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The Cultural Appropriation of the Shakespeare Narrative: the Contributions of a Forger

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The Cultural Appropriation of the Shakespeare Narrative: the Contributions of a Forger The cultural appropriation of the Shakespeare narrative: The contributions of a forger Jennifer Minich May 6, 2015 Jennifer Ellen Minich 2043339m The critical response to William Henry Ireland’s Miscellaneous Shakespeare Papers accelerated the appropriation of “Shakespeare,” the man and his body of work, by playwrights, writers and artists as a fictional mechanism of cultural criticism. This will be analyzed in two phases. The first phase will investigate the critical responses to the Ireland Papers. The second phase will examine and document the uses of Shakespeare on stage, in literature and in art in the 19th century. The cause and effect relationship between the two phases will be exploited to detail Shakespeare’s transition from a playwright at the beginning of the 18th century to a fictional vehicle for cultural criticism by the end of the 19th century. In December 1794, a teenaGe William Henry Ireland presented his father, Shakespeare enthusiast, antiquarian and travel writer Samuel Ireland, with a forged deed of lease siGned by William Shakespeare.1 The deed was the first of a collective of forgeries, which would come to be known as the Miscellaneous Shakespeare Papers and referred to throughout this study as the Ireland Papers.2 The chief goal of these forgeries was fairly innocent and understandable. In Samuel’s house William Henry had Grown up readinG Shakespeare on a daily basis3 and was well acquainted with his father’s deep-seated obsession with the Bard.4 William Henry was eager to prove his worth and gain his father’s respect.5 Of course, William Henry had other motives also. He was a younG romantic and deeply inspired by the traGic story of Thomas Chatterton, a teenage literary forger active in the 1760s.6 After committinG suicide in 1770, Chatterton was immortalized as a romantic hero and genius by literary and antiQuarian communities.7 The glorification of Chatterton’s efforts inspired William Henry to create his own kind of lastinG fame.8 In An Authentic Account of the Shakespearian Manuscripts (1796) William Henry 1 Mair, John. The Fourth Forger: William Ireland and the Shakespeare Papers. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1983: 27. 2 Ibid, 27. 3 Ibid, 6. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid, 11. 6 Ibid, 9-10. 7 Ibid, 11. 8 Ibid, 11. 2 Jennifer Minich May 6, 2015 details his motivations for each forGery. Professedly his most common motive was to defend the Bard from some scurrilous accusations.9 After the discovery of the deed of lease, William Henry maintained that the source of the Ireland Papers was a cache discovered in the home of an eccentric, wealthy Gentleman. The Gentleman originally referred to as the “Gent,” but later referred to as “Mr. H.,”10 allowed William Henry to take ownership of the documents on the condition of retaininG his anonymity.11 Samuel greedily took the Papers his son presented to him and exhibited them for a small fee at his house on Norfolk Street.12 Over the next year and a half, from 1795-179613, the speed with which over 170 Papers were unearthed (or executed) and the very low-reGard Samuel held for his son were initially enough to quell any doubts about the authenticity of the Ireland Papers.14 For the first year, the so-called ‘Believers’ in the Ireland Papers far outweiGhed any criticism from ‘Non-Believers’ or critics.15 Attacks leveled aGainst the Ireland Papers were Quickly demolished by the ‘discovery’ of supportinG documentation by William Henry and the enthusiasm of Samuel’s influential circle of friends. Ultimately, William Henry’s ruse was exposed by a series of strategically timed publications by the ‘Non-Believers’ and critics, culminatinG in the disastrous first and final performance of the forGed Shakespeare play Vortigern and Rowena at Drury Lane on April 2, 1796.16 Shakespeare himself experienced an evolution of relevancy in the 18th century. The first Shakespeare Folio was published in 1623, less than ten years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616.17 Prohibitively expensive and difficult to decipher for the lay reader, the acquisition of a Shakespeare Folio at the beginning of the 18th century was little more than a status symbol in prominent literary, antiQuarian and 9 Ibid, 32. 10 Ibid, 79. 11 Ibid, 26. 12 Freeman, Arthur. "William Henry Ireland's 'Authentic OriGinal ForGeries': An Overdue Rediscovery." Houghton Library Blog. 10 24, 2012. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/houghton/files/2012/08/Ireland.pdf (accessed 04 20, 2015): 1. 13 Ibid. 14 Mair, The Fourth Forger: William Ireland and the Shakespeare Papers: 38. 15 Freeman, William Henry Ireland’s ‘Authentic ForGeries’: An Overdue Rediscovery: 1. 16 Ibid. 17 Sabor, Peter, and Paul Yachnin. Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century. Aldershot: AshGate PublishinG Co., 2008: 1. 