You are listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Folks.

It's a hug though no one I haven't seen when USA have a watch to see you there last watch.

Welcome to Hoax, a new podcast, or is it?

It is?

Every episode we sort through the lies we wish were true and truths that sound like lies.

This is not just another scam and scandal podcast.

Oh no.

These are stories of pranks and griffs throughout history, so big and bold they make us question why we believe.

I'm the ghost of Danishchwartz and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.

Welcome to the show.

How's it going, Lizzie?

It's going great.

I'm really excited.

Anticipation has been building all week for your hoax.

I've been very excited researching this one.

I'm kind of like talking to everyone in my life about it, but not you, because I want you to be surprised.

I've just been getting teases of just been getting tech of like this is gonna be good.

Okay, Well I'll jump in and ask you, Yes, what do you know if I tell you about the Ireland Shakespeare hoax?

What does that mean to you?

Well?

I know of a few different Shakespeare hoaxes.

Okay, so I don't know which one is the Ireland one.

Okay, what what give me some Shakespeare hoaxes?

So well, there's like theories that Shakespeare was somebody else yeah yeah, yeah, or that he was a group of people.

And then I think my mom maybe sent me an article that I didn't read.

But I did read the headline of some kid, young guy who said that he found quote unquote found another play or two by Shakespeare that I guess he had actually just written.

And then it took a while for it to get debunked.

Oh here's that, mom.

This is for you.

This is for Lizzie's mom.

She and I have actually been texting.

Well, great, she would like to hear from you.

Okay, So I actually don't want to start with the Sun.

But it's not a spoiler alert.

This is a podcast called hoax.

It is a hoax, yes, but I want to start with this boy's dad.

We're going to talk about a man named Samuel Ireland.

Okay, that's his last name.

Are we in Ireland?

No?

No, we're in England.

Well, so I'm all the way off.

It is confusing.

Their last name is Ireland.

Okay, this is a man named Samuel Ireland.

We're in the seventeen hundreds, okay, So Samuel Ireland is like he's like many older men that I feel like people just encounter in our lives.

He when he was growing up, he kind of wanted to be an architect.

He failed out of that.

He wanted to be a He tried to work as a weaver, but that was a very competitive industry in London at the time, and so he you know, flipped out of that and he sort of landed in a job where he made etchings and wrote sort of semi successful, mostly unsuccessful travel books and sold collectibles mostly.

But I think what's important is that this man's personality.

He's a commoner.

And again we're in like the eighteenth century England, so status matters a lot.

He's a commoner, his ancestors are nobody important, but he sort of has delusions of his own importance.

He likes having things connected to famous people and events.

Sure, and I wonder maybe I'm just jumping way ahead, but in terms of he makes etchings of more famous works and then makes copies of them, is this perhaps going to be give him an idea to make someone I don't know.

I don't know, but we'll just say he's a collector and he loves being the smartest person in the room.

He loves impressing his friends with like he had a piece of Charles the Second Cloak, he had a leather jacket that was worn by Oliver Cromwell.

And so even though he collected all these things and like would sell them, which is like not a very gentlemanly thing to do, he purported to sort of be a gentleman with his like locked cabinet of rare and important artifacts.

Interesting.

The important thing to know about Samuel Ireland is that he's really pretentious, always needs to be the smartish person in the room, thinks he has incredible taste as like a curator, and he's very arrogant, So your average ivy league guy.

Yeah, although he's self educated and like has a complex about it and has a complex about the fact that he's not a noble okay, But he lives in a very fashionable area of London, the Strand.

He has three kids, two girls and a son.

And there's no Missus Ireland, but there is a live in housekeeper known as Missus Freeman, which like wouldn't be incredibly not atypical for the time.

Women are dying in childbirth all the time, and sometimes there are just gaps in the historical record.

But the thing is Missus Freeman wasn't also her real name.

Her real name was Anna Maria de Berg Coppinger, and she sort of had her own scandalous life.

She was a former mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, and she had a pretty large payout, like in a large income about like seven hundred thousand pounds today, like what that would be, and that's money that you're like, what is her relationship with the Samuel Ireland?

And probably most historians think that these three kids were hers with him, but they were born out of wedlock, and so they just sort of had this sort of front that the that she was that housekeeper even though she was probably in a relationship with Samuel Ireland, Okay, and.

They wouldn't just get married because then the Earl would stop giving her money.

Well, we also don't know if that money even came from the Earl, like possible it was a payout.

People have different theories.

We don't know.

She was just sort of a scandalous lady.

It's possible that the older daughters were from a different relationlationship and they weren't Samuel's.

And again it's possible that he wasn't the father of any of the kids, and it's possible that she wasn't the mother.

This is just sort of one historical situation where you're like, something was happening.

Sure, listener, feel free to fill in the blanks with whatever you think is most interesting.

The youngest son, the only son, is named William Henry William Henry, Ireland, and she is awful to him.

She's not very nice to him.

So if you're like, if she's his mom, they do not have a good relationship.

And she's also always hinting to the son that his dad is not his real dad.

That's so rude.

It's like, really rude.

And this boy has this poor lonely boy has a real complex.

The son's name is William Henry.

The dad weirdly will call him Samuel, after a older son, Samuel, who died in infancy, which sounds weird but wasn't entirely uncommon at the time.

He still is like a weird thing because it's also his name.

Yeah, but no one else to my knowledge ever called him Samuel.

So we're calling him William Henry.

Okay, that was his name.

Okay, But there's like a lot of it's a complicated father son dynamic.

And the thing about Samuel the dad is that it was he was a very literate man.

He like loved the fact that they grew up in a very literary household.

And every night after dinner he would read to them Shakespeare plays and he would read out loud books to them.

That was like the way you entertained yourself before HbF.

That honestly sounds really nice.

Yeah.

And there's one book that recently came out called Love and Madness by a man named Herbert Croft, that the dad will read that William Henry absolutely.

Recent to the time about a recent book.

No, no, no, recent to the times.

And it actually the book Love and Madness is about a recent case that had happened at the time, like a true crime scandal.

It's a fictionalized version of a true crime story at the time of the Earl of Sandwich's latest mistress murder, which to the housekeeper must have been awful.

Or she's like, glad it wasn't me.

Glad but that book will be important later.

So just remember that when William Henry was growing up, he was familiar with that book.

Okay.

The other thing that Samuel loves is that William Shakespeare, I mean at the time, but also now Billy Shakes, Willy Shakes, there's almost no historical record of his life.

The pieces and history of Shakespeare's life are so rare and scattered.

That's why people have all these conspiracy theories about like it was one guy, it was a woman, it was no guys, because there's just very little that exists.

It's why you can write Shakespeare in Love and no one can be like that didn't happen for all we know, for all we know, for all we know, Gwyneth Paltrow was there.

I like to think she was, even if it was supposed to be Winona Writer, was it?

So that's this is like the lore is that it was supposed to be Winona Writer, which when you think about it, kind of like on paper, makes more sense.

She's a little bit more androgynous and like a wafy yes, more like a petite person you would write like Twelfth Night around, yeah, except rather than Romeo and Juliet and The story goes that they were best friends and Gwyneth was over at her house and saw the script for Shakespeare in Love, like on We're known as Desk, and was like, hello, then I steal your oscar and called the producers or whatever.

I mean, I love that movie.

We know who's great in that movie.

Let's say it on three one D three Ben Affleck.

He's really funny.

Uh okay.

So we don't know a lot about Shakespeare, indeed, except the exact plot of Shakespeare in Love, which happened caonomically.

