contemporary dramatist (such as Wentworth Smith, for example).
Six of these spurious dramas were included in the Third Folio of
Shakespeare's complete works. Since this came out forty years after
the First Folio, when men who had known Shakespeare personally {211}
were dead, we certainly cannot believe that its editor had better
information than those of the First Folio, who were the poet's personal
friends, and who did not include these plays. The spurious dramas
printed in the Third Folio were: _The London Prodigal, The History of
the Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, The History of Sir John
Oldcastle, The Puritan Widow, Yorkshire Tragedy_, and _The Tragedy of
Locrine_.

Among the other plays imputed to Shakespeare at various times are:
_Fair Em, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Arden of Feversham, The Two
Noble Kinsmen, Edward Third_, and _Sir Thomas More_. Some good
critics, chiefly literary men, not scholars, still believe that
Shakespeare wrote parts of the last three; but it is practically
certain that he had nothing to do with the others, and his part in all
these disputed plays is extremely doubtful.

+Shakespearean Forgeries+.--Men who assigned the above spurious plays
to Shakespeare made an honest error of judgment, but other men have
committed deliberate forgeries in regard to him. At the end of the
eighteenth century, W. H. Ireland forged papers which he attempted to
impose on the public as recently discovered Mss. of the 'Swan of Avon.'
One of these finds, a play called _Vortigern_, was actually acted by a
prominent company. But the unShakespearean character of these 'great
discoveries' was soon perceived, and Ireland at length confessed.

Another famous fraud of a wholly different kind was that of J. P.
Collier. The great services which this man has rendered to the world
of scholarship make {212} all men reluctant to pass too severe censure
on his conduct; but it is only fair that the public should be warned
against deception. He pretended to have found a folio copy of the
plays corrected and revised on the margin in the handwriting of a
contemporary of Shakespeare. Some of these revisions were actual
improvements on the carelessly printed text; but it is now known that
they were forgeries. Similar changes were made by him in other
important documents, and were for some time accepted as genuine.

+The Bacon Controversy+.--During the latter part of the nineteenth
century, the contention was