Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, comprising
contributions alike to the aesthetic, textual, historical, and
biographical study of Shakespeare, are noticed above (see pp. 333-4,
346). To the critical studies, on which comment has already been made
(see p. 333)--viz. Coleridge's 'Notes and Lectures,' 1883, Hazlitt's
'Characters of Shakespeare's Plays,' 1817, Professor Dowden's 'Shakspere:
his Mind and Art,' 1875, and Mr. A. C. Swinburne's 'A Study of
Shakespeare,' 1879--there may be added the essays on Shakespeare's
heroines respectively by Mrs. Jameson in 1833 and Lady Martin in 1885;
Dr. Ward's 'English Dramatic Literature' (1875, new edit. 1898); Richard
G. Moulton's 'Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist' (1885); 'Shakespeare
Studies' by Thomas Spencer Baynes (1893); F. S. Boas's 'Shakspere and his
Predecessors', (1895), and Georg Brandes's 'William Shakespeare'--an
elaborately critical but somewhat fanciful study--in Danish (Copenhagen,
1895, 8vo), in German (Leipzig, 1895), and in English (London, 1898, 2
vols. 8vo).

Shakespearean forgeries.

The intense interest which Shakespeare's life and work have long
universally excited has tempted unprincipled or sportively mischievous
writers from time to time to deceive the public by the forgery of
documents purporting to supply new information. The forgers were
especially active at the end of last century and during the middle years
of the present century, and their frauds have caused students so much
perplexity that it may be useful to warn them against those Shakespearean
forgeries which have obtained the widest currency.

John Jordan, 1746-1809.

The earliest forger to obtain notoriety was John Jordan (1746-1809), a
resident at Stratford-on-Avon, whose most important achievement was the
forgery of the will of Shakespeare's father; but many other papers in
Jordan's 'Original Collections on Shakespeare and Stratford-on-Avon'
(1780), and 'Original Memoirs and Historical Accounts of the Families of
Shakespeare and Hart,' are open to the gravest suspicion. {366a}

The Ireland forgeries, 1796.

The best known Shakespearean forger of the eighteenth century was William
Henry Ireland (1777-1835), a barrister's clerk, who, with the aid of his
father, Samuel Ireland (1740?-1800), an author and engraver of some
repute, produced in 1796 a volume of forged papers claiming to relate to
Shakespeare's career. The title ran: 'Miscellaneous Papers and Legal
Instruments