ABSTRACT
Francis Webb, one of the most prominent defenders of the Ireland Shakespeare papers, put it well, albeit in a losing cause: “When ten thousand rays, all darting from one great Circle, point directly to the same Centre; they illuminate the mighty Round with the steady beams of Truth.—Truth is uniform, simple, One-Error, multiform, perplext, infinite.”1 Reality, he insisted, is always consistent with itself, and inconsistency is a sure sign of error. Even as he was inadvertently lending support to one of the most audacious literary impostures of the century, he was spelling out one of the most reliable means of spotting fakery.