Yes.

One thing that we do know, and they did know at the time, is they have a deed that he bought like a house, just as like an investment property, and that's one of the signatures we have of his cool.

And Samuel was so excited because one of the sub letters of that pro not even at the time Shakespeare owned it to his knowledge, was a guy with the last name Ireland, and so he likes to pretend, I mean it's possible.

I mean, maybe it's true, but there's no like genealogy.

But he was like, yeah, my ancestor lived in the house that Shakespeare owned, and so it gave him like a cool link to that.

Yeah, I would totally if that were me.

Yeah, I would say that.

There's no proof of it, and there's no Again, there's no proof that he was related to that, but there's no proof he wasn't exactly, And you know what I'm going to say, Chances are he probably was.

How many Irelands are there.

Well too, at least because one of them is in the UK and one of them's not.

Yeah, too northern and regular.

Yeah, yeah, I've seen dairy girls.

So William Henry the Son is a mediocre student.

His dad acts like he hates him.

Everyone kind of thinks he's adult.

He gets kicked out of his first school, kind of drops out of his next school, studies in France for a while and has a really good time.

So basically, this is a kid that no one thinks it is going to amount to anything.

And he comes back to London and he gets a job as a clerk to a lawyer and they call it the lawyer that he was working for, and I just love this phrase.

Was a conveyancer in chancery, which is basically a legal office for deeds.

Okay, And when I say he got a job, this is like intent that implies he was getting paid.

They actually were paying the lawyer.

It's like an internship, okay, because there's no law school at this time.

He past apprenticing.

You're apprenticing.

You just work there for free, but actually you pay a little bit of money to learn the trade for a few years.

So that's what he's doing.

And he's in a lonely office.

The lawyer that they hired, I guess to train him, gives zero shits about him.

He's alone in this lonely office all day.

There were two other people working in this office, one old guy who dies and one young guy who leaves.

And so he's just clerking surrounded by old legal deeds.

Everyone thinks he's dumb.

His dad hates him, he doesn't have a mom.

Slash, the possible maternal figure in his life treat him like absolute garbage.

Poor William Henry.

So this is William Henry's life when he is a teenager.

His dad, Samuel, is writing a travel book.

Basically the dad became semi successful doing little drawings and going to places around England and writing about it.

And he goes to see Stratford upon Avon.

Sure, Stratford upon Avon is famously Shakespeare's birthplace.

Indeed, and I know that, and that's one of the five things I know about Shakespeare.

A little bit more context for who Shakespeare is at this time and his reputation.

This is like what like one hundred years after he died.

It's like one hundred and change a two hundred.

It's almost exactly two hundred years after he was born.

Okay, because what's happening is when Shakespeare died, he was not that famous.

He was relatively successful in his life, but was among a handful of really successful playwrights.

Died pretty anonymously, and for the next one hundred one hundred and fifty years or so, no one really cared about him, which is also why we just don't have a paper trail of him one because no one was saving paper at that time.

Paper was so expensive that if you had paper lying around, you would use it in book bindings, which is now like a fun fact.

Every few days, you'll like see a New York Times article that's like, oh, this famous document we found.

They're usually finding them because they were used as book bindings and other books.

Your algorithm is so different from mine, and you're like, oh, yeah, I totally see that once or twice a week.

Yeah, I'm not watching Taylor Swift and Cat video.

But also that so Shakespeare just like wasn't that important.

No one like thought his stuff was worth preserving because he was kind of in nobody.

And that sort of changes in the seventeen hundreds, mostly because of this one actor named David Garrick.

Okay, and David Garrick was an incredible Shakespearean actor who was sort of the first naturalistic Shakespeare actor, and so the theater was becoming a big thing.

This the main actor was celebrating Shakespeare.

David Garrick throws the biennial like the two hundred year anniversary of Shakespeare's birth in Stratford upon Avon, And when he did that, people in Stratford there were some who had not heard of Shakespeare fascinating.

So that's sort of what where it was like people were going people who like cared, but he wasn't like a no national thing.

But that was slowly changing by the late seventeen hundreds and so people are getting back into Shakespeare.

But I think the other important thing that people should know about Shakespeare at this time, who was his plays were super super popular but Georgie and England was not precious about them.

They changed their play his plays a lot.

If you went to see a performance of King Lear in the late seventeen hundreds, you might see a version with a happy ending, because that's what a Georgian audience wanted to see.

Sure, and the theater people were just selling tickets.

So Samuel Ireland comes to Stratford pon Avon and he's sort of determined that.

He's like, I want to find a little Shakespeare tidbit, okay, I want to get Recently, a few years before this, they had discovered that gatehouse deed with Shakespeare's signature on it.

Oh gotcha.

So he's like, maybe there's another one lying around here.

Exactly.

They only discovered that in seventeen sixty eight, and so they're like, well, surely there are more things Shakespeare signed.

He's like, I'm going to go find it.

He goes to Stratford pon Avon.

Shakespeare's last residence was a place called New Place, and it was demolished by a guy, Sir John Clopton, and so he was like, oh, maybe Sir John Clopton's house they had like taken stuff from Shakespeare's and there's a crate of Shakespeare's stuff.

And so Samuel Ireland goes to Clopton House and he's like, I'm here to see if you have any shakespeare stuff lying around, and the current owners of Clopton House go, oh my god, I can't believe you just came, because it was literally two weeks weeks ago.

I think I was making a bonfire and there were all these old papers and I just assumed no one wanted them, and I just threw them in the fire.

Honey, isn't that right?

And like the husband comes down, he's like, yeah, it was two weeks ago.

We used them to clean the chimney and we use them in the bird cages.

We just didn't know.

And the thing is they were messing with him.

Yeah, well what I thought was gonna happen was they were gonna be like, yeah, we happen to have his old you know, like teacup, do you want to pay Tom dollar for it?

Yeah?

I mean that also does happen.

He goes to and Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife, and Hathaway's her childhood home and they're like that chair right there Shakespeare sat on when he was wooing Anne Hathaway, do you want to buy it?

And yes he did.

Sure.

But at this house, at Cloppden House, when they were like, we burned it all, we didn't know anyone wanted it.

The son William Henry is there and like he kind of realizes they're messing with his dad, and I think he's embarrassed for his dad a little bit.

Yeah, but the dad totally believes it, and it's like, you don't know what you've done, and they're like, whoops.

Yeah, it's like when your parents post misinformation.

He likes deep fakes, and you don't want to be the one to tell them, but you also want someone to tell them.

Yes, And also imagine like your dad is like the person most in the world you want to please and to live up to, and you're like, is my dad embarrassing?

And the dad at this moment, William Henry realizes that all that his dad wants is a Shakespeare signature, and the dad even says, I would give up half of my collection of books over rare books for one Shakespeare's signature, as would I.

So William Henry gets an idea and he thinks, well, I work all day at a legal office surrounded by old books and old deeds constantly.

Some of these deeds are from the fifteen hundreds when Shakespeare was around.

Some of the paper is old.

Maybe I can just see what happens, But he doesn't start with the Shakespeare for Jery.

Hey, you gotta work your way up to it.

The year is seventeen ninety four and he finds in like a little used bookstore, an old book, a two hundred year old prayer book, and it's not in great condition, but it's still old, and it's like preface with a dedication to Queen Elizabeth.

First.

It's it's interesting to find a two hundred year old book, but it's not like incredibly valuable or important.

