Michael Keevak, National Taiwan University

In 1795 a young man named William Henry Ireland, then about eighteen years of age, fabricated a series of Shakespearean forgeries that, for the space of few months at least, were enthusiastically believed by both the educated English public and some of the leading scholars and critics of the day. By the end of his meteoric career, Ireland's portfolio of impostures included legal deeds, promissory notes, receipts, letters both to and from Shakespeare, a portrait sketch, and even a "lost" tragedy, Vortigern, written in the bard's own hand. After his exposure Ireland tried to defend his actions first in a pamphlet, and then in an elaborated and rather "improved" version in his Confessions, and the story was reiterated many times until his death thirty years later.¹ In each instance we are presented with a teenager driven mainly by a desire to please his unresponsive...