WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 — Shakespearean fraud can be good material for comedy, and "Fakes, Forgeries and Facsimiles," an exhibition that opens on Wednesday at the Folger Shakespeare Library here, shows it. A letter once said to be from Queen Elizabeth begins: "Wee didde receive youre prettye Verses goode Masterre William through the hands of oure Lorde Chamberlayne ande wee doe complemente thee onne theyre greate excellence." Sent to "Globe bye Thames," it orders the playwright "withe thye beste Actorres" to "come toe usse bye Tuesdaye nexte" in "Hamptowne," where she is expecting to be visited by "the lorde Leicesterre." There was just one catch, an exhibit label points out: Leicester died before the Globe was built. But that was too subtle a point to stop William Henry Ireland, who was 17 in 1794, the year he "discovered" many Shakespeare manuscripts. To great public acclaim his father, Samuel Ireland, a Shakespeare idolator, eagerly published all of them he could. How had manuscripts like a love letter Shakespeare wrote to Anne Hathaway, with a lock of his hair attached, come into William Henry's possession? As he explained, they were given to him by a Mr. H., who would allow publication but demanded anonymity. And what's more, he said, they were an inheritance. You see, it was like this: Shakespeare was out drowning one day, and an ancestor, named of course William Henrye Irelande — well, let Shakespeare tell it — "Savedde mye life whenne onne Thames." Shakespeare expressed heartfelt gratitude: In life wee wille live togetherre Deathe shalle forre a lytelle part usse butte Shakspeares Soule restlesse inne the grave shalle uppe Agayne and meette his freynde hys IRELANDE Inne the Bleste Courte of Heavenne. Then in 1796 the play "Vortigern," from the "Shakespeare manuscript" newly discovered by the young forger, was produced in London. It was a bomb, the game was up, and William Henry confessed. But the public had almost as much enthusiasm for forgeries it knew were forgeries as it had for forgeries it thought were genuine. There was still a bright future for a 19-year-old (though some suggest he lied about his age) who could sign Shakespeare's name as well as Shakespeare could — and had done so in scores of books called the Shakespeare Library.

Forgery by William Henry Ireland: Shakespeare love letter to Anne Hathaway with a lock of his hair. A bookplate on a 1795-96 edition of Shakespeare's works sold to Henry C. Folger as a possession of President John Adams.

Another Shakespeare Library, the Folger, is not shy about discussing the deals in which Henry C. Folger, the library's founder, was taken.

There is a "Taming of the Shrew" drawing that an art dealer, John Anderson Jr., sold Folger in 1927 along with 35 others, under the pretense that they were by the 19th-century painter J. M. W. Turner. As Anderson apparently had more of these drawings, he went on to promote them, saying that such Turner drawings were in "the matchless collection of Shakespeareana belonging to Mr. Henry C. Folger."

A "Richard III" quarto with five William Penn signatures was sold to Folger by a book dealer who believed it had been owned by the William Penn who was the father of Pennsylvania's founder. (Not.)

An edition of Shakespeare's works whose bookplates say it was from "John Adams Library" was bought with the bookseller's assurance that the former president had owned it. But someone forgot to scratch out the apostrophe on one bookplate, showing that that library was plain old John Adam's.

A guessing game lets visitors try to distinguish real from fake. Which actor's picture is an original drawing and which is an inked-over photograph, the one of David Garrick or the one of Junius Brutus Booth as Hamlet? And it is hard to tell a 1555 original from an 1800's facsimile in facing pages of "The fardle of facions conteining the aunciente maners, customes, and lawes, of the peoples enhabiting the two partes of the earth, called Affrike and Asie" by Johannes Boemus.

Fakes, too, are of two parts. While some are created to deceive, beguile and cheat, others are acknowledged by sellers and add value to books.

Books several hundred years old are often missing pages. Good facsimiles let libraries complete their books, as the Folger repeatedly shows. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" (1477), one of the first books printed in England, is shown in a copy completed with 16 facsimile leaves, while a copy of "Henry V" from 1600 is mostly facsimiles and has only a few original pages.

Books can also be completed with pages from other original copies. Copies of the First Folio (1623), the first collected edition of Shakespeare's works, that were completed this way are on display. Two copies of the book displayed side by side show marginalia written by the same hand, leading to the conclusion that the same copy of the First Folio was used to complete both of them.

In the age of the fax machine, viewers of the show get a fresh appreciation for the word facsimile. A facsimile could be, for instance, a book of autograph manuscripts like "The Autographic Mirror" (1864), containing a photolithographic reproduction of a letter from Elizabeth I to James VI of Scotland, later James I of England. Or a 1967 photographic reproduction of "Astronomicum Caesareum" (1540), containing "volvelles," paper disks that rotate to show astronomical changes, like star positions or when the Moon's light side or dark side will be visible.

"Fakes, Forgeries and Facsimiles," which runs through Jan. 3, also has its dark side. Another 19th-century forger was John Payne Collier, but unlike Ireland, he never confessed, even though he was exposed long before he died at 94 in 1883. Collier was a renowned scholar who edited the works of Shakespeare and had a huge influence on Shakespeareans' thinking.

"He forged letters and other documents, and inserted forged verses, inscriptions, lists and autographs in genuine 16th- and 17th-century manuscripts and printed books," an exhibit label notes.

The Collier forgeries discussed in the Folger exhibition include forged corrections to a copy of Shakespeare's Second Folio (1632) and records for the Blackfriars Theater, where Shakespeare's company performed.

"The full extent of his forgeries is unknown — the authenticity of many books and manuscripts owned or studied by Collier has been permanently compromised as a result of his known deceptions," the label says.

What may become the most controversial exhibit in the show is a portrait bought in 1931 by Folger's widow, Emily. The Folger book "Infinite Variety" (2002) says she probably thought it was a portrait of Shakespeare. It is known as the Ashbourne, and it has had a long and complicated restoration by the Folger over the last several decades. Alongside the portrait the results a full-size radiograph made last year by the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa shows what is now beneath the surface, and the institute's report is on display.

Also included with this exhibit is an article published in Scientific American in 1940 that, one way or another, changed minds about the Ashbourne forever. Using X-rays, Charles W. Barrell, a photo expert, found images under the surface paint that no one knew were there and, based on his findings, determined that the figure in the portrait was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who was then and is still the most popular challenger for the authorship of the Shakespeare canon. An exhibit label says this article is "now discredited."

Since 1979 the Folger has identified the subject of the portrait as Hugh Hamersley (1565-1636), best remembered as a mayor of London.

Not included in the Folger show is a series of articles by the researcher Barbara Burris, published in the last two years by the Oxfordian newsletter Shakespeare Matters, that criticize the Folger's restoration work and reassert the Oxford case for the Ashbourne.

This dispute might also make good material for comedy — in another generation or two.

The New York Times
Septiembre - 2003