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"VORTIGERN" (WILLIAM HENRY IRELAND).
Term Paper ID:26581
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Essay Subject:
Examines 18th Cent. forgery of play by Ireland which he claimed to be by Shakespeare. Freudian analysis of forger/author's motivations & intentions.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines 18th Cent. forgery of play by Ireland which he claimed to be by Shakespeare. Freudian analysis of forger/author's motivations & intentions.
Paper Introduction:
This research will examine the eighteenth-century forgery of a purported play by Shakespeare, Vortigern, as well as other documents relating to or supposedly written by Shakespeare, by one William Henry Ireland, the only son of a London engraver, Samuel Ireland. What motivated W.H. Ireland to produce a whole range of Shakespeareana seems most credibly attributed to what are today known as oedipal issues between parent and child. Young Ireland appears to have had the misfortune of being born into a family in which the father-son relationship was strained by ambiguity of affection and parental identity, and complicated by evidence of his father Samuel Ireland's obsession with the life and work of Shakespeare, as well as with a more general project of upward-class mobility. The range of issues dealing with the ambiguity of family relationships in the Ireland household can be seen
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In 1746, the British army soundlywon at Culloden; in the play, Aurelius's northern forces defeat Vortigern,a moral as well as military victory not because W.H. Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Freud's comment on psychicdelusions that lessen existential suffering lends texture equally to thecollective literary consciousness of England at the time and to William'sapparently desperate wish for parental love and approval: "In [thatprocess] . 3 vols. An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments. Mair says that Ireland's pamphlet Confessionswas intended to "display his own talents, clear his father's reputation,and score off his enemies" (236). 18 8; New York: AMS P Inc., 1965.Hunt, Margaret. What motivatedW.H. Thus Vortigern's recruitment of Saxons,plainly alien figures even in the rivalry among Picts, Scots, and Britons,can be compared to Bonnie Prince Charlie's landing, from Catholic France,and enlisting Catholic Highland Scots in the project of marching southtoward England's throne. In that context, the authenticity of theProfession could function as provenance for Vortigern, not because the playdeals directly with religion but identifying Shakespeare as a Protestantappears to have been an exercise in wish-fulfillment for the English whosuspected him of popery. Rowse. The "most unkindest cut of all" (JuliusCaesar III.ii)? This was complicated by the fact that Samuel Ireland had scantregard for William Henry's intellectual gifts. . 3, The Tragedies and Romances. Ireland's literary ambition an be discerned in his preface to an 1832edition of Vortigern, which cites his and the play's humiliation, but thencomments that so many people (those who thought the Shakespeareana genuinewere called Believers, says Grebanier) accepted their authenticity for sometime: "I shall now close this Preface ... 14 -187.---. William Henry Ireland's superego may not have developed predictablyfor the reason that his father was neither lenient nor strict but more orless absent. "Shakespeare's Queer Sonnets and the Forgeries of William Henry Ireland." Criticism 4 (Spring 1998): 167-189.Mair, John. New York: Greenwich House, 1983.Freud, Sigmund. Thomas, 1832."Jacobites." Grolier Encyclopedia Online. Romeo and Juliet. But the effortwas not an exercise in selfless love but rather of the wish for what Freudrefers to as a "super-ego identification with the father," the obverse ofthe ambivalent, repressed primal wish to kill the father, as Oedipus killedLaius (Freud 79f). New York: Norton, 1965.Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Such parallels suggest that Ireland's narrativestrategy was to give an account of ethnic-religious cleavages so familiarto eighteenth-century Britain, not in specifically religious terms butrather in terms of a more generally felt English identity and Holinshed-like patriotism. And supposing the latter assertion could be, in the very smallest degree, correct, to what can be ascribed the malignity with which I have been pursued, but to an ignoble and dastardly sentiment of envy, nurtured in the bosom of those, who were the dupes of a stripling in years, and a total novice in the paths of literature?" (Ireland n.p.)Poor William Henry: When he wants to prove that no malice drove his fraud,he characterizes himself as a "head-strong youth, under seventeen years ofage, whose only aim was to afford pleasure to a parent" (Ireland n.p.). New York: W.W. from whose chest he had originally said heobtained them. Rational actionper se comes about as the individual ego evolves from infancy to adulthoodand makes sense of the fact the organism that it inhabits is different from(and alien to) the external world: "originally the ego includes everything,later it separates off an external world from itself" (Freud 15). Ireland's Profession played perfectly into thisfeature of England's popular and literary imagination because it displacedwhat might be called "that dear perfection which he owes / Without thattitle" (Romeo and Juliet II.ii) of Catholic. Potter, Inc., 1978. . The Fourth Forger: William Ireland and the Shakespeare Papers. If the link between Vortigern and the Jacobite Rebellion seems linkedto the connection between Shakespeare's Profession and the Rebellion'slegacy of anti-Catholicism, this does not mean the content of Vortigernspecifically articulated Protestantism. with two simple comments: If my productions were such miserable trash ... . This research will examine the eighteenth-century forgery of apurported play by Shakespeare, Vortigern, as well as other documentsrelating to or supposedly written by Shakespeare, by one William HenryIreland, the only son of a London engraver, Samuel Ireland. Ireland's major passion was amassinga variety of artistic and historic collectibles--from books and artifactsowned by famous people to paintings by Hogarth and Van Dyck. Nor did Mrs. Freeman, who might have been his natural mother, forreasons of social (superego?) respectability, acknowledge him (Grebanier289). 