John Payne Collier - Controversial Shakespearian Scholar

Controversial Shakespearian Scholar

His leisure was given to the study of Shakespeare and the early English drama. After some minor publications, he produced in 1825–1827 a new edition of Dodsley's Old Plays and in 1833 a supplementary volume entitled Five Old Plays. In 1831 appeared his History of English Dramatic Poetry and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration, a badly arranged but valuable work. It obtained for him the post of librarian to the Duke of Devonshire, and, subsequently, access to the chief collections of early English literature throughout the kingdom, especially to the treasures of Bridgewater House. In 1847 he was appointed secretary to the Royal Commission on the British Museum.

Collier used these opportunities to effect a series of literary fabrications. Over the next several years he claimed to find a number of new documents relating to Shakespeare's life and business. After New Facts, New Particulars and Further Particulars respecting Shakespeare had appeared and passed muster, Collier produced (1852) the famous Perkins Folio, a copy of the Second Folio (1632), so called from a name written on the title-page. In this book were numerous manuscript emendations of Shakespeare, said by Collier to be from the hand of "an old corrector." He published these corrections as Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare (1852) and boldly incorporated them in his next edition (1853) of Shakespeare.

Their authenticity was disputed by S.W. Singer in The Text of Shakespeare Vindicated (1853) and by E.A. Brae in Literary Cookery (1855) on internal evidence. In 1859 the folio was submitted by its owner, the Duke of Devonshire, to experts at the British Museum; the emendations were incontestably proved to be forgeries of modern date. Collier was exposed by Nicholas Hamilton in his Inquiry (1860). The point whether he was deceiver or deceived was left undecided, but the falsifications of which he was unquestionably guilty among the manuscripts at Dulwich College have left little doubt respecting it. He had produced the Memoirs of Edward Alleyn for the Shakespeare Society in 1841. He followed up this volume with the Alleyn Papers (1843) and the Diary of Philip Henslowe (1845).

He interpolated the name of Shakespeare in a genuine letter at Dulwich, and the spurious entries in Alleyn's Diary were proved to be by Collier's hand when the sale of his library in 1884 gave access to a transcript he had made of the Diary with interlineations corresponding with the Dulwich forgeries. No statement of his can be accepted without verification, and no manuscript he has handled without careful examination, but he did much useful work. He compiled a valuable Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (1865); he reprinted a great number of early English tracts of extreme rarity and rendered good service to the numerous antiquarian societies with which he was connected, especially in the editions he produced for the Camden Society and the Percy Society.

His Old Man's Diary (1871-72) is an interesting record, though even here the taint of fabrication is not absent. Unfortunately, what he did amiss is more striking to the imagination than what he did aright, and he will be chiefly remembered by it. He died at Maidenhead, where he had long resided, on 17 September 1883.

For an account of the discussion raised by Collier's emendations, see C.M. Ingleby, Complete View of the Shakespeare Controversy (1861).