s of those who would
acknowledge no other means of deciding on debated questions had been
refuted and repelled. What were the other means of investigation and
verification in which not less than in the metrical test they were
accustomed to put their faith, and by which they doubted not to attain in
the future even more remarkable results than their researches had as yet
achieved, the debate just concluded, in common with every other for which
they ever had met or ever were likely to meet, would amply suffice to
show. By such processes as had been applied on this as on all occasions
to the text of Shakespeare's works and the traditions of his life, they
trusted in a very few years to subvert all theories which had hitherto
been held and extirpate all ideas which had hitherto been cherished on
the subject: and having thus cleared the ground for his advent, to
discover for the admiration of the world, as the name of their Society
implied, a New Shakespeare. The first step towards this end must of
course be the demolition of the old one; and he would venture to say they
had already made a good beginning in that direction. They had disproved
or they would disprove the claim of Shakespeare to the sole authorship of
_Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Hamlet_, and _Othello_; they had
established or they would establish the fact of his partnership in
_Locrine, Mucedorus, The Birth of Merlin, Dr. Dodipoll_, and _Sir Giles
Goosecap_. They had with them the incomparable critics of Germany; men
whose knowledge and judgment on all questions of English literature were
as far beyond the reach of their English followers as the freedom and
enlightenment enjoyed by the subjects of a military empire were beyond
the reach of the citizens of a democratic republic. They had established
and affiliated to their own primitive body or church various branch
societies or sects, in England and elsewhere, devoted to the pursuit of
the same end by the same means and method of study as had just been
exemplified in the transactions of the present meeting. Still there
remained much to be done; in witness of which he proposed to lay before
them at their next meeting, by way of inauguration under a happy omen of
their new year's work, the complete body of evidence by means of which he
was prepared to demonstrate that some considerable portion, if not the
greater part, of the remaining plays hitherto assigned to Shakespeare was
due to the collaboratio