1714- 8 ." Journal of Social History 29 (Summer 1996): 1 2 -1 22.Ireland, William Henry. The Annotated Shakespeare: Vol. The play was laughed--more exactly howled--off the stage (Grebanier221). London: J. The Great Shakespeare Forgery. New York: Macmillan, 1939.Malone, Edmond. . William later characterized the forgery as theeffort of a young lad of 18 (17 according to Ireland's Preface to an 1832edition of Vortigern) to please his father (Grebanier 7 -1). Potter, Inc., 1978. A.L. . The egoencounters alienation and conflict even as it seeks satisfaction,accommodating itself to what is other, whether the world of general societyor the father figure, subconsciously identified with society: "[M]an'sactivity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to realize . During the period that young Ireland wasproducing his forgeries, the principal preoccupation of the elder Irelandwas pursuing the wish to receive royal recognition of his discoveries (Mair115). . the slightest affinity to ourbard'" (Grebanier 39). It also puts a Freudianconstruction of national consciousness on what might more properly belabeled an exercise in eighteenth-century pop culture. .Keevak, Michael. The Jacobite Rebellion,which crushed forever the claim of Catholics in general and in particularthe Scots Stuart line deposed by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, to thethrone of England, as well as claims of intrinsic territorial and legaljurisdiction on the part of Scotland, locus of the military part of theRebellion ("Jacobites"). Grebanier and Mair both conclude that young Ireland had literary andtheatrical ambition per se. .satisfactions" (Freud 76). The Annotated Shakespeare: Vol. Ed. New York: Clarkson N. During his apprenticeship, teenageIreland lived at home, but the elder Ireland does not appear to have beenengaged by the adolescent boy's life. Mair (234) says "theoriginals of Edmunda's madness [Lady Macbeth], Flavia's wanderings in theforest [Rosalind], or the aged Constantius' division of his kingdom [Lear}are not difficult to detect." The archetypal behavior patterns of fatherand son as individuals point to Freud as the best analyst of the episode. A key source of the forgeries and their Freudian implications can beinferred from a trip by father and son in 1893 to Stratford-upon-Avon,where Samuel confessed his bardolatry and fervent wish to have something ofShakespeare's (Grebanier 33-4). Ireland is determinedto make a case for Scots militarism but because Vortigern supplementsBriton forces from Saxony (Vort. one can try to re-create the world, to build up in its steadanother world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated andreplaced by others that are in conformity with one's own wishes" (Freud 27-28). The disaster was twofold. It was no secret thenor now that Shakespeare's plays owed much to the Holinshed's Chronicles,which functioned much as the official history of the Elizabethan court,which in turn coincided with England's emergence as a Protestant state.Holinshed provided documentary basis for England to be perceived as fullyChristian, fully moral, even as it declared independence from the corruptChurch (Holinshed 76 et passim). . The range ofissues dealing with the ambiguity of family relationships in the Irelandhousehold can be seen in Freud's analysis of the power of the superego, orthe civilizing influences on the individual psyche of the developing child,in terms of the child's suppression of natural tendencies toward aggressionvis-à-vis "the authority which prevents him from having his . Keevak (67) says that "Ireland's eventualaim, which failed disastrously, was to put himself forward as a new youngbard," by way of Vortigern. Works CitedChurchill, Winston. . Ed. The difficulty with this explanation is that it rather toomuch credits the conscious artistry of young Ireland, given the derivativelanguage and awkward action in Vortigern. The most "severe" kind of conscience "arises from the joint operationof . Vortigern: An Historical Play with an Original Preface, Represented at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on Saturday, April 2, 1796, as a Supposed Newly-Discovered Drama of Shakspeare. New York: Clarkson N. On the other hand, the fact that Samuel had connections at theDrury Lane helps explain why it was there that Vortigern was mounted by Mr.Kemble and company. Freud's view is that conscience (superego)formation can occur whether or not a child is leniently or strictly broughtup. First, Kemble becameconvinced the play was a fraud and so mounted it in a spirit of viciousirony. Julius Caesar. Henry Steele Commager. James Strachey. Rational action means"becoming a member of the human community, and with the help of a techniqueguided by science, going over to the attack against nature and subjectingher to the human will" (27). He had apassion for the theatre (and its demimonde) and a friendship with themanager of London's Drury Lane Theatre (Grebanier 55). As Churchill explains (11-12),Saxon incursion from the continent into Roman Britain coincided withincursions southward by Picts and Scots, plunging Britain into the DarkAges by