But William Henry is like, maybe I can, you know, see what I can do, And so he gets some old paper from his office and he writes a fake preface, like a fake letter from the author to Queen Elizabeth the First, as if this author was giving her this copy specifically to be like, oh, and I'm sending you this copy of my book.

Specifically, he just watered down ink to make it look faded, to make it look faded, and because he had spent so long in his job copy out things using what's known as secretary hand, he kind of knows how to do old timey writing.

So he writes an old timey letter from this author to Queen Elizabeth, and before he goes to give it to his dad, he goes to a bookbinder in town.

And this bookbinder, if you're like a lawyer, you would bring like all your deeds there to get them like bound into a big leather volume.

And he goes to this bookbinder who knows him, and he's like, do you think this will fool my dad?

I did this as a prank.

And the bookbinder looks at it and is like, I don't know.

I'm convinced.

And one of the bookbinder's assistants looks at it and he's like, no, no, that ink just looks faded.

And he mixes up uses some like marbling dye and mixes up some ink and gives it to him and is like, use this and hold it over a fire and that'll look old.

That is classic.

I'm doing a report on the Middle Ages.

Let me singe the edges and dye the paper with tea bags, and my teacher will add like half a point a point.

Because I made it look old times exactly what this is.

He pays this anonymous assistant bookbinder a shilling for the vial of new ink, and I'm like, that guy, I want to know his story because he was he had that in his pocket.

Immediately he was like, oh, you need you need fake old.

Ink you're doing.

He rewrites the letter, holds it over the fire like the guy tells him to to make the ink look old, and gives it to his shows it to his dad and it is like, hey, I found this letter tucked in this old book.

Doesn't it look authentic?

And the dad's like, yeah, looks to me.

And from that he's like, great, got my dad hook line and sinker again.

He's trying to like figure out what the line is.

You got to test the waters exactly.

And in another like used curio shop, he finds a small bust of Oliver Cromwell, who's a different person than Thomas Cromwell.

William Henry sees this bust and he's like, I think this is good, but it's done by a nobody.

So my dad, who's so pretentious, won't think it's special or important.

So he Forges a letter basically saying that Cromwell himself had given the bust as a gift to the judge who had presided over Charles the First's execution.

So like these two guys who like hated the king they were, but in real life they were enemies and they hated each other.

Obviously William Henry did not know that.

Also, just going back to the version of history that William Henry is proposing, Yeah, is that like if you like, I'd be like, Dana, thank you so much for cutting off that guy's head.

Here's a tiny version of my head for you to keep.

I would think that that was crazy.

If I don't know someone, I work with someone and I'm going to beep out the celebrities name.

He worked for a celebrities production company.

Please bep out this name.

And a gift that this person gave to him was a tiny bust of his head and he's brought it to the office.

It's incredible, So it happens.

Yeah, literally, a tiny bust of that.

That's sort of the old times version of like giving a signed headshot to like your dry planner, except it's bigger and no one wants it.

Uh, And the dad is like, this seems authentic and thinks that this sculpture is really important and invites over all of his art friends and they all think it's authentic, and they decide that this little sculpture that William Henry knows for a fact was done by a nobody.

They decide, oh, it was definitely sculpted by this guy Abraham Simon, who was like the famous sculptor of the day.

And William Henry is like, these snobs.

They're adding so they're adding more levels to the hoax than even he intended exactly, and they're adding cannon and they're.

Adding cannon, and so to him, he's like, not only can I pull this off, but everyone is a snob and a fake and they believe what they want to believe.

So now he's going to uh up the ante.

He first lays the groundwork, saying telling his dad that he made friends with this gentleman who needed some legal chores done.

That's like step one.

And then a few days later he's like, oh my god, this gentleman invited me to his London home.

And then the next little tidbit of information is like, oh he knows I like rare old objects.

He says, he has this old trunk lying around and sometime I can go through it and see what's in it.

And the dad's like, that's interesting.

So he's laid the foundation.

William Henry sounds like a smart and kind of funny guy, and I don't understand why I didn't have any friends and everybody hated it.

So he tells his dad, I made friends with this gentleman.

Mister h is the only way he'll ever refer to him, because he wants to remain anonymous.

But he has this old oak trunk and you can go Not only can he go through it, he can keep anything he finds.

This would be my dream as a child who was like into weird old stuff.

Yeah, but it's fake.

Meanwhile, his dad's copy of a seventeen ninety Shakespeare book.

You know how sometimes books like important like a consortium of Shakespeare stuff would have like a scan of an important letter or whatever.

Sure it had a print of the recently discovered deed that had Shakespeare's signature, like in the book that was printed.

And so he's like, great, I have Shakespeare's signature.

So he steals the book and practices Shakespeare's signature over and over and over again.

And basically what he does is using old paper from his office and using this vial of ink that he got from the bookbinder.

He almost word for word, but like like copies homework, but you change it just enough so no one knows you copied the homework.

The wording of the old deed that he found from that was authentic and makes it a new deed that, oh we don't know.

Shakespeare had a new deed that was like a transaction between Shakespeare and his friend and fellow actor John Hemming and this guy Michael Fraser and his wife.

Shakespeare and Fraser quote unquote sign this deed, okay, And he signs Shakespeare copying Shakespeare's signature, and Fraser he uses his left hand and that's how he's like, I'll forge the signature.

Is so what does he say that they?

Does it matter what the deed?

No, it's just like as a transfer of property.

But he's keeping it really vague.

I bought some you know, lumber from me, Yeah, for whatever, okay.

And I think it's kind of his mo is to keep these transactions vague because you don't want anyone to be able to call you out on the specifics.

Yeah, but the one hard part of this old forgery is these deeds had seals like wax seals, and you can't like make a new old wax seal.

So he basically just steals an old wax seal from an old legal document from the time.

And since he can't, you can't stick it.

It's not sticky anymore, so he just uses new wax that then he made a little darker and look old with soot, which is real book report stuff.

So he just sticks an old seal onto the document with some like new wax with a little sudden Again.

He's a creative problem solver, Yeah, and I want to be his friend.

And so he had laid the foundation for where he says tells his dad, I was going through that mysterious.

He's done world building.

He's created a narrative.

And he presents it to his dad and says, I found an old Shakespeare signature.

And the thing that kind of breaks my heart is his dad is not as excited as he wants to be.

His dad looks at it and he's like, looks authentic.

And even though the dad had like been like, if I find a Shakespeare signature, half of my rare books anyone could have, And he just tells his son like, in exchange for this, you can have any one of my rare books.

And the Sun is supposed to supposed to get half.

But the Sun even demures and he's like, no, I'm okay actually, and the Dad's like, no, no, I insist, and he like gives him one of his rare books, was the Do you.

Think the dad was sad that he hadn't found it himself?

Maybe?

And I think it's just like the personality of one of those guys, like he's just he's just a bummer.

He brings but the dad wants to authenticate this, and he brings over an expert on wax seals, and this old wax seal expert looks at it and goes like, yep, this seal is from the fifteen hundreds, which it was, even though it was stuck on with new wax, which this guy should have known.

But this old seal expert also looks at it and goes, WHOA, do you know what this seal is?

No?

And they're like no, And William Henry's like, I didn't even see anything.

I didn't even notice it's a thing.

The seal expert goes, it's a thing called a quintaine, which is basically the dummy that knights would practice jousting against, Like if you're a thing of like Game of Thrones or whatever, someone's like practicing a sword against like a dummy.

But that's like what you would what you would practice lancing against.

How is that a seal?

Well, like in the in the that's the design of the seal.

Oh, that's like the picture of the picture of it.

