DECEMBER MEETING OF THE SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK.-The President, APPLETON MORGAN, Esq., in the chair.The Executive Committee reported the completion of the third number of THE BANKSIDE SHAKESPEARE, which was expected to be delivered to the Numbering and Issuing Committee by January 15, 1889; also the distribution to members and subscribers of Number 8 of the Society's Regular Series, being the paper lately read before the Society, "THE CONSTRUCTION AND TYPES OF SHAKESPEARE'S VERSE AS SEEN IN THE OTHELLO,' by Vice-President, Thomas R. Price, M.A., LL.D. Dr. B. Rush Field then read the paper of the evening: MEDICOSHAKESPEAREAN FANATICISM. Mr. Fleming said that Dr. Field's paper impressed one with the human impossibility -as it appeared-of regarding any Shakespearean question except from one's own personal standpoint. The point of view was always to the fore. The lawyer would have Shakespeare a lawyer, the physician would have him a physician, the philosopher, pure and simple, would have him a philosopher pure and simple. He (Mr. Fleming) did not remember anywhere to have heard of a lawyer who was sure Shakespeare was a physician, or a physician who was sure Shakespeare was a lawyer, etc. Was it not the real explanation that Shakespeare was a dramatist, first, last, and always? Was it impossible that Shakespeare may have had a friend who had studied law, another who had studied medicine, another who had worked at the old philosophers? Mr. S. H. Nichols did not think that accounted for it. He himself, and an hundred others, had studied a little law, and a little medicine, and a little philosophy. But, although to us and our contemporaries there were ten or twenty thousand volumes accessible to Shakespeare's one, he did not believe that any one among us all could put down on

* Printed at page 1 of this issue.

paper as many references to and statements of facts in these three branches of erudition as Shakespeare did and get them all as nearly correct from mere reading as Shakespeare did in his plays. The learned reader of the evening was exactly right, in the speaker's opinion, when he said that any examination of any single one of Shakespeare's attributes, from any standpoint or any point of view (or working at what Mr. Fleming properly described as "the personal equation "), invariably resulted in a denial, or at least a question of authorship. Mr. Morgan said that Shakespeare makes the clerical profession (as was doubtless the custom in his day,) practise law as well as medicine. It was the bishops, not the lawyers, who posted Henry V. as to his title, by Salique prescription, to France. Though the plays are packed full of law, and though Jack Cade's lieutenant, Dick, proposed to hang all the lawyers the first thing, it is curious that Shakespeare never puts his law into the mouths of lawyers. In the Winter's Tale he even goes so far as to make a statutory official state the law as to childbirth in prisons incorrectly, and an old woman correct him. Perhaps this was the reason why Lord Campbell, in quoting the legalisms in that play, made no allusion to this circumstance. He (Mr. Morgan) would like very much to ask Mr. Nichols how it would be if he found himself presented with two abrupt alternatives, one or the other of which he must select-namely, the pure Shakespearian authorship theory, or the Donnelly cipher theory? Mr. Nichols replied that he should try to gain strength for such an election as that by repeating the hymn, "Lo, on a narrow neck of land 'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand." Mr Nevin drew an analogy from Milton in favor of the accepted authorship view. Mr. Reynolds moved that Dr. Field's paper be referred with approval to the Publication Committee with orders to print. ADOPTED. The Chair stated that the next regular meeting of the Society would be held at Hamilton Hall, on Thursday, January 24, to hear a paper, "Did Ben Jonson write Lord Bacon's Works?" by Alfred Waites, Esq. On motion, adjourned

Attest:

WM. H. FLEMING, Acting Secretary.

CLEARFIELD, PENN., Dec. 26, 1888.

