remorselessly
tracking him letter by letter, and stroke by stroke, until
the whole methods of the man's widespread and mischievous
trickeries have been laid bare.

Sir George subjected the accounts — especially the one of
1604-5— to a prolonged and searching scrutiny, and though
he allowed that, on a first glance, the two pages in that
document have a somewhat suspicious air about them,
he proceeded to point out many little features which told
strongly in favour of their genuineness. He was almost
at once convinced that they were, at any rate, not the
handiwork of Collier, whose " style" in forgery is only too

Sir George Warner s Searching Scrutiny 69

well-known to him. Finally, he declared that he could
detect no sign of any modern fabrication at all, nor even
any tampering with the manuscripts ; and that he saw no
reason whatever for supposing that the lists were not, in
every regard, absolute genuine writings of the early seven
teenth century.

With so much strong corroboration in favour of the
writer's challenge of the " forgery " verdict, it might be
thought that it was unnecessary to do anything more to
carry conviction to the minds of all reasonable men. But
in a literary matter it is no light thing to controvert a
universally-accepted decree of competent persons, who are
no longer alive to vindicate their opinions ; still less to
try to unsettle " a settled fact," of half a century's stand
ing, written about and acted on by a whole host of com
mentators and critics — many of them, too, still very much
alive. Moreover, there would have seemed something
inconclusive about the whole thing, unless the crucial and
unanswerable tests of microscopical and chemical analyses
were applied to the papers and the ink. If the ink were
proved to be, after all, modern, no literary arguments would
go for very much against scientific evidence. If, on the
contrary, it was shown to be ancient, the demonstration
would be overwhelming and conclusive.

Accordingly, he laid the facts before Sir Henry Max-
well-Lyte, Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records, who has,
as all interested in the subject know well, with most inade-

70 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

quate means, worked wonders in the arranging and rendering
accessible of the National Records, since he was appointed
their custodian in 1886. To the request that the documents
might be subjected to such a scientific inquisition, Sir
Henry, recognizing the importance of the enquiry, at once
gave a cordial assent ; and he forthwith submitted the
Books of Revels of 1604-5 anc^ 1611-12 to the Principal of
the Government Laboratories, Professor James J. Dobbie,
F.R.S., for examination and testing.

The process, which took place at the Government
Laboratory in Clement's Inn Passage, Strand, in the pre
sence of Mr. Stamp, of the Record Office, was of a most
stringent and exhaustive character : the results being fully
set out in an elaborate report furnished to the Deputy-
Keeper. This report the writer has been privileged to
read ; and every part of it decisively confirms what has
been stated above, as to the general appearance of the ink
being uniform throughout the book, and as to none of it
having faded more in one part than the other.

When examined microscopically, the identical character
istics of the ink throughout the whole document of 1604-5
were still more clearly perceived. "It has consistently the
same glistening gummy appearance; and in drying has fre
quently shrunk from the paper, forming fissures and cracks
through which the unstained fibre of the paper may be
seen." No difference is discernible in any of these respects
between the ink on the second leaf and that in other parts

Microscopical and Chemical Testings 71

of the document — though a different ink has been used for
the signatures, with the one exception of Tylney's — nor
has the ink penetrated into the paper fibre to a greater
extent on that leaf than on the others. It was, there
fore, most probably of the same degree of fluidity, and the
paper, at the time of writing, of the same surface and
condition.

The ink was also tested with chemical reagents ; but the
effects produced gave no indication of any difference either
in the constituents of the ink, or in the degree of resistance
to bleaching agents, in any portion of the document.

In an appendix Professor Dobbie gives a list of the
letters, or portions of letters, which have been treated with
chemicals ; and a list of the chemicals used : " Saturated,
and 5 per cent., solutions of oxalic acid ; a solution of
hydrogen peroxide ; 50 per cent, solution of acetic acid ;
10 per cent, of sodium hypochloride ; potassium ferro-
cyanide solution ; and hydrochloric acid (concentrated)."