You know, you choose whatever your little thing is, and someone chose that.

And this old seal expert goes because it's Shakespeare is so he's playing three dimensional trucks.

It's what you would shake a spear at.

So it's definitely his seal, and so they get really really excited.

Listen more allure.

This is like this is Swifties reading into everything Taylor wears and being like, it's a pun with seven layers eighty seven.

That's how smart Shakespeare is, seven layers.

The dad is like, shake, he would shake a spear at it, obviously, obviously.

And the dad is like, you've got to go back to this trunk because if there was one Shakespeare deed in there there's more and the sun I kind of think would have been done with one, but gets caught up in it.

I think it feels good that his dad is excited.

His dad's also pressuring him to find more, and I think it is both fun to trick people and also someone who had been called stupid and worthless his whole life.

It's partly like I'm creating a document that you think the greatest playwright in all of history wrote, Get Touched, but also like I'm getting one over on you, so I'm not that stupid after all.

Oh yeah, So he decides that the anonymous mister h who of course wants to remain anonymous because all of this is beneath him, says he can go back to the trunk, and this time William Henry decides that he's going to write as Shakespeare.

I yagatta.

So it's the ultimate test.

So it was a legal deed just with Shakespeare's signature.

But now he's decided he's going to write things as Shakespeare.

And here's the part that I think is very very interesting.

He's going to write as Shakespeare and sort of create a fan fiction version of Shakespeare, that's who he wants him to be.

So in the seventeen nineties, I think people love and worship Shakespeare at point.

Theatrical people are like Shakespeare is the Bard, He's our god, like England's homegrown god.

But there are still things about Shakespeare's life that people found a little unsavory.

The ghost in Hamlet, Shakespeare Hamlet's dad says something about like being in purgatory, an illusion that people are like, oh no, was Shakespeare's secretly Catholic, which in the seventeen nineties would have been like horrific.

Yeah.

And also there's as you know from Shakespeare in Love, Shakespeare was married to a woman named Anne Hathaway, but just left her in Stratford, pon Avon and sort of lived a bachelor's life in London.

He's making out with Gwyneth Paltrow and.

In George and England.

Like the sort of disrespect that Shakespeare treated his wife with was kind of unseemly.

People just didn't like that about him.

You don't want to believe that about Shakespeare.

It sucks when like an author that you love has beliefs or things about their life that don't line up with like a perfect version of how you want them to be.

But that has never happened.

That has not either been since it has not happened to any others.

We've never had to can.

We've never had to deal with that where you like love someone's work but them.

We've never separated the art from the artist, and we never will.

And we never will.

But in George and England, they were kind of dealing with gotcha.

And he takes it upon himself that two of the things that he forges as Shakespeare.

One is a declaration of his Protestant faith, no very handy, and the other is a love poem to his wife, Anne Hathaway.

And one thing that I want to say, I'm going to send you an excerpt from this fake love poem.

I have a feeling it's going to be bad.

Poetry is hard.

One thing that I think is very, very funny, and that people do start making fun of once these forgeries come out, is that he writes old timey Shakespeare like a childwood in that he's adding ease to every word and double continents like he's doing like fake old timey, oldly shoppy.

And to be clear, that is not how people in The Old Times wrote he's doing such an exaggerated version of it that spoiler alert when this is revealed as a hoax.

It just took someone reading it to be like that is actually not etymologically consistent.

But would you like to read the poem that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare quotes wrote to his wife Ben Hathaway.

Yes, and I'm going to read it in like normal words.

Yeah, So just know that there's extra letters in here, but I'm givving them.

Is there in heaven ought more rare than thou, sweet nymph of avon Fair?

Is there on earth a.

Man more true than Willie Shakespeare is to you?

It's like sweet, it's a whole poem.

It's literally, roses are red, violets are blue.

There's no one else on earth more true than me to you, Like it's it's cute.

It's not Shakespeare.

You know, when people are saying that writing is good but not Shakespeare, and they go, well, it's not Shakespeare.

This literally it's not Shakespeare or Shakespeare.

It's not Shakespeare.

And he's also filling in other pieces of Shakespeare's biography that like people didn't know at the time, Like people always kind of wonder how Shakespeare had the money he had, and he dedicated one of his poems to the Earl of Southampton, and so William Henry decides that the best way to just fill that little gap in is write a thank you letter from Shakespeare to the Earl of Southampton, being like, thank you for the money.

He doesn't give a specific number because he knows that, you know, if the evidence that he actually did give him that money came out, that it could be disproven.

And then he also writes a thank you for the thank you from the Earl to Shakespeare, which is addressed Dear William, which is very casual for an earl writing to a commoner, but you know, Shakespeare earned a thank you.

One thing.

A book about all of this, which is very good, is called The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare.

And one quote from that book that I think is very funny is they said, Shakespeare into circle, we're turning out to be more than anyone imagined.

Yeah.

Well, if if.

Your entire idea of stuff from history is thank you notes and thank you gifts, yeah, everyone's got real good manners.

I guess he's also writing the Earl's note just with his left hand.

And again the earl had good handwriting.

Right, And also you're now forging things from a person who presumably we have more stuff from them.

Yeah, there are samples of his handwriting.

William Henry didn't know about that and didn't have access to them, but he he was an earl.

We have handwriting from him.

It was good.

It wasn't your like left handed strue.

Like William Henry is not like a dumb guy.

He's doing this excellent so far hoax, Like a commoner who lived two hundred years ago, like might have left some stuff behind.

We don't know what he looked like, or you know, et cetera, et cetera.

But like an earl presumably has like living descendants who would be like, you know, that doesn't happen.

But it's like one of those things that people assume because Shakespeare had dedicated a poem to this earl that the earl had given him some money.

And this is just confirming like the speculation that historians at the time understood.

But the handwriting is a mess.

He also writes a letter from Queen Elizabeth thanking quote good Master to ours e William for some verses and requesting a command performance.

It's kind of insane that the Queen herself, not like one of her scribes, would be writing this letter.

And it's also kind of insane because this letter was dated in fifteen eighty eight, which was before Shakespeare started writing his own place, So she was just writing to an actor that she liked.

I mean, at this point, I'm starting to think this whole episode is the basis of Shakespeare.

Does Tom Starpard know about this?

Is this what gave him the idea?

Yeah, So he just keeps going.

There's so much forgery happening.

He buys a bunch of antique paper.

He's keeping a supply of that special ink to all locked under the window seat in the lawyer's office.

His kind of brilliant idea, Like he's so clumsy at times, but he's also really smart, Like he decides that the things should be tied with antique thread, like what because they're going to carbon date it.

In seventeen ninety but he and his dad had gone to a speech at the House of Lords and there was like an old tapestry on the wall and he just like pulled an old thread from the tapestry to use it.

And he's trying to keep up the pace of all these forgeries.

So what he does to kind of like fill in when his dad is like impatient for something else is he's like, oh, this book used to be Shakespeare's and like write some marginalia in.

And sometimes he's like, I found the original long hand transcript of the plays, and so he just then copies the plays long hand.

So what's happening now is these forgeries are a hit.

People are so excited that they found this treasure trove of Shakespearean things.

Can I ask, like, what's the like is this being written about.

In the paper?

This is are people coming and looking at it in like a little display likes the what's the goss?

What's the news?

That is exactly what's happening.

Yes, and yes, it's like February seventeen ninety five, that's when reporters starts showing up, like an editor for a newspaper shows up.

He says that that love letter that you said wasn't Shakespeare.