Editors SHAKESPEARIANA :

I will take this occasion to report to SHAKESPEARIANA, that a Shakespearian society was organized here about a year Frank Fielding, President; Miss Marie Kratzer, Secretary. It consists of about twenty members; meets fortnightly; exercises consist of readings, quotations, discussions, etc. Great interest is manifested by all the members of the class, who enjoy it very much, and we feel particularly indebted to SHAKESPEARIANA for our renewed interest in Shakespeare's writings. The members are as follows: Hon. Joseph W. Parker; Dr. and Mrs. H. B. Van Valzah; Mr. and Mrs. William D. Bigler; Mr. and Mrs. H. A. Kratzer; Mr. and Mrs. Frank Fielding; Miss Marie E. McAlpine, Miss Marie Kratzer, Miss Mary E. Mossop, Miss Alice Mossop, Mr. Clement W. Smith, Miss Ruth R. Weaver, Miss Kate A. Weaver, and Miss Lizzie Hartswick. Yours respectfully, FRANK FIELDING.

The Open Court.

OUR always valued correspondent, Mr. William D. O'Connor, sends us a manuscript, anent Dr. Nicholson's pamphlet, which he says, "as a loyal Shakespearian you may not admit, but in regard to Donnelly's book, respice finem is the true word."

Mr. O'Connor's point in his manuscript is, that Dr. Nicholson has really corroborated Mr. Donnelly; that by using Donnelly's own "root numbers," "modifiers," etc., he (Nicholson) has arrived at an intelligible story which, while not coinciding with, does not in any way contradict, the Donnelly narrative; that the two can be easily reconciled, etc., thus proving rather than disproving the existence of the cipher.

Mr. O'Connor's connection with the Baconian theory is too conspicuous for us to question his right to be heard ex cathedra as to it and all that it implies. But, seriously, when is this Baconian miracle to cease? or is it a continuing miracle,

like that of life and death-of production and reproduction, the recurrence of the seasons, etc.? Did Francis Bacon not only write the Shakespeare plays, but, in the writing of them, use only words which, when arranged by anybody, his believers or unbelievers, friends or foes, would always make coherent narratives? Some have found it impossible to believe that a Stratford village lad became a Shakespeare at all. But, at the most, this was only a miracle!

Are not Mr. Donnelly and Mr. O'Connor trying to explain (or to dispose of) one miracle by asking us to swallow two, three, or half a dozen? For surely it is miraculous (1) that the words composing the Shakespeare plays, although part of the warp and woof of an Elizabethan literature, by an arithmetic invented by Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century can be pressed into a narrative constructed in the diction of the nineteenth century by one investigator: and again miraculous (2) that another narrative in nineteenth century diction, but entirely different, can be constructed by the same arithmetic by another investigator who is trying to explode the investigations of investigator number 1: and so on and on?

If Mr. O'Connor will write us as to this (always considerative of the limits of OPEN COURT), we will gladly print his letter. But he must pardon us for saying, that the paper he sends us appears to us only repetitive of Mr. Donnelly's statements, which the press of England and the United States, to say the least, have not neglected during the past eight months, and with the full import of which our readers are perfectly familiar.

Shakespeariana

VOL. VI.

FEBRUARY, 1889.

NO. LXII.

A PLEA FOR A REFERENCE CANON OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS, WITH A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF NOTATION APPLICABLE TO ALL CRITICAL REPRINTS OF THE FOLIO OR QUARTO TEXTS.*

E Americans are in the habit of saying that time is money. We seldom squander it without occasion. Our lavishness is generally in the hope of some re

turn, either in the way of instant pleasure, or remoter but expected benefit. This is true of all sorts of intellectual time-spenders, but of none truer than of the student of literature. For the field is vast, the bounds of a long lifetime are scarcely sufficient for the satisfactory prosecution of a single branch of research; and as the night draws on and the shadows lengthen few of us care to halt in our review of the ripe golden hoards to winnow away mere chaff, or be otherwise wanton spendthrifts of the precious light that remains. To such, even the waste of minutes is an annoyance, unhappily, of their patience too often demanded.

I propose now, in a practical talk to practical fellow-students, to vent a little spleen upon a grievance from which most of us have too often suffered, namely, the scantiness and faultiness of existing codes of literary reference. Historian, biographer, essayist, can all bear witness to the weary hours of search, the pages thumbed, the shelves emptied, to verify some phrase,

*Read before the New York Shakespeare Society, April 28, 1887.