The text of this strangely-spelt, strangely-worded epistle, with its puny efforts at a jest, was succeeded by a suggestion that "G. Peel," the alleged signatory, could be none other than George Peele, the dramatist, who achieved reputation in Shakespeare's early days, and was an industrious collector of anecdotes.
Thus the impish Steevens baited his hook. The sport which followed must have exceeded his expectations. Any one familiar with the bare outline of Elizabethan literary history should have perceived that a trap had been set. The letter was assigned to the year 1600. Shakespeare's play of Hamlet, to the performance of which it unconcernedly refers, was not produced before 1602; at that date George Peele had lain full four years in his grave. Peele could never have passed the portals of the theatre called the "Globe"; for it was not built until 1599. No historic tavern of the name is known. The surname of the person, to whom the letter was pretended to have been addressed, is suspicious. "Marle" was one way of spelling "Marlowe" at a period when forms of surnames varied with the caprice of the writer. The great dramatist, Christopher Marle, or Marloe, or Marlowe, had died in 1593. "Henrie Marle" is counterfeit coinage of no doubtful stamp.
The language and the style of the letter are undeserving of serious examination. They are of a far later period than the Elizabethan age. They cannot be dated earlier than 1763. Safely might the heaviest odds be laid that in no year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth "did friende Marle promyse G. Peel his syster that he would send hyr watche and the cookerie book by the man," or that "Ned Alleyn made pleasante affirmation to G. Peel of friend Will's theft of the speech in Hamlet concerning an actor's excellencye."
From top to toe the imposture is obvious. But the general reader of the eighteenth century was confiding, unsuspicious, greedy of novel information. The description of the source of the document seemed to him precise enough to silence doubt.
[III]
The Theatrical Review of 1763 succeeded in launching the fraud on a quite triumphal progress. Again and again, as the century advanced, was G. Peel's declaration to "friende Marle" paraded, without hint of its falsity, before snappers-up of Shakespearean trifles. Seven years after its first publication, the epistle found admission in a slightly altered setting to so reputable a periodical as the Annual Register. Burke was still directing that useful publication, and whatever information the Register shielded, was reckoned to be of veracity. "G. Peel" and "friende Marle" were there, in the year 1770, suffered to exchange their confidences in the most honourable environment.
Another seven years passed, and in 1777 there appeared an ambitious work of reference, entitled Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical History of Literature, which gave its author, John Berkenhout, a free-thinking physician, his chief claim to remembrance. Steevens was a friend of Berkenhout, and helped him in the preparation of the book. Into his account of Shakespeare, the credulous physician introduced quite honestly the fourteen-year-old forgery. The reputed date of 1600, which the supposititious justice of the peace had given it in the Theatrical Review, was now suppressed. Berkenhout confined his comment to the halting reminiscence: "Whence I copied this letter I do not recollect; but I remember that at the time of transcribing it, I had no doubt of its authenticity."
Thrice had the trick been worked effectively in conspicuous places before Steevens died in 1800. But the evil that he did lived after him, and within a year of his death the imposture renewed its youth. A correspondent, who concealed his identity under the signature of "Grenovicus" (i.e., of Greenwich), sent Peel's letter in 1801 to the Gentleman's Magazine, a massive repertory of useful knowledge. There it was duly reprinted in the number for June. "Grenovicus" had the assurance to claim the letter as his own discovery. "To my knowledge," he wrote, "it has never yet appeared in print." He refrained from indicating how he had gained access to it, but congratulated himself and the readers of the Gentleman's Magazine on the valiant feast that he provided for them. His action was apparently taken by the readers of the Gentleman's Magazine at his own valuation.
Meanwhile the discerning critic was not altogether passive. Isaac D'Israeli denounced the fraud in his Curiosities of Literature; but he and others did their protesting gently. The fraud looked to the expert too shamefaced to merit a vigorous onslaught. He imagined the spurious epistle must die of its own inanity. In this he miscalculated the credulity of the general reader. "Grenovicus" of the Gentleman's Magazine had numerous disciples.
Many a time during the past century has that worthy's exploit been repeated. Even so acute a scholar as Alexander Dyce thought it worth while to reprint the letter in 1829 in the first edition of his collected works of George Peele (Vol. I., page 111), although he declined to pledge himself to its authenticity. The latest historian of Dulwich College[40] has admitted it to his text with too mildly worded a caveat. Often, too, has "G. Peel" emerged more recently from a long-forgotten book or periodical to darken the page of a modern popular magazine. I have met him unabashed during the present century in two literary periodicals of repute—in the Academy (of London), in the issue of 18th January 1902, and in the Poet Lore (of Boston) in the following April number. Future disinterments may safely be prophesied. In the jungle of the Annual Register or the Gentleman's Magazine the forgery lurks unchallenged, and there will always be inexperienced explorers, who from time to time will run the unhallowed thing to earth there, and bring it forth as a new and unsuspected truth.