He said quote that it had the utmost delicacy of passion and poetical spirit.

So many people want to come to the Ireland House to see all these artifacts that Samuel eventually has to like restrict visiting hours and eventually makes people buy a ticket.

It's like when you know, the face of Jesus shows up in a.

In a grilled cheese sandwich or whatever.

So we both recently watched that episode of Gally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, there are people who are making fun of this immediately.

It's not it's one of those situations where people love to both people from the past were so dumb.

No, there were absolutely people back then who immediately knew it was a forgery and were making fun of it.

There was like a newspaper thing that someone wrote saying that a magic trunk was also providing a recent discovery of Shakespeare's favorite recipe for goodly plumb cudding, which is like a funny joke.

As we've established, it is the point of view of this podcast that people in the past were very dumb, and people now are also very dumb.

Yeah, people in the past were as dumb and gullible as people today.

Yes, some are, some aren't, but really prominent people do show up and declare them authentic.

One of them is Boswell, James Boswell, who's a famous biographer.

He's the famous biographer one of those Samuel Johnson.

But it's like he's a guy, and who's Samuel Johnson?

He had a famous biography, ran Ja, Well, what did he do to warrant a biography?

He was like a big traveler.

I don't know, I've never read it.

Well, okay, I don't feel so bad not knowing who this famous traveler was.

He was a writer.

He just wrote a bunch of stuff in the seventeen hundreds.

But the poet laureate at the time, Henry James Pie he shows up, and Samuel, the pompous dad who's so proud that he has all these Shakespearean things, makes everyone who shows up sign a certificate of belief because people in the press were being like, this is a forgery, but all these people can't be wrong.

And he also decides a little later that he wants to publish all of these articles and things in a book.

And he also basically makes people anyone who wants to come see them in person has to like pre order, oh sure, which is kind of also a great way to do it.

Meanwhile, the forgeries keep going, he keeps churning them out.

At what point are they just like, bring the whole trunk here, like the idea that like they keep finding one a week.

Yeah, it is a little unbelievable to me.

Really unbelievable.

Part to me that's so funny is that sometimes the fines are so convenient it's hilarious.

Like one of the things that he found is this drawing of Shakespeare that I'm gonna text you and I want you to describe it.

It is what William Henry claimed was a self portrait that Shakespeare had done.

It's like good in a way that a nineteen year old did it.

There's like some shading.

I can't deal with this.

It looks like it was done with markers, which obviously it was not.

It just it looks like a doodle.

It looks like a doodle, and it looks like someone wrote William Shakespeare with their left hand.

Yeah, around it and doesn't it.

And what I also love about this drawing is that Shakespeare's pointing at himself like, yep, it's me, and this is to Samue.

And this is ws behind him because again.

His name is William.

His name is William Shakespeare.

And to Samuel Ireland's credit, when he sees this one, he goes, Nope, Shakespeare didn't do this one.

Maybe it was like fan art.

I don't know, he goes like Shakespeare's godly hand did not draw this.

No, And I think William Henry was a little insulted by that, because then.

There was a note that was like, dear Diary, when I die, I'm gonna leave all my stuff in a trunk, including my self portrait, which is not bad.

Basically it's a oh this letter showed up and it was like Shakespeare writing a letter to an actor friend being like, I mean closing a self portrait, nothing serious, just say quote whimsical conceit just dashed it off.

I know it's not much.

I okay.

And again like mister H, the fictional mister H, yeah, just happens to have not only stuff that Shakespeare would have had, like in his possession, but that his friends would have had.

Yeah, it doesn't mean sent them through the mails and the like it's falling apart.

Occasionally recover it cover that by being like, and I'm copying down the letter here for my record.

Were but also it gets even more convenient that mister H just has it not always in the trunk, because remember how I said that they had discovered that deed to that's the real Shakespeare say yes, like you know, ten ten fifteen years earlier.

At this point, the guy who found that was a family friend.

He like lived nearby, a.

Family friend of the Shakespeare Irelands.

I was a family friend of the Ireland.

His name was Albany Wallace.

And he goes, oh, this is crazy.

I found a real signature from John Hemming, who was a friend of Shakespeare and who, if you recall William Henry, had been forging letters to and from And he goes, well, this is weird.

The signature man, right, yeah, this is really weird.

The signature of this John Hemming does not look at all like the signature of that John Hemming.

And William Henry's like, give me a minute, and he goes to quote unquote mister H to say, mister H, the signatures didn't match.

And according to William Henry, mister H just chuckled and said ha and goes to his desk and pulls out a different signature and goes, well do these match that That one is a signature of tall John Hemming.

The other one was a signature of short John Hemming.

Because you see, there were two John Hemming's were actors working in this time.

Everyone knew that one was at the Globe, one was at the Curtain theater, ha ha ha, and everyone was satisfied.

I guess, yeah, totally.

If you're thinking that these forgeries have gone a little far, yeah, The one to me where I'm like, people had to have realized this isn't real was another like will oh, like a will and Testament that Shakespeare wrote because someone pointed out some like Visitor to the House was like, well, if Shakespeare has any living descendants, wouldn't all this stuff belong to them?

And William Henry was like, oh, that's interesting.

Did Shakespeare have living descendants?

We know?

So he did have kids.

He had two daughters and a son.

The son died, the son died, there's a whole book.

And his daughters did have kids, but it ended right there.

So he had grandchildren, but no further Okay, but you're like, he lived in London having sex with Gwyneth paltrowtz possibly had a child out of wedlock.

Sure, it's also possible we could discover that one of his grandchildren had a kid that we didn't know about.

You know.

It's like it was open enough that there could be the discovery that he did have more descendants.

We have not learned that.

But someone was like, well, wouldn't if we do, they would get the rights to all this stuff, wouldn't they?

And William Henry's like interesting?

Interesting, And he writes a new deed that Shakespeare wrote a will and testament, because remember, if, by the way, all my.

Stiff should go to mister h Well.

Remember how there was an Ireland ancestor who lived in the house that Shakespeare own was just a tenant.

There's no evidence he even met Shakespeare.

He just happened to live in a house that Shakespeare owned.

This new will describes a scenario in which Shakespeare had fallen into the Thames and his good friend, also named William Henry, Ireland, pulled him out of the Thames and saved his life, and as a reward for that, he makes the generous bequest to his good friend, Master William Henry, Ireland, again, an obscure London haberdasher be there we have no evidence ever met Shakespeare, bequeathed him ownership to five of his plays and a gift of ten pounds.

And it specifies that theatrical rights would go to Ireland's son and so on forever.

This is like a bad Doctor who episode written by someone who has never been to England and is like what happens in the past, Shakespeare, what do you do?

Fell in the towns the Thames?

And then you know what a coincidence that he also one of the plays that he bequeathed to this William Henry was king Lear, which had not been written.

You know, I got a pitch is old.

He's got some daughters.

And this is one of those situations where then people fill in the blanks because there are some verses that Shakespeare had dedicated to a w h and people are that it was William Henry, his good friend.

He rescued it from the Thames.

Again, there are people at the time who do realize this is insane, Like there's a joke.

Someone writes that there's a letter is going to appear any day now announcing that Samuel Ireland was Shakespeare's grandson.

Also, again there's so many mistakes that later are so obvious.

Again, king Lear had not been written by the time this deed is bequeathing it.

And also people in the fifteen hundreds did not have middle names.

So the fact that he called him William Henry, it's like that didn't make sense.

But the people who are suspicious all are suspicious of Samuel the Dad because he's the prominent collector, gotcha.

