F.E.
REPLIES.
BLUNDER IN MALONE'S SHAKSPEARE.
I regret that no further notice has been taken of the very curious matter suggested by "Mr. Jebb" (No 14. p. 213.), one of the many forgeries of which Shakspeare has been the object, which ought to be cleared up, but which I have neither leisure nor materials to attempt; but I can afford a hint or two for other inquirers.
1. This strange intermixture of some John Shakspeare's confession of the Romish faith with William Shakspeare's will, is, as Mr. Jebb states to be found in the Dublin edition of Malone's Shakspeare, 1794, v. i. p. 154. It is generally supposed that this Dublin edition is a copy (I believe a piracy) of the London one of 1790; but by what means the three introductory paragraphs of John Shakspeare's popish confession were foisted into the real will of William is a complete mystery.
2. Malone, in a subsequent part of his prolegomena to both of those editions (Lond. v. i. part II. 162., and Dublin, v. ii. p. 139.), printed a pretended will or confession of the faith of John Shakspeare, found in a strange, incredible way, and evidently a forgery. This consisted of fourteen articles, of which the first three were missing. Now the three paragraphs foisted into William's will would be the kind of paragraphs that would complete John's confession; but they are not in confession. Who, then, forged them? and foisted them—which Malone had never seen—into so prominent a place in the Dublin reprint of Malone's work?
3. Malone, in his inquiry into the Ireland forgeries, alludes to this confession of faith, admits that he was mistaken about it, and intimates that he had been imposed on, which he evidently was; but he does not seem to know any thing of the second forgery of the three introductory paragraphs, or of their bold introduction into William Shakspeare's will in the Dublin edition of his own work.
It is therefore clear that Mr. Jebb is mistaken in thinking that it was "a blunder of Malone's." It seems, as far as we can see, to have been, not a blunder, but an audacious fabrication; and how it came into the Irish edition, seems to me incomprehensible. The printer of the Dublin edition, Exshaw, was a respectable man, an alderman and a Protestant, and he could have no design to make William Shakspeare pass for a papist; nor indeed does the author of the fraud, whoever he was, attempt that; for the three paragraphs profess to be the confession of John. So that, on the whole, the matter is to me quite inexplicable; it is certain that it must have been a premeditated forgery and fraud, but by whom or for what possible purpose, I cannot conceive.
C.