s expense in sundry personalities
both "loose and humorous," which being totally unfit for publication here
are reserved for a private issue of "Loose and Humorous Papers" to be
edited, with a running marginal commentary or illustrative and
explanatory version of the utmost possible fullness, {279} by the Founder
and another member of the Society. To these it might possibly be
undesirable for them to attract the notice of the outside world.
Reverting therefore to his first subject from various references to the
presumed private character, habits, gait, appearance, and bearing of the
gentleman in question, Mr. D. observed that the ascription of a share in
the _Taming of the Shrew_ to William Haughton (hitherto supposed the
author of a comedy called _Englishmen for my Money_) implied a doubly
discreditable blunder. The real fact, as he would immediately prove, was
not that Haughton was joint author with Shakespeare of the _Taming of the
Shrew_, but that Shakespeare was joint author with Haughton of
_Englishmen for my Money_. He would not enlarge on the obvious fact that
Shakespeare, so notorious a plunderer of others, had actually been
reduced to steal from his own poor store an image transplanted from the
last scene of the third act of _Romeo and Juliet_ into the last scene of
the third act of _Englishmen for my Money_; where the well-known and
pitiful phrase--"Night's candles are burnt out"--reappears in all its
paltry vulgarity as follows;--"Night's candles burn obscure." Ample as
was the proof here supplied, he would prefer to rely exclusively upon
such further evidence as might be said to lie at once on the surface and
in a nutshell.

The second title of this play, by which the first title was in a few
years totally superseded, ran thus: _A Woman will have her Will_. Now
even in an age of punning titles such as that of a well-known and
delightful treatise by Sir John Harrington, the peculiar fondness of
Shakespeare for puns was notorious; but especially for puns on names, as
in the proverbial case of Sir Thomas Lucy; and above all for puns on his
own Christian name, as in his 135th, 136th, and 143rd sonnets. It must
now be but too evident to the meanest intelligence--to the meanest
intelligence, he repeated; for to such only did he or would he then and
there or ever or anywhere address himself--(loud applause) that the
graceless author, more utterly lost to all sense of shame than any Don
Juan or other typical