And also not only would his son not be doing this, but like his son is famously adult.

Oh, the the classic.

It's more likely that Shakespeare left all this stuff behind than a slightly stupid person could.

Pull off a lie.

Exactly, A dumb nobody couldn't pull off a lie, which is exactly.

What they said about Shakespeare.

A dumb nobody couldn't have written these plays.

Yeah.

The one time that William Henry did almost get caught, he writes a letter from Shakespeare saying that he received fifty pounds from the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, for a performance from Shakespeare's Troop.

He dated this receipt fifteen ninety, and he goes to give it to his dad, you know, just one of the many weekly Yeah, Shakespeare.

Coming from the giant trunk of artifacts.

But Samuel Ireland looks at this and goes, well, this is weird because the Earl of Leicester famously died after leading troops after the Spanish Armada, which happened in fifteen eighty eight, So why would Shakespeare have been getting money from him two years after he died?

And the Sun panics and Samuel.

This is why I think also people to this day kind of think Samuel was complicit in this forgery, even though I don't know.

Take take for this what you will.

The Dad is like, no, no, there must have been a mistake somewhere.

Someone probably copied out this receipt.

Maybe this one was written by someone else.

Maybe Shakespeare got the date wrong or was mixed up.

And the Sun is like, should we burn this because it's not it doesn't really make sense, And the Dad is like, no, no, it has Shakespeare's signature on it.

We don't want to burn it.

He just rips off the date and keeps it among the collection.

Well, that's not how you're supposed to do historical preservation.

No.

It's one of those things where I think Samuel wanted to believe this so badly, and I think he genuinely did in the heart of his hearts, that he was willing to sort of dodge around anything that wasn't that was evidence.

To the contrary, the really sad part of all of this, the one that really breaks my is because obviously, at a certain point, Samuel Ireland is writing to this mysterious mister H to be like, hey, can I get a look at you, chunk?

Also, can I meet you?

Like?

Can I publish these?

Like we need to talk dude?

See okay, But this is also where I get to like, there's a certain amount of disbelieving you can do about the life of Shakespeare or someone you're never gonna meet.

Yeah, you're also fooling yourself about what your son is up to in a way that's really easy to check.

Yeah, and you're not checking.

He's not checking.

But mister H, of course is writing back.

Well, no one could ever.

I mean, you know, you couldn't write a letter from someone who didn't write the letter.

Yeah, you couldn't know.

That would mean you're a forger.

But the really sad part is that like mister H and Samuel the Dad start having this correspondence, and like mister H will be writing these things.

It's like, Hey, I hear you've been looking askant at your son wearing his hair long.

I assure you that's the fashion these days.

Boys are wearing their hair long and unpowdered, and quote, you cannot be an enemy to the manner in which our Willie wore his hair.

And then he also is writing these things, being like, your son is such a good poet, like he showed me some of his poems, and this is the letter that quote mister H wrote to the dad.

He goes, He tells me he is in general looked upon as a young man that scarcely knows how to write a good letter.

I have now before me part of a play written by your son, which for style and greatness of thought is equal to anyone of Shakespeare's.

And so he's just writing these things to his dad to be like your son is quite brilliant, I might say.

And the dad is like, uh, I never thought that, but thank you.

Isn't that sad?

It is?

Yeah, but also like delusional, delusional.

But at this point William Henry, who is nineteen, you know, he's a teenager, still decides it's like all going to his head.

He's fooling all these people.

Yes, like some people are making fun of it, but like his dad fully believes it, and all these prominent people believe it.

I think he kind of starts to belie even himself and announces to his dad, I found new plays that Shakespeare.

See.

This is the money.

This is the money you find because ask people what they know about Shakespeare.

They're not talking letters, deeds or even sonnets playing.

And so he says that a new play he wrote Shakespeare wrote is called Vortigan and Rowena, and it's about a fifth century English warlord turned king.

And you know, to his credit, he basically Shakespeare pulled all of his history plays from this.

You know, Holland said chronicles.

So that's where William Henry got this story.

And it's like King Lear meets Macbeth, Like he's not reinventing the wheel, but he does write this play.

Is it similar to the true crime book that you mentioned earlier?

Well, so this is the thing that I think is important about the book.

Okay, a little easter egg.

It's not really an easter egg.

It's more just like a thing that I think helps you understand why William Henry was doing this.

In that book, the True Crime Book, there was like a long digression about another like true quote unquote crime thing that had happened recently at that time, which was a boy named Thomas Chatterley.

And Thomas Chatterley was the seventeen year old boy who claimed that he found all these poems from like an old monk, like a fifth century monk or whatever, and maybe not fifth century, but some old monk.

And people were all excited about these poems.

But then when they found out that he was a nobody, they didn't want to publish them.

And of course he had written the poems, he was just claiming they were written by an old monk.

And then when he tried to set and everyone loved the poems when they thought they were by an old bunk.

And then when he tried to set off on his own to make it as a writer, he failed and he killed himself.

He committed suicide.

And it's a sad thing that happened.

Thomas Chatterley was a real person.

He died at seventeen, and he sort of it became like a mythic figure to the Romantics, like to Keats and Shell, like Thomas Chatterley like.

He was killed by the snobbery of the literary establishment, and the idea was that people only cared about his writing because he pretended it was old and written by someone else.

I mean, this is like a very real phenomenon.

Famous authors have like tried putting their work out there without their name on it.

Yeah, and it never goes anywhere.

And then suddenly when it's oh, when we know that it's a by so and so, suddenly it has all this literary merit and it can get published in New Yorker and.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I think that William Henry, I was gonna say, to his credit, I don't think it's to his credit, began like fancying himself a poet because he had written these love poems from Shakespeare to Anne Hathaway that experts are like, it's by Shakespeare, and he's like, maybe I'm a really good poet.

And I think what he thought is that this play would go on.

Eventually it would be outed as a forgery, but that it would be so good that people would still be excited and would still like want him to be a poet, and that he was just sort of launching his own career because forgery at that time was kind of a thing that was happening.

People were aware of Thomas Chatterley as this tragic figure, and so I think that's how he thought of himself, and so he writes Vordigan and Rowena a whole play.

And to make it really hard on himself, he's giving pages to his dad as he goes, so he can't even like go back and read pages.

That seems like a tactical error, tactical err But he was impatient.

His dad was impatient.

And it's a long play.

If this was by Shakespeare would have been one of Shakespeare's longest plays.

Has anyone ever done it?

Well?

Funny?

You still ask y they do it?

Oh?

Okay?

The drury Lane Theater like one of the main theaters in London.

There's a bidding war to the two main theaters are like, we want to do the lost Shakespeare play and they bid on it, and the drury Lane Theater is like, we want to do it and put it on and they buy it and they get it, and uh, Sheridan, the guy who like manages and runs the house, is like, oh, it's not very good, and so they basically hire a ghostwriter to like make it a little better.

Fair enough, you know, far be it from me to critique the greatest writer who ever lived.

But I saw Pygmalion not Pygmalion.

What am I thinking of Cymbeline?

Yeah, it's a Shakespeare.

And as I said, as we said at a Couples, as we said before about King Lear, like people were doing rewrites to Shakespeare back then, like it wasn't considered crazy.

So even the people who did believe that this was by Shakespeare was like, it was an early work and it's not great.

So let's, you know, file the edges.

The main actor, the main Shakespearean actor of the theater is named John Philip Kemble, and he has kind of thought this was a scam the whole time, and he is not excited to be doing this play.

He thinks it's all bullshit.

