The Forgers Hall of Fame: A Brief History of Literary Fakes and Frauds

Imagine waking up one morning and deciding to become William Shakespeare. You have fantasized about it for years and now you’re taking the fateful step. Overcome by a heady mixture of zeal, naivete, and hubris, you’re freed from feelings of shame or guilt. Although you live in the late eighteenth rather than the early seventeenth century, time won’t be an impediment for you because you’re gifted, studious, and even visionary in a deranged sort of way. Your father is a renowned collector of the original Shakespeare’s works, an authority in the field, so this transition is in your blood. Most importantly, when you present him with your handiwork he will finally come to love you.

You acquire some period paper, mix the correct tone of iron gall ink, sharpen your quill. Then, in secret, you write a love letter to your wife “Anne Hatherrewaye” and attach to it a lock of his—well, your—hair bound elegantly with pink and white silk thread you find in your mother’s sewing basket. Next, you scribe some hitherto unknown poems for Anne and, emboldened, fabricate passages of the original manuscripts of Hamlet and King Lear . You produce missives to Queen Elizabeth I. Careful not to create anachronisms, you autograph and annotate the margins of books printed before the other Shakespeare’s death in 1616.

Out of fear that one of the Elizabethan playwright’s legitimate descendants might step forward to lay claim to the growing sheaf of valuable artifacts you’ve so expertly forged, you counterfeit a genealogy that proves the trove is rightfully yours. To this end, you prepare a legal document in which your alter ego—grateful for having been rescued by one of your imaginary ancestors from going to a watery grave in the River Thames—gifts him this archive in 1613. You even manufacture a coat of arms that combines your family’s with his.

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