The New Shakspere Society was founded in autumn 1873 by

Frederick James Furnivall Frederick James Furnivall (4 February 1825 – 2 July 1910) was an English philologist, best known as one of the co-creators of the '' New English Dictionary''. He founded a number of learned societies on early English literature and made pio ...

in order "to do honor to Shakspere, to make out the succession of his plays, and thereby the growth of his mind and art; to promote the intelligent study of him, and to print Texts illustrating his works and times..." Furnivall deliberately used an archaic

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is one ...

of Shakespeare's name in order to distinguish his Society from the earlier

Shakespeare Society William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

(1840–1853) organized by

John Payne Collier John Payne Collier (11 January 1789, London – 17 September 1883, Maidenhead) was an English Shakespearean critic and forger. Reporter and solicitor His father, John Dyer Collier (1762–1825), was a successful journalist, and his connection ...

History

Its first official meeting was held on 13 March 1874 at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, and by the next year membership had reached 500 members. Members included prominent names of the day such as

Eleanor Marx Jenny Julia Eleanor Marx (16 January 1855 – 31 March 1898), sometimes called Eleanor Aveling and known to her family as Tussy, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist who sometimes worked as a ...

,Gabriel, Mary. ''Love and Capital'': Karl and Jenny Marx. New York: Little Brown. 2011. p467

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

James Halliwell-Phillipps James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (born James Orchard Halliwell; 21 June 1820 – 3 January 1889) was an English Shakespearean scholar, antiquarian, and a collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Life The son of Thomas Halliwell, he ...

Richard Green Moulton Richard Green Moulton (5 May 1849 – 15 August 1924) was an English professor, author, and lawyer. Biography Richard Green Moulton was born in England in 1849. He was the brother of William Fiddian Moulton, John Fletcher Moulton, and James Ega ...

, and

Edward Dowden Edward Dowden (3 May 18434 April 1913) was an Irish critic, professor, and poet. Biography He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinbur ...

. In its early years, it hosted public paper discussions and published both ''Proceedings'' and ''Transactions'' as the official record of the society. The Society also devoted a significant portion of its energies to determining the exact chronology of Shakespeare's plays; Furnivall believed that Shakespeare's works had to be studied in the order they were written to "get at a right understanding of his mind." The Society was disrupted several times by conflicts between Furnivall and other members. Frederick Gard Fleay, an early member, resigned during the Society's first year after an argument with Furnivall, and a number of members left the society in the 1880s following a protracted argument between Furnivall and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Membership continued to decline throughout the next decade, and the Society officially disbanded in 1894.

Publications

Furnivall and many other members of the society were interested in quantifying Shakespeare's works, such as counting their lines or analyzing the meter of his poetry, which was reflected in their published papers and books. The Society also planned to publish Teena Rochfort-Smith's "Four-text Hamlet," an innovative experiment which reproduced four versions of ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

'' in parallel columns to enable textual analysis, but had only completed a prototype of the first act before Rochfort-Smith's untimely death.

References

{{Authority control 1873 establishments in England 1894 disestablishments in England Shakespearean scholarship Literary societies Text publication societies Defunct learned societies of the United Kingdom