Uh, he did have integrity.

He doesn't think the play is very good, but they signed this contract.

They're putting it on.

Meanwhile, William Henry is getting excited and he decides that he's going to write another play, oh dear, And he's writing plays that like plausibly could have like there are lost Shakespeare plays and so he's writing plays that plausibly Shakespeare could have written.

And he writes Henry the second quote unquote by.

Shakespeare, or isn't it loves labors found is like the one, Oh is it because isn't it?

Oh, there was loves Labor's Loss and loves Labor.

It is supposed to be like somewhere out there one day there was loves Labor's found.

Yeah, and it makes sense that there would be a you know, Henry the second he wrote a bunch of histories, and William Henry's like, shoot, this one's better.

I should have started with this one.

But it's too late for that.

Because the Jury Lane is putting on Vordigan and Rowena even though it's not very good.

I think they even know it's not very good, but they're like, look, it's going to be a scandal either way.

All press is good press.

They don't the Jury Lane theater does not say on the advertising that this is by Shakespeare.

Well, that's error numbers one through No, it's smart.

They know that they can't like legally say it's by Shakespeare, so we don't know so many tickets.

Then no, the opposite, they sell out because it's a known scandal at the time, Like the fact that this is a lost Shakespeare play that they're putting on is known at the time, and it sells out.

It is the first time Jerry Lane.

The theater was remodeled with like more than three thousand seats recently, and it was the first time it's sold out.

Because there are these factions, the people who believe and if people don't believe, and it's like, come see for yourself.

Is it real?

Is it not real?

Kemball, the main actor who's also a part owner of the theater, schedules the premiere for April first, but this is my kind of guy.

But Samuel is so mad that he makes them move it to April second.

Sarah Siddons, who is like the main Shakespearean actress.

Maybe you've heard of her, Sarah Sindon.

No, but we are post men playing women.

Yes, okay, women are women.

Women are playing women again.

Shakespeare in Love is a historical document and you can learn about Elizabethan culture through it.

You can at this point in the seventeen nineties, women play women.

The most famous, one of the most famous actresses is Sarah Siddon.

She drops out before opening night.

She's also Kimball's sister.

They're like a brother's sister.

And she says she's ill, which maybe she is, but also maybe just like didn't want to get involved with this.

But the other most famous Shakespearean lady, Dorothea Jordan, who was the mistress of the King's son, one of the king's many sons.

Like she was like a really prominent lady, like a really famous actress.

She's in it, okay, And the play is scheduled to go off.

But before the play happens there there was one fatal error that Samuel made.

Samuel had been inviting people into his house to look at these old documents, and you know, in context with him like standing over your shoulder and like by candlelight, like you're like, oh, these look old.

The paper looks old.

I guess it's real.

He decides, as I alluded to earlier, that he's going to publish all of these findings in a book.

And he does, and he publishes them Christmas Eve, seventeen ninety five.

It sells really well.

But the problem is now people.

Can sit at home and look at it and be like this is fake.

Now that people look at it, they're like, this looks dumb as well.

And so remember the show was premiering April first, the book publishes Christmas, okay, and like, so that's the period where the actors like, this is bullshit, because you're going to dinner with all these people, and people are like, no, these this is fake, And so I think the actors are embarrassed.

And two days before the play is scheduled to premiere, Malone, Edmund Malone, who's the big like Shakespearean scholar of the era, drops what they thought was going to be a pamphlet to like as a little takedown, he drops a four hundred and twenty four page hardcover book like he brought receipts like.

It has tons of footnotes of why this is faith.

This is the they're not like us, This is what they're not like us.

It is this era, absolutely relentless.

What he gets wrong, though, is he thinks that there's too much for a single person to have done.

And he also thinks that Samuel and his dumb idiot son didn't do it.

He thinks they were duped by this mysterious mister h But he goes through like the spelling, the timing, the grammar like he's a Shakespearean expert and knows that these are faith.

But the book is so long and boring that it reads it it's actually not quite the body blow you would think it is.

So that's just sort of a letter.

And it's also he's really condescending, Like people don't like this guy, so there are still loyalists who are like, he's just being a snob.

So the play premieres with these two rival factions who are just sort of at each other's streat It's like it's a real Shakespeare, it's a forgery.

There should be a movie.

Yeah, it's good.

Right, it's a rowdy crowd.

It's mostly men, which I just think is important for the context of why there's so many like cat calls.

The show is a disaster.

People are constantly interrupting, and also Kemball, the main actor who wanted to schedule for April Fool's Day, sort of sabotages it.

He's the main actor, but he also is a part owner of the theater.

He cast it.

He casts like comic actors in small roles, even though it's a tragedy, makes people laugh.

And then sometime towards the end of the play, there's a line where he goes and when this solemn mockery is ended, and everyone cracks up, and then he repeats the line like really hamming it up.

And then there are fights that are happening between the factions in the audience, and after the show, there's so much like chaos and heckling and cat calling that Kemball is only able to restore calm when he says, we're not going to do the show anymore.

It was one night only, not doing it anymore.

So now that show's over, William Henry I think kind of realizes like it's the end of the line.

Yeah, And he I think also like wanted people to believe it was him and it was real, But now that this book came out, he's like, no one's going to really believe.

This, right, because then you don't get you don't get the credit for the discovery, and you also don't get the credit for the hoax because everyone thinks he's just too stupid.

And also his dad is being like mocked in the newspapers.

There's another play that comes out, like making fun of a pretentious collector who's like his dad.

It's the type of thing I would do.

Yeah, But he's like embarrassed, and so he confesses to his sisters.

He tells his sisters, I did all of these, and the sisters go to the dad, and the Dad's like, he's lying to you.

He's trying to take the glory of Shakespeare's words, like, not only is he lying, he's being arrogant and deceitful that he would like even lie and say he did these shakespeare things, like could you imagine the arrogance of saying he wrote a thing that Shakespeare wrote a horrible play that everybody hated.

So finally he just decides that he needs to confess everything.

He goes to that family friend, Albany Wallace, the one who discovered your actual deed and the signature, and is like, I'm just going to tell you everything, And eventually he's able to convince him that he did fortune by like showing him that he can ford Shakespeare's signature, and Wallace basically tells him like keep your mouth, just like let it die down.

So by May seventeen ninety six, William Henry is like basically having a nervous breakdown.

He leaves his clerkship.

He says he's getting married to a rich young woman, but when he gives the name, that woman doesn't exist.

And then he's like, oh, I meant this other woman, but like that woman doesn't exist either.

His dad and Missus Freeman are getting sort of fed up by his chaotic whatever, and they go to the country and William Henry tries to confess to his dad in writing, and his dad rejects, basically rejects the confession and is like, not only do I not believe you, but if you did this, keep your mouth shut, He goes your character.

If you insist on this will be blasted because basically William Henry is saying, I want to confess, and he wants to absolve his dad, but he also kind of wants to make a profit, like he's just like broken lost.

At this point, he does get married right before he turns twenty one, to this random woman named Alice Crudge, which is classic random woman name at.

Is roll Doll levels of random woman name.

Basically, no one knew this woman.

We only people were like, WHOA, who's they like see him walking with her in the park like a family friend.

It was like, WHOA, who's this?

You got married?

Like he's real, like shave his head, blea chip blonde, going through a crisis, and he doesn't really have any money.

He hasn't talked to his dad in months.

He goes to Wallace, this like trusted family friend, and is like, look, can you mediate between me and my dad.