The conclusions of the Government Analyst are " that
the ink used is of the same character throughout the
document," and that ''there is no evidence to support the
suggestion that the writing on pages 3 and 4 is of a
different date from the writing on the remainder of the
document."

This being the result of the testing of the play-list of
1604-5, it was obviously superfluous to subject the less im
pugned one of 1611-12 to any similar analysis.

72 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

Such is the decision of the Principal Government
Analyst ; and to his name the writer is permitted to add
those of Sir Henry Max well- Lyte, of Mr. Scargill-Bird, the
Assistant- Keeper of the Records, of Mr. Salisbury and of
Mr. Stamp, who superintended the testings, as each emphati
cally concurring in the conclusions deduced therefrom.

The result of these various investigations is, the writer
ventures to think, entirely to clear Peter Cunningham of
the charge of forgery brought against him, and completely
to remove the stigma affixed to the documents in 1868.

The two play-lists, therefore, should henceforth assuredly
take their place on an unshakeable basis, as the most
curious of all contemporary references to the performances
of Shakespeare's plays at Court in his life-time, and the
most valuable extrinsic evidence we possess — with the single
exception of Meres's list in his " Palladis Tamia " — for the
sequence of their composition, and, consequent thereon,
for the interpretation of that interesting psychological
problem — the development of our great dramatist's mind
and art.

At the same time, it is to be noted, in connection with
this question of the dates of production of the plays, that
since Peter Cunningham's time, much progress has un
doubtedly been made in the elucidation of their chronology ;
most of it being of so sound a quality that the results of
aesthetic criticism, as applied to the thoughts and concep
tions of the dramatist and the style and expression of his

The Value of the Play- Lists 73

poetry, are found, when checked by internal evidences
coinciding with external data — historical events, social cir
cumstances, and so on — as well as by the analytical testing
of the form and metre of his verse, to be not only unshaken,
but positively confirmed, by these authentic contemporary
records of the Master of the Revels.

As these give us for certain the correct dates of pre
sentation of several of Shakespeare's greatest masterpieces
before the Court, it will now be possible to proceed confi
dently with the reconstitution of the surroundings and
conditions, under which each of them was performed for the
first time at Whitehall.

This, however, is not the time or place to examine fully
the various consequences in this respect, and in others, of
the establishment of the authenticity of these two play-
lists. The genuineness of the earlier one has been already
assumed by the writer, in a couple of articles of his recently
published, describing the First Night Performances before
King James and his Court at Whitehall in 1604, of
" Othello" on " Hallamas Day" in the old Banqueting
House, and of " Measure for Measure " on " St. Stiuen's
Night/' in the Great Hall.

A reconstruction was therein attempted, by the aid
of old plans, unpublished contemporary manuscripts, and
the original bills of account, stored in the Record Office
and elsewhere, of all the circumstances and conditions of
both productions — the halls and their appearance, in

74 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

which each play was acted ; the seating arrangements for
the King and Queen and the rest of the audience ; the
position, shape and size of the stage ; the lighting, the
scenery, the accessories, and the music — all the splendid
surroundings, in fact, which rendered Court performances
so entirely different from those on the public stage ; in
their atmosphere of greater refinement, and with their
varied sensuous appeals, heightening the theatric illusion,
and producing a most marked effect on the audience, the
actors, and the style of acting alike.

One or two special points, however, in regard to the
play-list of 1 61 i-i 2, it may be convenient and interesting
to set down here. In the first place, the list affords
conclusive proof, at last, as to the true and exact date of
the composition and production of "The Tempest " —that
beautiful and delightful creation, wrought by Shakespeare
at the close of his career, and forming a rare and delicate
crown — " the top of admiration " — to the vast and varied
fabric, reared by the magic of his invention, to the accom
paniment of all the enchanting rhythm and music of his
verse.

The certain proof, long sought and long desired, is
here : that this marvellous and most exquisite play of his,
must have been written in the winter of i6io-n, immedi
ately after the publishing of the pamphlets, which described
the wrecking of Sir George Somers's flag-ship on one of
the Bermudas, and the adventures of his sailors on the

Conclusive Proof of the Date of " The Tempest" 75

mysterious island, so " full of noyses " — facts and fancies,
which, transmuted by the alchemy of the poet's imagination
and refashioned by his consummate skill, came forth as
the substance of the " insubstantial pageant " of that wonder
ful work.

A new proof, too, and a more pregnant significance, is
thus given to all that has been written on the origin of
" The Tempest," in recent years, by such sound and trust
worthy scholars as Mr. Sidney Lee, Mr. Gollancz, the late
Mr. W. J. Craig, Professor Herford in the " Eversley "
Shakespeare, and especially Mr. Luce in his incomparable
study and analysis of the play in the " Arden " edition.

It follows that " The Tempest " must have been pro
duced in the spring or summer of 1611, while the news of
the storm and the wreck off the " still-vex'd Bermoothes "
was still fresh in people's minds, and acted undoubtedly
(for reasons not necessary to be specified here) at the
" Blackfriars" ; and afterwards presented at Court — a
testimony to its recent popularity on the public stage of
London — before the King and Queen and Princes at
Whitehall, in James I.'s then newly-built first Banqueting
House, on " Hallomas Nyght"

This performance, in many ways one of the most inter
esting in the whole career of the poet, will be described,
with all its circumstances reconstructed as far as possible,
on a future occasion.

Here, however, we may note that by this conclusive

76 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

fixing of the date of the play are definitely disposed of, let
us hope for ever, long pages of discussion in scores of
books, suggesting later dates for its production.

Thus, especially, is finally and completely disproved
Tieck's famous and ingenious theory, put forward by him
a hundred years ago in Germany, and since adopted by
a great many critics — adopted particularly by the late
Dr. Garnett, who propounded it, with an almost irresistible
array of clever illustrations and arguments, in a charming
essay in the " Universal Review" for April 1889 ; adopted,
likewise, as recently as 1895 by Dr. Brandes in Denmark,
in his brilliant study of the poet's life and work and influence ;
and still clung to cherishingly by Mr. Henry James in his
just published introduction to " The Tempest " in the
" Caxton " Shakespeare — the theory, namely, that the play
was written to be first presented at Court in February 1613,
in honour of the marriage in that month of the Princess
Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine. Yet, though this theory
is now entirely disposed of, nevertheless it is a fact, interesting
enough in its way, that a performance of " The Tempest "
was really given before the Prince and his bride, some time
during the spring of that year.

So much for " The Tempest." Now a word or two as
to the light thrown by the play-list of 161 1-12 on the date
of "The Winter's Tale." As it happens, there has never
been — at any rate, for at least seventy-five years or so —
anything like the same amount of uncertainty and discus-

The Date of " The Winters Tale" 77

sion on this point of date, in the case of this play, as in
that of " The Tempest " or " Othello." For in 1836 there
was published by Collier a document — for once a genuine
and uncooked one — entitled " A Bockeof Plaies and Notes
thereof," which he had found in the Ashmolean Museum,
written by Dr. Simon Forman, a notorious quack physician
and astrologer of the time, though a real " Doctor" of his
University of Cambridge, who describes a performance of
" The Winter's Talle," witnessed by him at the Globe on
Wednesday, May i5th, 1611. This has provided the later
limit for its production ; and the surmise that it was a new
play when the astrologist doctor drew a warning from it
against " trustinge feined beggars and fawning fellouse,"
corroborated as it is by internal evidences — especially those
of metre and style — is still more strongly confirmed, if not
proved, by this record of its performance at court, at once
after the summer recess, on the 5th of November of the
same year.

For its anterior limit August 1610 has been suggested,
for the reason that on the roth of that month Sir George
Buc succeeded Tylney as Master of the Revels ; and
his own successor, Sir Henry Herbert, recorded, thirteen
years after, in his office-book, that the "olde playe,
called Winter's Tale," had formerly been allowed by Buc.
Though there is a flaw in this argument, owing to Buc
having issued his license for plays before he was regularly
instituted to the Mastership, still it is one which is far
from being entirely without cogency.

78 Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

But whether " The Winter's Tale " was written and
produced before or after " The Tempest " remains uncertain
— though there is nothing in this new bit of positive know
ledge of ours to conflict with the usual opinion of the critics
that it was the earlier of the two. There is, however,
reason to suppose that it was not staged at "The Globe"
much, if at all, before Shrove Tuesday, 1611, which in that
year fell on February 10.

There remains one small point in regard to the title of
the play as given in Buc's list. It is to be observed that
while all other notices — contemporary as well as later —
refer to it as " The Winter's Tale," this one alone describes
it as " The Winter's Night's Tale " — a version of its title
presumably furnished to the Master by Shakespeare's
Company, if not by himself. Though formed apparently
as a sort of balance or 'contrast to " A Midsummer Night's
Dream " — just as Shakespeare's original title for " Othello "
was " The Moor of Venice," in contrast to " The Merchant
of Venice " — it has a significance of some import. For it
helps to confute the contentions of some critics that the play
received its name because of its plot being " a wintry one " ;
or because of its having been produced in the winter season
— an idea of H alii well- Phillips's.

It has, on the contrary, lately been made pretty clear
that it was called "The Winter's Tale" for the reason,
emphasized by Shakespeare himself three or four times in
the course of the dialogue — as has been pointed out by

The Title of " The Winters Tale" 79

M. Jusserand in his admirable essay on the play in the
recently published volume of the '• Caxton " Shakespeare—
because it was just such a fanciful romantic piece, full of
strange happenings and wonders and improbabilities, as was
then known as " A Winter's Tale," or an " Old Wives'
Tale," told round the fire on a winter's night. Hence the
significance of the word " Night" in its title as given in
Buc's Revels Book — a unique variation which reinforces
M. Jfeserand's argument.

The phrase, however, was not entirely original ; for a
play called " A Winter's Night's Pastime " had been regis
tered at Stationer's Hall in 1594; and " The Old Wiues'
Tale," first printed in 1595, and recently reprinted by the
Malone Society, contains not only the phrase " A Merry
Winter's Tale," but also a combination of it with the other :
" 1 am content to drive away the time with an Old Wives'
Winter's Tale/'

" The Winter's Tale," or " The Winter's Night's Tale,"
remained a favourite piece at court for several years — being
presented, with "The Tempest" and a dozen other plays
of our great dramatist, in the spring of 1613, before the
Prince Palatine and his bride. Shakespeare's greatest
works, in fact, retained the patronage of James I. to the
end of his life, and it is only fair to remember that to that
King— with all his faults and foibles— is at any rate due
the honour of having appreciated the marvellous plays,
just as is due to him the credit of having ordered the new
translating of the Bible.

8o Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries

It is worthy of note, indeed, that in this present year
of grace, 1911, occurs the tercentenary, not only of the
" Authorized Version," but also of the production, as we
may now say with positiveness, of "The Tempest" — pro
bably Shakespeare's last play, as it certainly is one of the
most beautiful and enchanting of them all.

Might not some of the " King's Players " of to-day
celebrate the anniversary of that first presentation at
Whitehall by a commemorative performance on " Hallo-
mas Nyght " next, on or close to the exact spot where it was
first witnessed by a Sovereign of these Realms ?

LOHJDON: FEINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWBS AMD SONS, LIMITED.

IT WIKDMIU. STREET, W., AMD DUKE ETBBBT, CTAMFOKD ITBEBT, •.»

PR Law, Ernest

2893 Some supposed Shakespeare

L35 forgeries

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

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