It is one of the ironies of literary history that John Payne Collier should be remembered not as a preeminent nineteenth-century man of letters, which he certainly was, but as a forger, which he probably was not. In 1859, at age seventy, Collier was an esteemed scholar, editor, and literary commentator: over a period of forty years he had established himself as the most redoubtable authority on early English drama; his History of English Dramatic Poetry (1831) was a landmark in literary historiography; a score of books and articles based on his discoveries of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century documents had established him as the most successful of investigative scholars; and, most significant of all, his edition of The Works of William Shakespeare (1842-1844), a work of conservative scholarship, had been the standard text for nearly a decade against formidable competition.

With such a history of achievement, Collier's reputation should have been...