I'm going to publish a confession pamphlet because I want to clear my dad's name, and also I want to make a little money off the people will buy this pamphlet.

And so Wallace is like, okay, I'll help you mediate, brings the dad in and shows him pamphlet and like, the dad who's so mean to a son is like, I don't even think you could have written this.

Who wrote this pamphlet for you?

He publishes his account.

It sells well, even though some people don't believe it.

Some people just think it's all fiction, that it was his dad who was the forger all along, or that it was this mysterious mister h.

Is there anyone left who's like, no, it's Shakespeare.

They're just being weird about it.

Yes, the dad, I mean, the dad is still like it's still Shakespeare.

But no, like other people not really no, because he confess you could.

I guess people who like aren't paying attention to the news.

Sure, I'm sure people who like heard about it and then stopped caring about it are like, oh, they found some Shakespeare stuff, and I'm like, never looked into that again, really heartbreakingly.

At the end of his confession, he's like, and if I attempt another play, I hope the public can put its prejudices aside and like, you know, judge it with an open heart.

And it's like, Babe, at this point, people aren't gonna take you seriously.

You're not getting another job.

You're not getting another job.

But you know he's trying, and he actually he makes a decent living as a writer for the rest of his life, using a lot of pseudonyms.

Sure, he sort of writes Gothic novels, just sort of like generic, forgettable Gothic novels, and some histories and biographies another unproduced play.

Eventually, to make money, he starts selling like quote unquote authentic copies of the forgeries because he was notorious for these forgeries.

He had confessed, and so people want, like, oh, can you write me like the Shakespeare letter today out the way you wrote, So he starts selling those to make money.

Samuel his dad, was utterly humiliated, tries to publish his own defense still claims the papers are real, goes with the short and tall John Hemmings defense.

But at that point people have stopped engaging.

Yeah, it's like no one even writes back to like be like no, no, they're they're fake, right, No one engages the war.

It's like a one sided Twitter war at this point.

And Samuel dies without ever reconciling with his son, Oh Christ He and William Henry had like kept writing to his dad like all these sad things.

He like wrote to his dad once really angrily, demanding to know who his real parents were.

Yeah, it's it's really sad.

The ending.

In an unpublished memoir, William Henry went a little atonement and like wrote like a fictional version of like going to see his dad at his bedside as he was dying, and like he counts like and his dad had tears in his eyes of happiness and said that like you were the only joy in my life.

But like there's no evidence that he ever actually saw his dad again.

It's like kind of a really sad scene.

The obituaries of Samuel are merciless.

All of his collectibles that he had amassed, like they sell them after he died, but they are all kind of worthless because no one he's like now famous as a forger.

Yeah, and so all of his collectibles are worthless, basically the only one who the only collectibles he had that sell kind of well are the original forgeries, and they self were like what seventeen thousand dollars would be today.

After Missus Freeman, his like housekeeper slash wife wife died, one of the daughters, Jane Ireland, had all of the folios of all these forgeries burned, like the book, the copies of the book that the dad published.

She burns all them because she's like, I'm just done with this.

William Henry's wife dies, he remarries to make more money.

He writes like a longer confession, and in that version he ages himself down to seventeen, I think, because he thinks it's a little more winning if he did it younger.

Yeah, it's more well a, it's more impressive and be it's more like forgivable.

Yeah.

And so he he writes this confession.

It's sort of self aggrandizing.

It's not very apologetic.

He's like pretty proud of himself.

He's pretty proud that he like fooled these people into thinking he was Shakespeare.

Well, and so he says he was seventeen, which was also the age that Thomas Chatterton was when he committed suicide.

The sort of like a romantic figure, but he was nineteen.

Throughout all this he was older and again like working, he had a job, he was like an adult.

But yeah, he he's sort of caught between like apologetic and he knows it ended badly, but he's also kind of proud and I think for the first time in his life during all this he felt important.

It's also like, I don't know how how apologetic he really needs to be.

If like it was a mostly victimless crime that didn't last very long, you know, Like like I don't if you do a hoax that ends up that gets a bunch of people sick or something, I'm like, you need to fucking apologize.

But if you do like a literary hoax that lasts don't know, two years, a year and a half, a year and a half, I'll take one apology.

I don't need more than that.

Yeah, I don't like it.

Again, it's not like he was like forging a deed to a house and he's like, and now I live in the He like he didn't really profit.

I guess his dad did.

They didn't.

He didn't make a ton of money.

Yeah.

He's just such an interesting contradictory figure because like him writing these Shakespearean artifacts is imbuing like a sense of importance to the literary establishment, and so he like is worshipful of the literary establishment but also really resentful of it because he's like, they're all frauds and they're only thinking this poetry is good because Shakespeare wrote it, but also it is good because I wrote it.

Maybe I'm another Shakespeare.

And I do think he as he was writing some of these plays, was like, hey, Shakespeare was a glove maker's son.

He was a nobody, and he had the music.

Maybe I am another Shakespeare.

And it's like he also was desperate for his father's approval and like wanted his father to love him so badly, but also was like making his father look like a fool.

It's a real like Oedipole situation of like you want your dad to love you, but you also want to one up him.

Well, it's also like, what does my dad love Shakespeare?

So what am I going to do?

Be Shakespeare?

Yeah, I'm gonna sit in my room and pretend to be Shakespeare.

So That's the story of William Henry Ireland, who wrote and produced in an unseen Shakespeare play seen by one crowd, one crowd, one time, the second one Henry the second, which he thought was pretty good.

The other theater was going to put it on, but then once everyone was like these are these are not real, they were like, nope, we're not doing this.

See.

I think like I would totally go to like a night of scenes from forged plays.

It's kind of interesting.

They're not very good.

Yeah, just just snippets.

I don't want to watch the whole two hour thing.

You want like a taste a few scenes.

Yeah.

I admire his guts.

He took it so much further than I think any rational person would have.

Definitely not normal.

I think my favorite fact is that Shakespeare himself was rescued from the Thames by his ancestor and he bequeathed all of his plays, some of his to him.

That's some real fan fiction shit.

That's like, let me tell you about the time I met Harry Styles and he told me I was pretty it is.

He was writing the version of Shakespeare that people wanted to believe in, which is I think why they believed in this hook so much.

We don't know a lot about Shakespeare's life, but I do think people have an idea of who Shakespeare is in their head, of who you want Shakespeare to be, because when you love someone's work, you want them to be a certain way.

But we don't know who Shakespeare was.

Kind of the evidence is that he was sort of a shitty person.

He once sued a neighbor over like a really small amount of money, and he left his wife in his will his second best bed.

And that doesn't take away from if you like his plays.

But William henry knew that he was playing into a version of Shakespeare that people wanted to believe in, and England had cast Shakespeare as their hero, and so it also felt very anticlimactic in the seventeen nineties that they just didn't have any physical things of his.

Yeah, Lizzie, this episode was very, very long.

But where can the good people find you?

We plug Yes, so.

You can email us and pretend to be Shakespeare and send us a poorly worded email.

At Hoaxthpodcast at gmail dot com.

Indeed, and we'll you know, we're going to get our Instagram up and running.

We'll post some of the the self portrait of Shakespeare that really delighted.

Me and made me laugh.

Check it out there.

You can follow me at Dana Schwartz with three z's at the end, and our Instagram, which is linked in the bio.

Thank you so much for listening.

Please hoax responsibly.

Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Our hosts are Dana Schwortz and Lizzie Logan.

Our executive producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima lk Ali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk.

Our theme music was composed by Laine Montgomery.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening.