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.
