The Quest for Shakespeare

"In this study, the first of its kind, Kahan uncovers the motley and leaves his readers to contemplate the patchwork stitchings of Victorian aesthetics and science. His intermingling of archival research with lurid narrative forms is both engaging and surprising. His conclusion that that the era of self-fashioning is at an end, is worthy of consideration." (Richard Burt, Professor of English and Loser Studies, University of Florida, USA) "In this lively and provocative book Jeffrey Kahan examines the activities of the nineteenth-century 'New Shakspere Society', and the extraordinary, contrary, and larger-than-life characters that dominated and drove it. By adopting statistical analysis and scientific methods, the Society believed itself to be at the cutting edge of scholarship and created a new, scientifically verifiable Shakespeare. But although many of their insights and techniques anticipated later approaches, the Society has sunk almost without trace. Using unpublished sources and resurrecting many unjustly forgotten figures, Kahan provides a compelling tale of scrupulous scholarship, striking innovation and breathtaking malevolence. Written with verve and a real feeling for the characters involved, this promises to be an important contribution to the history of criticism and the canonization of Shakespeare." (Nick Groom, Department of English, University of Exeter, UK) "In 1873 Frederick James Furnivall urged a group of learned gentlemen to join him 'to do honor to Shakspere' and 'to promote the intelligent study of him.' The result was the New Shakspere Society, made up of Bardolators whose erudition was matched only by their enthusiasm. And yet, despite auspicious beginnings, the group never delivered on its promise. Jeffrey Kahan brings this band of scholars, litterateurs, clubmen, and eccentrics to life, shows the part they played in shaping our own ideas about Shakespeare, and reveals how modern Shakespeare studies are still wrestling with some of the same questions that exorcised the late Victorians." (Jack Lynch, Professor of English, Rutgers University-Newark, USA)

This book traces the formation and impact of the New Shakspere Society, created in 1873, which dedicated itself to solving the mysteries of Shakespeare’s authorship by way of science.

This book traces the formation and impact of the New Shakspere Society, created in 1873, which dedicated itself to solving the mysteries of Shakespeare’s authorship by way of science. This promise, however, was undermined not only by the antics of its director, Frederick J. Furnivall, but also by the inexactitudes of the tests. Jeffrey Kahan puzzles out how a society geared towards science quickly devolved into a series of grudge matches.  Nonetheless, the New Shakspere Society set the bibliographical and biographical agenda for the next century—an unusual legacy for an organization that was rife with intrigue, enmity, and incompetence; lives were ruined, lawyers consulted, and scholarship (mostly bad) produced and published.