Despite the recent rash of literary reworkings of William Shakespeare’s themes, you would think that the legendary playwright would almost instantly have become an icon not to be directly trifled with. For what mortal human could have the hubris to seek to match wits with the Bard of Avon? You might reasonably imagine that to be the case; but, if so, you would be wrong.
One of the most mysterious things about Shakespeare—a man of words, after all—is the paucity of handwritten words he left behind, in an age when people necessarily wrote by hand. His plays were all posthumously published from secondary sources, and there is little physical evidence that he corresponded with anyone. The few examples of his signature appear on legal papers. Rarely since Homer has anyone who bequeathed posterity such a gift of words left so little actual documentary evidence of his own daily existence. And of course, anytime a vacuum of any kind exists, you can be assured that someone will emerge to fill it.
Born in 1775, William Henry Ireland was an unhappy child, frequently beaten at school for a lack of attention to his teachers. At home he was no better appreciated. His unmarried and distant mother posed as a household maid to his father, Samuel, a wealthy author of widely read illustrated travel books; given this unusual domestic arrangement, perhaps it is unsurprising that Samuel was hardly nurturing. One thing his father did offer, however, was a house filled with curiosities of all kinds, and above all an enthusiasm for everything Shakespearean. “To possess a single vestige of the poet’s handwriting,” Samuel told his son, “would be esteemed a gem beyond all price.”