AD 5 . IV, England. He was, to put itanother way, a man of the world. Freud says rational action in perpetual tension with emotional andespecially sexual behavior characterizes human experience. Had Vortigern been a successful fraud, the elder Irelandmight have received the royal attention he craved and then grantedacceptance to William. An imperfectly formed conscience would not necessarily have preventedyoung Ireland from engaging oedipal issues with the elder, connected to theproblems of projecting a coherent, superego-socialized persona into theworld. As a youngster William was sent to France for schooling forseveral years, then apprenticed, at Samuel Ireland's discretion, as a lawclerk in London (Grebanier 56-7). Bonnie Prince Charlie had raised a Scots army in 1745; Vortigernexploits British hatred of the Scots, blaming them for Constantius's murderwhile raising a British army to crush the (north) half of the kingdom notalready granted to him by Constantius. At the time of Vortigern, protection of Roman legions isstill the Britons' best option. Vol. .the one or the other of these aims" (Freud 25). Thus nothing would do (inIreland's mind) but young Ireland must act on this genius and produce more.Parallels between Vortigern and the Jacobite Rebellion entail both theProfession and the fact that the plot of the play resembles facts about thehistory of England (1745-46) that were as of 1795, the year Vortigern wasproduced at Drury Lane, fresh in the communal mind. Until the end of his life,Samuel Ireland insisted that William had not the wit to forge the documents(Grebanier 55; 281ff, et passim), though William repeatedly assured Samuelthat he had indeed crafted them, that there had been no such person as themysterious and elusive Mr. H. The father figure who was not a real father programmatically andperhaps from his point of view sensibly distanced himself physically andemotionally from the boy, even as he generously acknowledged him as hisown. Norton & Company, 1962.Grebanier, Bernard. Second, a critique, published just before opening night, declaredthat Vortigern resembled "nothing of the history of Shakspeare, nothing ofthe history of the Stage, or the history of the English Language" (Malone352-3). The Roman-era setting allowsIreland to sidestep dealing directly with a hot-button sociopolitical issuewhile exploiting the skewed patterns of loyalty, royal identity, and nation-state alliances that had plagued Britain throughout its history and thathad manifest most recently in the 1746 defeat of the Young Pretender atCulloden. 3 vols. Had the fraud been exposed but a success on its ownterms, it might have been the weapon with which young Ireland couldpsychically enact the aggressive oedipal impulse and free himself from theneed for parental approval. The fact that Samuel Ireland had hanging on a wall adrawing depicting Vortigern, in Holinshed's history a disgraced monarch ofBritain, perhaps should have been a clue to William Henry's transition fromlatent to manifest seeker of paternal attention. Shakespeare's Protestant Profession can be interpreted as youngIreland's only stroke of literary genius in cultural context. But young Ireland remained trapped on theboundary of emotional and psychic contingency: Samuel persisted inbelieving the documents to be genuine because he refused to believe Williamhad the brains to forge them. Oneconsequence of the Jacobite Rebellion was persistence of "robust" anti-Catholicism in England, perhaps less among England's elites than the lowerclasses in 1795 but evident all the same (Hunt 1 21). Ireland to produce a whole range of Shakespeareana seems most crediblyattributed to what are today known as oedipal issues between parent andchild. But hoped-for paternalapproval seems never to have manifest as convincing evidence of love.Instead, Samuel demanded more every time William would come up with yetanother deed, letter, or notation supposedly written either by toShakespeare. The overarching point is that home and hearth were of secondaryimportance to Samuel. William later said that the journey(apparently rare quality time) "had taken such root in his mind that he was'more partial than ever to the pursuit after antiquities of everydescription, and more particularly to . Butwhen he wants to prove his own worth as writer--and by implication, socialplayer--he cites his well-documented ability to dupe supposed expertsdespite his youth. what becomes of the intellects of those who stamped them, in many respects, worthy the Bard of Avon? Mair explains Vortigern partly by the fact that Samuel Ireland readout in society the text of Shakespeare's purported Profession of the Faith(Mair 34-6). Rowse. Civilization and Its Discontents. frustration of instinct, which unleashes aggressiveness, and theexperience of being loved, which turns e aggressiveness inwards and handsit over to the super-ego" (Freud 77). Ed. 3, The Tragedies and Romances. "Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. The language was praised by such third parties as Cowper and aprominent schoolmaster named Dr. Warton. Young Ireland appears to have had the misfortune of being born intoa family in which the father-son relationship was strained by ambiguity ofaffection and parental identity, and complicated by evidence of his fatherSamuel Ireland's obsession with the life and work of Shakespeare, as wellas with a more general project of upward-class mobility. III.iv). Indeed, although young Ireland bore that name, thereis a view that he, like the elder siblings in the household, was actuallythe illegitimate issue of Ireland's housekeeper and mistress Mrs. Freeman,the discarded mistress of another man (Grebanier 53). 75-133. A.L. Trans. 1796; New York: Kelley, 197 .Shakespeare, William.
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