The New Shakspere Society, 1873-1894

Authors

  • Robert Sawyer East Tennessee State University

Abstract

Cluster: “Shakespeare Readings, Societies, and Forums.” Edited by Matt Kozusko, Christy Desmet, and Robert Sawyer. 

This essay traces the rise and fall of the New Shakspere Society (1873-1894). Its founder, F. J. Furnivall, promoted the newest scientific advances to apply to Shakespeare's plays in order to produce the correct order in which they had been written. Furnivall was joined in this enterprise by Frederick Gard Fleay, who took meter-measurement tests of Shakespeare to an illogical extreme. Offended by such pseudo-scientific speculation, Algernon Charles Swinburne publicly assaulted both the methods and the members of the Society, ultimately contributing to the demise of the group. Discredited and disgraced, Furnivall formally disbanded the Society in 1894.

Author Biography

Robert Sawyer, East Tennessee State University

Robert Sawyer is Associate Professor and Assistant Chair for Graduate Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of Victorian Appropriations of Shakespeare and co-editor of Shakespeare and Appropriation and Harold Bloom's Shakespeare. His two most recent works are "Jerry Lee Lewis: Whole Lotta Shakespeare Goin' On" for The Upstart Crow (forthcoming, 2007) and "Prologues and Epilogues: Performing Shakespearean Criticism in the Restoration," which appears in a recently published collection of essays from the University of Delaware Press (2007).

Issue Cover text: B&L, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2006. Image: 18th century actress in a shepherdess costume tips her hat.

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Published

2006-09-01

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2006): Fall/Winter

Section

Notes