logue, and Mrs. Jordan spoke it. Three hundred pounds were given by the managers for the right of representation. But Malone’s book came out at the moment, and being likely to mar its success, Ireland issued a hand-bill attacking his opponent, and bespeaking the candour of a British audience.[1] Assailed at length by general discredit from the researches of the Critic as well as public taste, persistence in the fraud ceased. Its perpetrator, young Ireland, gave the story of forgery in detail, confessing all the fabrications to be his own, and begun at the age of nineteen.
It is often amusing to see how little grateful are dupes to those who undeceive them. So it was with these papers. When critical proof and open confession of the forger no longer left a peg to hang a doubt upon, pamphlets came forth little complimentary to the detector of the fraud. Chalmers favoured the public with an Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers. And Caldecott, under the name of Samuel Ireland, father of the perpetrator of the offence, with An Investigation of Mr. Malone’s claims to the character of a Scholar or Critic; being an Examination of his Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Shakspeare MSS. Two or three others had
- ↑ “Vortigern. A malevolent and impotent attack on the Shakspeare MSS. having appeared on the eve of the representation of the play of Vortigern, evidently intended to injure the interest of the proprietor of the MSS., Mr. Ireland feels it impossible within the short space of time that intervenes between the publishing and the representation to produce an answer to the most unfounded and illiberal assertions in Mr. Malone’s Inquiry. He is therefore induced to request that the play of Vortigern may be heard with that candour that has ever distinguished a British audience.”