3 Jennifer Minich May 6, 2015 scholarly circles.18 In the theatre, he retained a latent but respectable popularity.19 ComplicatinG our understandinG of his status durinG the period is that the name of the playwriGht was rarely exhibited on playbills or in advertisements.20 In fact, it was possible for a theatreGoer to be familiar with Shakespeare by word of mouth without realizing that he was the author of the play they had just seen.21 Even more astounding, the practice of editing and adapting Shakespeare for the stage throughout the entirety of the 18th century meant that a play by Shakespeare could be advertised and credited to an editor or adapter, rather than Shakespeare himself.22 Popular adaptors included Nahum Tate, Colley Cibber and Aaron Hill. The commoditization of Shakespeare that can be observed in the latter part of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century had not yet taken place. To the developinG, theaterGoinG middleclass in the first decades of the 18th century, Shakespeare was omnipresent but elusive. He had Gained recoGnition in his own lifetime and retained recognition after his death, but he was not yet relevant to their day-to-day lives. The purchase of Shakespearean relics and pilGrimaGes to Stratford by select specialists were popular as early as the late 17th century, however they reached a new height in the decades preceding the Irelands Papers.23 Popular relics included woodcarvinGs from a mulberry tree that tradition dictated was planted by Shakespeare in the backyard of his house in Stratford.24 In 1769, Garrick organized the Stratford Jubilee at Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Bard’s birth.25 In general, the Stratford Jubilee was a rousinG success for Bardolatry.26 Poems and sonGs from the event were published; the national media narrated the event and thousands made the pilGrimaGe to Shakespeare’s birthplace. Scholarly indulgence of Shakespeare lore was a popular pastime in the 1790s27 when Samuel and William Henry Ireland toured 18 Hamm, Robert B. "Rowe's "Shakespeare" (1709) and the Tonson House Style." ColleGe Literature (ColleGe Literature) 31, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 185. 19 Hume, Robert D. "Before the Bard: ‘Shakespeare’ in Early EiGhteenth-Century London." ELH (The John Hopkins University Press) 64, no. 1 (SprinG 1997): 43-44. 20 Ibid, 43. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid, 44. 23 Mair, The Fourth Forger: William Ireland and the Shakespeare Papers: 13. 24 McNamara, Brooks. "The Stratford Jubilee: Dram to Garrick's Vanity." Educational Theatre Journal (The John Hopkins University Press) 14, no. 2 (May 1962): 137. 25 Ibid, 135. 26 Ibid. 27 O'Sullivan, Maurice J. "Shakespeare's Other Lives." Shakespeare Quarterly (Folger Shakespeare Library) 38, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 142. 4 Jennifer Minich May 6, 2015 Shakespeare’s Stratford in 1793 while writing Picturesque Views on the Upper, Warwickshire, Avon.28 Published in 1795 durinG the heiGht of the fame of the Ireland Papers, Samuel even dedicated the preface to his Picturesque Views to the mysterious “Mr. H,” William Henry’s anonymous benefactor.29 A direct result of the LicensinG Act of 1737 and the Tonson-Walker Copyright Wars of 1734-1735, interest in Shakespeare Gained momentum as the 18th century progressed. The Tonson-Walker Copyright Wars resulted in the publication of affordable, pocket versions of individual Shakespeare plays, often including a mini biography.30 The LicensinG Act of 1737 closed all unlicensed theatres and the Lord Chamberlain was Given the authority to prohibit the production of any new play.31 In the absence of new plays, more time on the boards was dedicated to Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s tragedies were notably popular with the middleclass public, as were actors like David Garrick, who rose to prominence by implementinG an actinG style that appealed directly to the sentiments and aspirations of his middleclass audience.32 Garrick fused Shakespearean heroes and the archetypal 18th-century Gentleman by imbibinG them with humanist values, building careers on the backs of Shakespearean heroes like King Lear and Macbeth.33 Periodicals and maGazines critically reviewed Shakespearean performances and informed an ever-growing literary public of changes to traditional staging, editorial changes and actor interpretations. By the late 18th century, Shakespeare’s name was fully commoditized, printed on playbills and in advertisements specifically for the purpose of sellinG tickets.34 Once the sole property of the learned elite, the public was encouraged by both the accessibility of Shakespeare that occurred in the late 18th century and the Shakespeare forgeries to engage in the conjectural dialogue carried out in newspapers, periodicals, cartoons and fiction. ThrouGh these mediums the middleclass took eQual ownership of 28 Mair, The Fourth Forger: William Ireland and the Shakespeare Papers: 17. 29 Ibid, 88. 30 Hamm, Robert B. "Rowe's "Shakespeare" (1709) and the Tonson House Style”: 186. 31 Crean, P.J. “The StaGe LicensinG Act of 1737.” Modern PhiloloGy (The University of ChicaGo Press) 35, No.
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